Questions that will be considered later, worth thinking about now, include: How does this persist? If things are so bad, why aren’t things way worse? Why haven’t these corporations fallen apart or been competed out of business? Given they haven’t, why hasn’t the entire economy collapsed? Why do regular people, aspirant managers and otherwise, still think of these manager positions as the ‘good jobs’ as opposed to picking up pitchforks and torches?
I hope you also answer a question I had when I was reading this: it’s percolated down into common consciousness that some jobs are unusually tough and demanding. Medicine, finance, etc have reputations for being grueling. But I’d never heard that about middle management and your picture of middle management sounds worse than either. Any thoughts on why knowledge of this hasn’t percolated down?
Any thoughts on why knowledge of this hasn’t percolated down?
Maybe it’s an incorrect view. Like I indicated in my other answer, the picture painted by this post does not at all correspond to my experience in large corporations, nor does it correspond to my father’s experience as a middle manager in a large corporation.
Before we ask ourselves why something is correct, we should endeavor to ensure that it is in fact correct.
1) much of the reason it’s grueling and unpleasant is that it’s a social tournament, with success being predicated on convincing people that you’re successful. This naturally encourages participants to play up the benefits and downplay the costs to outsiders (and each other, and themselves).
2) It’s not as evenly distributed as the well-known difficult jobs—there are pretty good middle-management positions that can easily be found as examples to attract suckers to play your game.
I suspect that by the time someone notices they’ve been baited-and-switched by #2, they’ve invested enough in #1 that they start to believe it can’t get better.
Thank you for calling attention to that question. It wasn’t on the core list and it should be there. It’s sort of implicitly within that last question, but also importantly distinct and should be answered first. I should think more explicitly about that.
I do have a few good potential mechanisms I can point to, but will work to improve my model slash wait until I’ve laid out more of my model, rather than answer here.
I hope you also answer a question I had when I was reading this: it’s percolated down into common consciousness that some jobs are unusually tough and demanding. Medicine, finance, etc have reputations for being grueling. But I’d never heard that about middle management and your picture of middle management sounds worse than either. Any thoughts on why knowledge of this hasn’t percolated down?
Maybe it’s an incorrect view. Like I indicated in my other answer, the picture painted by this post does not at all correspond to my experience in large corporations, nor does it correspond to my father’s experience as a middle manager in a large corporation.
Before we ask ourselves why something is correct, we should endeavor to ensure that it is in fact correct.
Two reasons come to mind:
1) much of the reason it’s grueling and unpleasant is that it’s a social tournament, with success being predicated on convincing people that you’re successful. This naturally encourages participants to play up the benefits and downplay the costs to outsiders (and each other, and themselves).
2) It’s not as evenly distributed as the well-known difficult jobs—there are pretty good middle-management positions that can easily be found as examples to attract suckers to play your game.
I suspect that by the time someone notices they’ve been baited-and-switched by #2, they’ve invested enough in #1 that they start to believe it can’t get better.
Thank you for calling attention to that question. It wasn’t on the core list and it should be there. It’s sort of implicitly within that last question, but also importantly distinct and should be answered first. I should think more explicitly about that.
I do have a few good potential mechanisms I can point to, but will work to improve my model slash wait until I’ve laid out more of my model, rather than answer here.