It's suffocating to be in a middle management position because you get squeezed by the higher-ups and your own team. If the higher-ups make a decision that your team dislikes or vice versa, you're going to be in the shitter with whichever party suffered every time even if you had the best intentions.
This is the purpose of middle management. You're the one responsible to the C-levels for what happens on your team, and you're the first line of defense for the C-levels to ignore the complaints of their lowers. Thus you get shafted from both sides.
The only way to be good at middle management is to basically throw everyone under the bus all the time. When your subordinates complain about policy, it's all "this isn't me, management made this decision." And "I'll pass it along to management".... When management complains about the team, it's all "they're not being motivated, how about we give them pizza" or something. You know, useless one time "gifts" that should "improve morale" but actually does nothing, and costs less than actually increasing wages.
Yup, if you take a middle management job, you better have a plan to move up quickly, or desperately need the money.
It's suffocating to be in a middle management position because you get squeezed by the higher-ups and your own team. If the higher-ups make a decision that your team dislikes or vice versa, you're going to be in the shitter with whichever party suffered every time even if you had the best intentions.
This is the purpose of middle management. You're the one responsible to the C-levels for what happens on your team, and you're the first line of defense for the C-levels to ignore the complaints of their lowers. Thus you get shafted from both sides.
The only way to be good at middle management is to basically throw everyone under the bus all the time. When your subordinates complain about policy, it's all "this isn't me, management made this decision." And "I'll pass it along to management".... When management complains about the team, it's all "they're not being motivated, how about we give them pizza" or something. You know, useless one time "gifts" that should "improve morale" but actually does nothing, and costs less than actually increasing wages.
Yup, if you take a middle management job, you better have a plan to move up quickly, or desperately need the money.
Unfortunately for me it's the latter