A good middle manager should be spending most of their time
If they do this, keep them. If they don’t, then don’t
Exactly what @1aqd+1lD5XV7m said.
@8obk+1mrkiRRg Do we work at the same company? Your post implies managers have the ability to choose the group they manage. There is no open posting of jobs. You are told where you work you don’t pick.
You are all wrong. A good middle manager is applying for a new job outside of exxonmobil and making his exit plan!
Punch your ticket as a technical contributor in the group before you manage the group.
@1bwr+1mrkiRRg Another post implying you can sleep your way to the top. Yawn. Anyone else tired of this trope? Add some value to the discussion. Your joke wasn’t that funny the first time and it is just making you look pathetic at this point.
My manager at XOM actually cared about his employees. Defended the best he could against upper management.
They got rid of him and replaced him with a puppet
Left XOM due to the absolute technical incompetence of management, which as it turns out is very well known. New managers I work with outside of O&G are: 1) accomplished in their field and have real background in what they lead, and 2) actually care about their staff.
Not sure what a "good middle manager" should be doing; but a Great manager should be under his/her/its employee's desk every day sucking you know what as thanks for getting them promoted to middle management.
Speaking about generalizations:
.....You will like some managers and not like others......
My experience and that of most of my colleagues (all mid career engineers) is that they dislike (and even hate) 90% of their managers!
90% $ucking rate is not a generalization, it is statistics. Granted, my sample is small and biased towards the mid career people, but I bet is the experience of the majority.
90% means that the management culture $ucks, it means that 90% of those individuals are incompetent douchebags that should be fired in a heartbeat.
It's simple. If you are a person of "integrity" and refuse to row in the boat with the rest of the managers, you will be NSI'd out of the corporation. Senior management will flag you with the label, "INSORBORDINATION" for the rest of your management career.
ExxonMobil management is similar to any government political party "herd mentality". ROW IN THE BOAT WITH US OR BE THROWN OVERBOARD.
My favorite part of this post and posts on this board in general is the overreaching generalizations. All managers should. All managers should not. All managers do X. The truth isn’t so black and white. Different people like to be managed differently. What is helpful mentoring and guidance or providing clarity for one employee feels like micromanaging to another. There is a spectrum of behaviors on display by managers. You will like some managers and not like others. This shouldn’t come as a surprise.
So why don’t all of you with all the answers become managers and fix things?
Most managers are self serving and don't give a cr-p.
That’s exactly what they should be doing. Most good ones do this while the self serving ones encourage employees to lie, fake it and do whatever you have to do in order to make them look good. Self serving managers are all to common place these days. The worst ones micromanage and look to change anything in the process for pds bullet points that in their mind serve to enhance their worth and help the perception of their managers. What’s really sad is when the employees learn about the lies that the managers tell the higher ups. All trust is eroded and it’s very easy to fault the company since they are the face of the company. My Manger unfortunately is the epitome of the later. She’s special and I’ll just leave it at that.
Silly goose. That's not the way it works.
What a "GREAT" middle manager should be doing.
(1) Sunset bad ideas quickly before spending tens of millions of dollars on research only to put the bad idea on the shelf.
(2) Look outside before reinventing the wheel internally. If there is technology that we could buy or lease from a third-party technology provider that we could commercialize in our corporation to make money, buy it. It costs too much money and time to develop "Me Too" processes.
(3) Punch your ticket as a technical contributor in the group before you manage the group.
Unfortunately, in my experience, this is what most middle managers think they do. So quite sad that perception by manager and perceptions by employees are so far apart.
YES x 3000 x infinity.