First a caveat - I’m not a manager. I am at the top of the tech tree in a large org, which carries with it “leadership responsibilities”. I’ve also worn many hats over the years in various employment, so I know a thing or two about management.
I think you are generally wrong. Yes, ‘manager’ carries with it a certain amount of administrative and organisational responsibilities, not to mention the important ‘soft skills’ with conflict resolution and the like. But to deny or minimise the value of providing leadership is to miss the forest for the trees. The good managers I work with (and in my role I work with many) are definitely leaders in the traditional sense. They are the cool, rational, respected hands that provide guidance, break ties in debates and help drive the team/s forward. They are required to think strategically at times, and are certainly invaluable tactically.
We are all accountable to someone, all the way up to the CEO (who is accountable to the board). To diminish the role and contribution of managers at the bottom of the management stack is to be wilfully ignorant of the value they are providing.
> The good managers I work with (and in my role I work with many) are definitely leaders in the traditional sense.
Good managers are leaders, but this is far from universal.
Most orgs have no shortage of managers who used be good individual contributors, and who were pushed into the management track due to seniority when the previous manager left, or who wanted the pay bump, but have no real leadership ability and have no business being there.
There are a lot of “it depends” here. I’ve worked at orgs where best engineer gets promoted to manager because… best engineer! And the result can be a train wreck. I’ve seen the reverse where managers from a business background are managing engineers (also can be a train wreck). There are also plenty of great managers who don’t “lead”; they go about their work building a great working environment and helping others succeed (often a senior engineer will be providing the leadership portion).
A good organisation will be good at offering opportunity to the right people and giving them the tools they need. I agree that a good org is rarer than it should be, which is probably the source of much cynicism.
Some technical people are terrible at helping juniors in their careers, and relatively poor communicators. Their job is "get the thing built" or "maintain the servers".
Managers support each report in succeeding not just at their job but their career, and are an escalation point for cross-team conflict, among other things.
Just because somebody's job-description says something doesn't guarantee that persons contributes anything -- e.g. the CEO of yahoo who refused to buy google for 1 billion dollars.
You are generally wrong, but minimally true. If what you wrote was true, these people would be titled leaders or officers. But they aren't. Because they aren't. It's not that complicated. And yes, rarely some people show leadership, but that's rarely a requirement to be a manager
>The good managers I work with (and in my role I work with many) are definitely leaders in the traditional sense.
It's a fine opinion to have, but on matters like this, I'm more interested in the opinions of those who are being lead. Plenty of leaders love to think of themselves as great leaders.
I think you are generally wrong. Yes, ‘manager’ carries with it a certain amount of administrative and organisational responsibilities, not to mention the important ‘soft skills’ with conflict resolution and the like. But to deny or minimise the value of providing leadership is to miss the forest for the trees. The good managers I work with (and in my role I work with many) are definitely leaders in the traditional sense. They are the cool, rational, respected hands that provide guidance, break ties in debates and help drive the team/s forward. They are required to think strategically at times, and are certainly invaluable tactically.
We are all accountable to someone, all the way up to the CEO (who is accountable to the board). To diminish the role and contribution of managers at the bottom of the management stack is to be wilfully ignorant of the value they are providing.