It has nothing to do with difficulty. It’s not a leveling up game of leetcode.
> whereas when managers make mistakes, the responsibility is diffused to their subordinates.
No it’s not. They will roast their subordinates but unless the org is completely dysfunctional they are responsible for the ultimate deliverables.
The higher up you move, the more responsible for outcomes that are less and less in your control. You even gain legal liability as you enter the “officer of the company” levels.
> ...unless the org is completely dysfunctional they are responsible for the ultimate deliverables.
This is true in theory if everyone has perfect knowledge. In practice I've never seen it play out. A large part of management is framing (i.e. playing off imperfect knowledge). It happens before and after success or failure is decided. Smart managers commit, but frame their responsibilities or outcomes in favorable terms. They find ways to de-risk. They publicly share risky deliverables with other teams or increase scope to push decision making up the ladder. They commit to only what their team can slam dunk. They make sure to only lead rockstar teams (this is huge). They cherry pick metrics to make failure look reasonable and success look incredible. They leave before major failures are realized or hand failures off before they sour. Remember: In large human systems, feedback cycles can easily take years.
It's a game and there's lots of clever ways to play. But the only way to lose is to publicly accept loss. When you do, it's very honorable and moving. But I've never seen the hit to perceived competency offset by perceived integrity. Because at the end of the day, companies make money. There's no company metric for honor. It's politics, whether we choose to see it or not doesn't really matter. For an extreme example, take a look at the presidency. Incumbent presidents lose in election year recessions. Period. Never mind most economic crises are a decade or so in the making.
People in aggregate are much simpler than we like to think. And so leadership is much more sleight of hand than our nobler ideals would have us believe.
> It has nothing to do with difficulty. It’s not a leveling up game of leetcode.
Then you should reply to the parent comment and not mine.
> No it’s not. They will roast their subordinates but unless the org is completely dysfunctional they are responsible for the ultimate deliverables.
Please. If you’ve never seen incompetent managers bumbling along making their staff into scapegoats, etc., then you don’t have a lot of experience.
Nothing changes at the higher levels either. Projects are cancelled and teams fired etc, not the executive in charge. The time execs get fired is when they do deliver and there is some kind of liability.
I guess I’ve been mainly working at successful companies? The biggest company I worked at was Google 7+ years ago and managers that couldn’t deliver and blamed employees would get exited or demoted quite quickly.
It’s been even more aggressive in the startups I’ve been at since.
> whereas when managers make mistakes, the responsibility is diffused to their subordinates.
No it’s not. They will roast their subordinates but unless the org is completely dysfunctional they are responsible for the ultimate deliverables.
The higher up you move, the more responsible for outcomes that are less and less in your control. You even gain legal liability as you enter the “officer of the company” levels.