"Companies... insert lots of layers of middle management between the people running the company and the people doing the work."
This quote by late Steve Jobs captures a sentiment by frustrated employees everywhere. The middle layer of managers is just corporate fat. But if that assumption is true, why is the role so persistent?
The reason people feel this way has nothing to do with how good managers are at their job. Middle managers occupy the most intense structural friction point in any organization. They are functionally translators, stuck between two different dialects that refuse to acknowledge the other’s reality.
The executive suite speaks the language of abstract metrics and future potential. The individual contributors speak the language of immediate reality, dependencies, and inadequate tooling. The middle manager is the interpreter forced to reconcile a PowerPoint deck showing “Exponential Growth” with a Jira board showing “Blocked.”
This gap is the source of resentment.
From above, they are viewed as too sensitive, too slow, or lacking strategic alignment. They are blamed when the top down mandate meets ground level friction.
From below, they are viewed as corporate mouthpieces, incapable of practical defense against bad policy. They are always delivering news they didn't write, enforcing rules they didn't create, and trying to motivate people to carry buckets they know have holes in them.
They are simultaneously over-responsible for execution and under-responsible for strategy. They get the weight of leadership without the authority that defines it.
If the company messes up, people blame the structure, and the structure they blame is always the manager who runs the weekly meetings. Yet, workers rarely trust the CEO or the HR department. We only believe the work is real because of the manager sitting with us.
The middle manager is the last piece of organizational tissue holding the whole thing together. They convert abstract corporate anxiety into concrete tasks. They are the system’s primary shock absorber.
You shouldn't expect the manager's job to be easy or popular. They are paid to stand in the middle of the space between what the company promises and what it actually gives us. That's why the job is necessary, and why it's so tough, even if it looks like they're just sitting in meetings all day.