Fixing the Management Problem in Tech

6 min readOct 7, 2024

There is a management problem in the tech industry.

This is not about bashing the tech industry, which has wonderfully contributed to humanity, economy, productivity and numerous other areas. The problem is not unique to the tech industry and can be found in other sectors as well. It is an industry I grew up in and am very familiar with, as many of my colleagues are.

1. The management problem

Poor management: managerial behaviors that are both ineffective and cause a negative experience for the subordinate.

It is not about unethical or illegal behavior.
This is not even about strategy and functional competency.
I am referring to the people, the infamous cliché, “our most important asset”.

Clearly, not all managers are poor.
Each manager has their own strengths, weaknesses and management styles.
There are many inspirational ones who people respect and follow, but they are too rare.

2. Examples

The management problem manifests itself in several ways:

Manager refuses to have 1:1s
Manager often finds reasons to cancel 1:1s
Manager coming to 1:1 with no agenda, doesn’t take notes and doesn’t follow up
Manager expecting 1:1 to be a status report
Manager not giving feedback, positive or negative
Manager giving generic feedback like “good presentation” or “you need to improve”
Manager delivering an empty performance review “because it doesn’t matter”
Manager not coaching, developing or involved in a development plan for their direct report
Manager not allowing to learn new skills and develop in further areas and responsibilities needed for the team
Manager always dictating solutions
Manager shows anger for questions or asking for help

3. The symptoms

The management problem can be seen in various ways:

Visible failure to achieve results on the company, department, team and individual level
Lack of rapport and trust
Lack of transparency about the state of affairs and decisions
Evident stress and anxiety, waiting for vacations, absenteeism, sick leave
Low morale, low eNPS (internal measure of employee satisfaction), negative Glassdoor sentiment
Low engagement in volunteering activities and stepping up
Colleagues literally saying they are unmotivated
High turnover — people may join the company but often leave managers
A belief that this is a fact of life, low expectations

4. Further impact

The management problem is causing second-order challenges:

Lower profitability, lower success on the market and investor attractability
Loss of knowledge, time and money as hiring is far more expensive than preserving
Decreased productivity due to misalignment, lack of feedback and growing people
Decrease employee motivation and happiness
Difficulty to attract talent, no ambassadors
Innovation and creativity stifling, employees discouraged from taking risks or proposing new solutions due to fear, doing the bare minimum
Contributing to the vicious cycle by setting a bad example for the next generations

Overall, the impact of the sum of all poor managers extends beyond the immediate team or department and affects the organization as a whole, jeopardizing its success, growth, and long-term sustainability.

5. The reasons

Why do we continue to have the management problem?

Lack of awareness that management is a profession, and is learned. We expect engineers to study Computer Science and enrich their skills for years, but zero expectations on the managerial aspect
The next managers are often chosen based on IC work (best engineer), which doesn’t predict success in managerial work, and they get no guidance or training
Effective management is continuous, boring, unsexy and invisible. It might even be perceived by other managers and peers as not managing, and inflicting punishments
Promoting managers based on tenure, favoritism or a single aspect their manager likes like quick decision-making over results and retention
Engineers are often high C on the DiSC profile, and are not “people person”
Interviewing is sometimes filtering for only technical skills and beerability (would I like to have a beer with them or not)
Coding ability as the most important factor is romanticized in movies
Newspapers highlight the success of toxic managers (Musk, Jobs), and don’t write about others who failed with this attitude, or whether they have others around them to mitigate their behavior
Bad internet advice like the “shit sandwich”
For many years management was the only track upward, and people with no interest or skills, or wish to gain them got promoted
Tech is notorious for short tenures, promoting the idea that investing in relationships is a waste, and getting the most out of everyone in the form of code is the right thing to do
Management competence is not always evaluated in performance reviews
In a pressuring environment (decisions to make, deadlines to make, meetings to attend, problems to solve), when the manager is responsible for technology, delivery and people — people is the first one to drop, as the first two are quick and simple to see and measure. The impact shows in the long run and hard to prioritize
Technical skills keep being the main criteria for positive evaluation even in higher ranks, over managerial abilities and communication skills
Fast-paced environment: The tech industry is known for its rapid pace of innovation and change. Managers may struggle to keep up with evolving technologies, market trends, and competitive pressures, leading to challenges in decision-making and prioritization
Being used to solving problems with technology or process, overlooking the human factor
Pressure to deliver fast results can lead to either micromanagement or more often, too high an autonomy, a.k.a absentee manager or under-management
Education budget, learning and development, when exists, is usually used for technical topics or very short people leadership topics that are not enough
Executive meetings and leadership offsites emphasize delivery and technical decisions, ignoring people aspects

6. What has been tried

Some have tried to bypass the management problem in different ways:

Flattening — the idea is that managers are costly and ineffective, thus, having fewer of them means fewer problems. Instead of a management hierarchy, having a single manager managing many direct reports (the highest I encountered was 40). Naturally, this causes more problems — no relationships and knowing people, their motivation, even more stress and ineffectiveness
Removing managers altogether — Google removed all managers and brought them back afterward. Several companies tried, but only very few remained without them
Increasing salary to retain people, a.k.a golden cage
Title inflation — to keep people happy for a while (have you seen Senior Directors without any direct reports?)
More vacation days — so people suffer less
Managerial training — usually very time and scope limited, few managers attend or have other meetings during it and no visible behavior change afterward. Success is measured by training attendance instead of behavior change or results
Executive coach, agile coach, OKR coach — they are effective in solving specific strategic and tactical topics
Engagement surveys — often mistakenly analyzed in whole categories like “leadership” or “compensation” instead of specific behaviors of specific managers
Happy hour or table tennis — they are not a replacement for culture

7. What actually works

Workshops? Activities? Asking people to be mindful in an all-hands meeting?

No.

The management problem can be mitigated by treating management as a profession that requires learning and practicing, just like Computer Science.

It comes down to every single manager — effective management is all about the 4 principles:

Get to know the direct reports
Talk about performance with the direct reports
Grow the direct reports
Push down work to the direct reports

The implementation is 1:1s, giving feedback, coaching and delegating.
This alone fixes a tremendous part of the problem.

Imagine your experience with a manager who got to know you, told you what behavior to do more of and less of, coached you and gave you increasingly new types of work.

The rest can be further improved with additional learning and applying effective communication with DiSC, setting psychological safety, practicing time management, understanding motivation, setting effective OKRs and more.

Therefore, addressing management deficiencies and investing in leadership development are critical for fostering a positive work environment and driving organizational performance.