The changing role of Middle management in Technology teams
What the last 2 years have taught me about the role of Middle management and how it is changing for the "better"
In my coaching conversations over the last year with different leaders, one question that has continuously come up time and time again : Do technology teams and organizations need middle managers any more ?
I am not surprised that this question is on the top of the mind of lot of leaders. The last 2 years of chaos in the Technology arena, with the recurring news about layoffs and restructuring and executives calling for “flat” organization as the next silver bullet for all management problems, has not helped either. I observed a sense of dread and anxiety among middle managers with some opting to change their roles to adapt or choose to succumb to the demands of the executives. Some industry thinkers have also indicated that the last years have been hard for middle managers to find new opportunities as organizations cut back on the leadership hiring. All this adds to the hue and cry among the professionals and affects the real impact that middle managers can make to the organizations and to their teams. In this article, I am sharing my thinking that I have been sharing with my coaching clients over the last years, and predict how the role of middle managers will evolve over the years for “better”.
How did it all start ?
Before we get into the predictions and my views of the middle management, let me share a short history of the shift in the role of middle management in the last few years. Beginning in 2023, posts like below became a common scene among news forums : “Big Tech is getting rid of middle managers:”
Source: https://fortune.com/2023/02/06/middle-managers-tech-layoffs-efficiency-zuckerberg-facebook-google/
also covered this in his widely popular newsletter back in February 2023, sharing his insights about why this is becoming a trend in the industry : focus on efficiency, end of ZIRF (Zero Interest-Free period) leading to cut in growth via reduced hiring etc.
Organizations often attract incentives for performance management where career growth in the form of rising to the rank of middle managers becomes the norm, and this comes to bite when the organizations need to cut down.
How I think about role of middle managers
Middle managers need to be versatile. They are not just responsible for hiring and people management, but a lot more. Depending on the type of the organization, middle managers take on lot of hats and apply the right form of situational leadership needed for the context and state of the organization. In a high growth setup where emphasis is on lot of hiring, middle managers are usually on the stretch to invest a significant amount of their time on interviewing and alignment to make sure the right hiring decisions are made. In a setup that requires the organization to move fast to outcompete other players or achieve product-market fit, middle managers make sure their teams are highly aligned, motivated and setup in a way to drive fast progress. In this setup, middle managers invest their time to understand potential blockers for their teams, translate the vision and strategy clearly to their teams and invest significant amount of their time addressing constructive conflicts. In organizations that already have their product-market fit and want to grow sustainability while addressing challenges of their growth to retain their leadership in the market, middle managers play a different role. In this kind of setup, they are optimizing for creating and sustaining high performing teams, building opportunities for their teams to figure out the next problem to solve, making sure the teams understand how to prioritize for impact and growing the next generation of leaders.
The most common reason behind the misunderstanding of middle management role emerges from the lack of understanding of the versatility of their role. Further middle managers themselves do not see their need to be versatile and slow down the learning to get better at taking on wide variety of hats as they progress their career. Often the naive take on this is that middle managers “work” around “work”, eg: not writing code in a software engineering context, rather “supporting” their teams who are doing the actual coding. In the time of crisis, roles that are seen as working around “work” are seen as liability and not critical for the success of the organization and hence this creates the hue and cry of death of middle management.
One of the leadership concepts that I have had exposure to in my career and I believe middle managers must aspire to is the role of “Direct Responsible Individual”. Apple coined this term, and later the technology industry adapted it in different forms : Gitlab’s take on it is quite interesting. Treating middle managers as “DRIs” is a sustainable long term path for making the role successful and impactful within organizations. Setting up DRIs as an expectation for middle managers is not easy, and comes with a culture shift in delegating control and increasing accountability.
Another context I share with my coaching clients and teams I lead is the need for middle managers to continue to build and demonstrate competency in their area of specialization. Middle managers need to demonstrate to have strong intuition of their specialization, that they acquire through their past experience as individual contributors, keeping up to date with the changes and collaborating with subject matter experts. Some middle managers also get their hands dirty and directly pair with individual contributors occasionally so that they can understand the challenges that their teams face first hand and they can communicate effectively with the wider organization about the challenges.
Middle manager is not a uni-dimensional role, but one with wide variations and nuances, each of which is essential to run an organization effectively. Performance management theatre in large organizations also contribute to inefficient setup of middle management.
Source: https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1686499701993111552
The sub-optimal setup of middle management layer with limited accountability and ownership drives the misrepresentation of this role, and fuels the current discourse on the future of this role.
What is next ?
If you are a middle manager and are unsure of how your role will develop further given the world order, my suggestion is to plan for “optionality”. Look for opportunities where you can acquire skills to build towards a more holistic leadership - building business acumen, diving into details about your area of specialization, keeping yourself updated and building your network. If you can, reach out to mentors through mentor networks who can guide you through this unpredictable and uncertain environment. While the social media is going frenzy with news about layoffs and radical change in industry, always note that the world order works in cycles. A cycle of economic turmoil is followed with prosperity, and downturn is often a time when new and exciting opportunity emerges to help move the world to a prosperous state. The more you keep yourself engaged in learning, reflecting and acquiring the skills in the current world order, the better prepared you are for the future.
In my podcast “In Your Shoes”, I interviewed Martin Flügge (Zalando) some time back about the role of Engineering leader, and Martin had shared his story about leading teams and being impactful as a leader.
I run a Leadership bootcamp since 2023. This bootcamp has had over 50 participants in the last year, and it is rated as 4.7 on Maven. The next edition of the bootcamp is in March 2024. Six hours of live content over Two days and a dedicated community for folks who are aspiring to take their leadership journey to the next level. Join the next cohort or sign up for future cohorts here : https://maven.com/vivekjuneja/inyourshoes