Managers Are Slavemasters

We [developers] can be just as insensitive as they [managers] can.

True, but much like only the government can use force to censor, management is the position of power so what they do matters.

We're all in positions of power. We can all have an influence on the attitudes of others.

Some pigs are more equal than others. The ability to start and stop projects, give raises, assign people to projects, allocate recs, decide policy, know about the loops, etc., I have found are more powerful than my ability to lead by example. Especially as groups grow larger.

Whenever subordinates are insensitive or insulting to managers, it just makes things worse. It is pointless to argue over who is more at fault or who is doing more damage.

Your world is different from mine. In mine, we say the masters are more at fault than the slaves. Workers have very little impact if management isn't interested. Try beating your head against management walls and the "we are all equally at fault" neologism gets wiped away with the blood. -- AC1

There is no claim that we are all equally at fault, only that we all have the choice between trying to make things better and trying to make them worse. When you compare your managers to slavemasters, which are you doing? When you are beating your head against the walls so hard that you bleed, is that management's fault, or might it be yours? I have tried beating my head against those walls, and I have learned that it just hurts.

Before solving a problem, you need to understand its nature and scope. If managers are slavemasters, calling them that is merely understanding the nature and scope of the problem. Trying to play "nice nice" is not only useless but actively bad if it means deluding yourself. -- AC2

Clearly your managers are not literally slavemasters, and they do not think of themselves as slavemasters, so the word is a metaphor you yourself have found fitting to apply. Are you then applying the metaphor of slave to yourself? If so, are you prepared to fully accept the consequences and implications of your destiny as a slave?

Have you a better metaphor? Incidentally, if the consequence of applying the slave metaphor is that one must lead a revolt against slave-owners and slave-masters, getting the law that allows slavery repealed, then what is so bad about that? -- AC2

Mmm, and yet I am the head of a game design team and I have been known to think of myself as a slave-owner, particularly with the dominion of the educated over the uneducated that the term implies... -- WickedDelight?

When you are beating your head against the walls so hard that you bleed, is that management's fault, or might it be yours? I have tried beating my head against those walls, and I have learned that it just hurts.

So don't beat your head against the wall and just accept it? Or have the sudden realization that management is correct and you are wrong? Or JustLeave. So far, you don't seem to have a point other than to pick an argument.

I try to do things that will improve the situation, and try to not do things that will exacerbate the situation. I accept that beating my head will not help, so I stop doing it. Getting upset only hurts you and prevents you from finding logical solutions; it has no effect on management. Find some constructive way to improve the situation.

Are you in chains, and will you be whipped, beaten, tortured, or killed if you refuse to do as your bosses say? If not, then you are not a slave. That is the reality that you need to accept. You won't find solutions living a victim's role.

My point, which you may not accept, is that you can make choices and you have some control over your relationship with your managers. Pretending to be a powerless victim is childish and irresponsible.

Your advice is good and already has been taken. After a point, it's not pretending.

I must say I'm somewhat worried at the absence of actual insight here. Managers manage matters for those who own an enterprise according to 1) the best interests of the owners, as modified by 2) their own avarice, and/or 3) the welfare of those they manage. Generally, the welfare of those they manage is not a top priority, but rather ensuring that their masters remain pleased with their custodianship of the enterprise.

To imagine that physical abuse is the only kind of coercion available is naive. Mayer Rothschild is notorious for having commented on the wisdom of "freeing the slaves" so that their direct and immediate care was no longer a burden to the former owners, and the observation, "Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its laws."

Enslavement can be accomplished by other means than beatings. Economic enslavement is a valid term. In our country (yes, the USA) the term is not an absolute. There are degrees of self-determination, ranging from "completely in control and making the rules for everyone else" to "clueless and completely at the whim of whomever is in charge."

The perception that people are, in fact, "resources" (resource, human, 1 each) to be managed for maximum output leads down a fairly short slide to depersonalization.

Mission statements are carefully crafted to avoid saying things like, "to make the Board of Directors stinking rich," when this is usually closer to the truth than, "to be a leader in the industry, with the happiest customers anywhere." Why? Because one wants the "resources" to feel committed to the "cause" and to have a "mission" so that one doesn't have to explain to them the discrepancy between what one pays them and what one pays one's self.

Managers are just slaves at a higher level. They're not making the rules, just enforcing the ones they're given.

Creating the kind of enterprise where benefit is directly related to accomplishment and actual value to the enterprise, rather than "buy low, sell high" as it applies to human time and effort, is a rare thing made all the more difficult by generations of "us and them" thinking and the opportunism of getting as much as possible from a relationship with as little invested effort as possible.

All of that having been said, I assert that it is possible to construct a win-win endeavor, despite the cultural bias toward abusive, unbalanced-exchange in owner-management-labor constructs. -- GarryHamilton

I was liberated when I realized that managers are simply the people to whom I delegate the task of running the project, thus leaving me free to do the important things. -- DaveWhipp

If that's what they did, I would be happy. Remember that delegation is an active process, not passive. The act of delegation does not relieve you of the responsibility to ensure that the job is done

There seems to be more than passing similarity between the feelings of "liberation" declared so openly above, and those of people engaging in master-slave sexual relationships who are similarly "liberated" from the burden of decision-making and responsibility.

See also Etzioni's work (e.g., http://sol.brunel.ac.uk/~jarvis/bola/motivation/etzioni.html)

The organization consciously generates and maintains these values which are represented in signs and symbols - visual, verbal, behavioural and conceptual. (ie, Propaganda)

Commitment to the organization's ideology brings with it persuasive/suggestive power. members internalize organizational values which become their own and guide their behaviour naturally. (ie, Indoctrination / Brainwashing)

Interesting. It seems that some managers aren't slavemasters but rather arch-manipulators and enlightened brainwashers. The interesting thing was that this reference was brought forward by a manager, who apparently sees nothing wrong with deliberately manipulating and controlling people without their informed consent. Because after all, it's only the "organization" (ie, management) that needs to be conscious of the propaganda for it to be "good management".

Shall we spinoff ManagersAreManipulators? or ManagersAreBrainwashers??

(I would dearly like to know how our anonymous manager reconciles "I propagandize my subordinates" with "I respect them as human beings".)

I wrote a response here but am now deleting it. RK's debating style just makes it not worth the effort. See Psychoanalysis in ConversationalChaff. Too late, I responded already.

[The suggestion was made that propaganda, while being an emotive word, is by definition pretty neutral and unobjectionable. Its definition being merely the systematic spreading of an ideology or cause, which is to be expected of managers.]

I'm sorry but it is objectionable. People in positions of power who spread doctrines are propagandizing in all of the negative connotations of the word. That's what distinguishes a cult leader from a teacher.

Also interesting how you leapt from my addition of a reference to a web page to an assumption I "see nothing wrong with deliberately manipulating and controlling people without their informed consent". Etzoni's work is an attempt to explain, and does not imply approval.

Explain what?

The kinds of power observed in organizations.

What "good management" means? You've done that! According to the reference you provided, good management is as propagandistic a practice as advertising or public relations. Except that instead of "buy, buy, buy" and "don't question authority", you indoctrinate "work, work, work"! Which makes modern management more insidious than outright slavery.

Oh, and I don't see how I'm leaping to conclusions when on one page, a person defends management as respectful of employees, and on the other page explains that this respect takes the form of brainwashing instead of whipping. (There are a few legitimate functions which management serves, but you haven't raised any of them. Why do you think that is?)

I've lost interest in continuing this. Continue to leap to unwarranted conclusions if it makes you happy. Delete this para too, if you like.