>>you'd think the universal experience is 1% good, 9% benign, 90% actively seeking the downfall of civilization
It might not be a grand conspiracy or might not come from meticulous planning, but what happens is they just work for self preservation. Its no secret that people who work on a thing are bound to know things about them better than some body who just approves leaves, or makes abstract decisions. You will get replaced if you don't assert authority often and proactively kill the biggest threat to your position. This also means maintaining pets, and rewarding them more than people who are performing better.
All of this resembles a pattern of behaviour over the years with managers sabotaging everything good around to save themselves.
Over years I have seen managers are the biggest reason why companies go down. There are few other reasons.
Right and there's asymmetry between what a good & bad manager can do.
A good manager can motivate people, but in absence of interesting projects or budget to pay people, they can still lose talent.
A bad manager can make even interesting work and good compensation intolerable and lead to a revolving door of B players as no one with better options wants to stick around.
The through line for me of genuinely bad managers is guys (always guys) who are emotionally unstable and/or have anger management issues. Whether it was being put on as an effect to get a result, or they genuinely had no control, it doesn't matter.
Shouting at people, berating people in public, praising in private while criticizing in team meetings, going on tirades over petty stuff (formatting of internal non-user facing documentation), etc.
It might not be a grand conspiracy or might not come from meticulous planning, but what happens is they just work for self preservation. Its no secret that people who work on a thing are bound to know things about them better than some body who just approves leaves, or makes abstract decisions. You will get replaced if you don't assert authority often and proactively kill the biggest threat to your position. This also means maintaining pets, and rewarding them more than people who are performing better.
All of this resembles a pattern of behaviour over the years with managers sabotaging everything good around to save themselves.
Over years I have seen managers are the biggest reason why companies go down. There are few other reasons.