So let's get to the topic of managers vs workers.

Some or maybe most workers will downplay their managers and this is very true in the industry of software engineering, well at least from my 20 years experience and I been guilty of this too.

We tend to see that managers just sit around and do nothing compared to the efforts that software engineers put into making a system. This is how we see the managers specially during the bumpy times.

But after me taking a professional certificate course on International Security & Risk Management made me realize that managers do important things that we software engineers fails to see.

First, top management or the executive levels has a mismatch of culture and language when it comes to interacting with workers, the managers bridge that gap.

And because of this communication and culture difference between executive and workers, there is also a gap for trust. Managers bridges this gap and without them, it would be hard for executive level to trust the workers.

Workers like the software engineers under a manager, are focused on the details of their world. The world of the executives including the bigger picture in which the company is trying move around is invisible to the workers. The managers steer the workers to align with the company strategy.

There is a lot more to say about the importance of managers, without managers, there would not be an interface between the company / organization and the workers.

One might say that nah just remove the manager and I as the worker will take over. But then that simply means the worker is replacing the manager as a manager albeit in a poor capacity 😅