Promotions and competition from manager

Acumen
fdgaefgdf

Go to company page Acumen

fdgaefgdf
Aug 17, 2021 14 Comments

What incentive does a manager have to promote someone under him to his own level? Knowing most peoples psychology what I have observed is people like to preserve their own position and power. So if a manager promotes someone under him who is better than him, then the promoted person can end up becoming the managers manager in the future. Is this something managers are afraid of? How do the top leadership of various companies handle this situation? Or do they also harbor this attitude?

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  • I have seen this happen. The original manager was too incompetent to even see this.
    Aug 17, 2021 0
  • Apple
    jsjdrncjd

    Go to company page Apple

    jsjdrncjd
    Read up on what being a successful manager means

    If you can successfully develop people into good managers, you will be given responsibility for developing more managers => you go up for senior manager, then director, then VP, etc
    Aug 17, 2021 2
    • Acumen
      fdgaefgdf

      Go to company page Acumen

      fdgaefgdf
      OP
      Lets say that I want to work on a massively ambitious project which my manager does not want me to because I will overshadow him. For this project, I will be corresponding with my manager's managers. Wouldn't most managers feel insecure in this situation? How to handle it as an ambitious employee?
      Aug 17, 2021
    • Apple
      jsjdrncjd

      Go to company page Apple

      jsjdrncjd
      It depends on the manager

      This is not something randoms can help with unless they know the specific people involved and their personalities and approach to work

      The best advice I can give you is understand what your manager cares about and is motivated by, understand what your skip cares about and is motivated by, understand what you care about and are motivated by, and try to maximize satisfaction for all.

      E.g. If you do something great that your skip cares about, and your manager cares about being praised by your skip, then make sure to mention the great help your manager provided to enable you to achieve that thing your skip is praising
      Aug 17, 2021
  • It looks good for a manager to have workers that get promoted. It means that they hire, train and retain good talent. If they hope to be in senior leadership one day, this is critical. Alas, there are tons of insecure managers who don’t want to cultivate good talent due to their insecurities and fear of being replaced. Those are the shitty ones.
    Aug 17, 2021 2
    • Acumen
      fdgaefgdf

      Go to company page Acumen

      fdgaefgdf
      OP
      In your experience are most managers the good leader kind or insecure kind?
      Aug 17, 2021
    • Depends on the company/org from what I’ve seen. Ive been in great companies where people take pride in cultivating good talent(the bad managers will not fit into the culture here and tend to leave early), and ive also been in crappy companies with terrible cultures where insecurity is the norm(and no one gets promoted past a “Sr” title.

      Really depends on the culture
      Aug 17, 2021
  • Datadog
    carrotdog

    Go to company page Datadog

    carrotdog
    Competent managers would promote others to their level as it demonstrates their ability to grow the team.

    Most managers are too selfish and incompetent to realize this. Ymmv
    Aug 17, 2021 0
  • Lyft
    llort

    Go to company page Lyft

    llort
    Managers don’t promote people, promo committees do. And you can get somebody other than your manager to sponsor your promotion.
    Aug 17, 2021 3