What is this concept of “managing your manager” or “managing upwards”?

Hey folks on Grapevine, could use your help. Managing up: Super poor at this. Never meet the skip boss either. Anyone know what’s the right way to crack managing up and accelerate up the career ladder 🪜 without seeming like a blatant careerist or building “genuine” relationships even though you don’t feel that way. Is there a simpler way to make this happen? Managing oneself: There’s a great article by Peter Drucker on Managing Oneself. All fine and dandy in theory but I wonder if there’s a more practical Gen-Z version of this anyone could take a stab at? Link for the latter: https://hbr.org/2005/01/managing-oneself

Can you grow your career by displaying honesty at work? Do you think manipulative people are most successful at work? What category do you think you come under? Honest or Manipulative? If people at work, force you to be manipulative, would you accept it for the sake of your own career growth?

Ok ! So when we say manager what exactly comes to your mind?? The one who can help you with any problem that comes your way. You are a support system for your team. You know in and out of your role. But apparently this doesn’t happen at start ups. The person who can just boast about the work and show off things in front of management and manipulate things without doing any work? So what exactly we need to do ?? And how to learn the art of manipulation if you want to survive???

All the People Managers here, comment below, What do you really want out of your team and for yourself at work? Do you really enjoy micromanaging people and showing off your authority by hyper monitoring them and messing up their work life balance? Do you want to be respected and loved by your team or you just want to be feared by them to feel better about yourself? Using fear as a motivator does not really increase your team’s productivity you know? Please enlighten me 🙏

There are managers who are paid close to a Crore Rupees a year for doing this. Scene: Our team is working on it. We’ll get back to you. Reality: I have no idea about what the issue is. I’m completely dependent on my team. Scene: I have a hard stop now. Have to drop off. Reality: I don’t care about the ongoing meeting. My “passive” attendance in some other meeting is more important than the ongoing meeting. Scene: +team FYI Reality: Not my responsibility. Team must take a look. Scene: Do you have some bandwidth? Reality: If you say no, I will use this against you during appraisal. Scene: Feel free to give feedback about leadership. Your opinion is important for continuous improvement. Reality: Negative feedback should be worded with politically correct statements. Else be ready to face consequences. Scene: The leadership team expects so-and-so from you. Reality: I’m not capable of questioning the leadership team. I’m just passing the buck to you. Scene: Can you prepare a deck by this day? Reality: I want to show a rosy picture to my leaders. I will ‘use’ you to impress my leaders. Scene: Who wants to work on this item? Reality: I’ll judge employees who don’t volunteer. Scene: I want you to complete this (bullshit work) by this weekend at any cost. Reality: I want to save my ass in this job. Scene: Do you have any blockers? Reality: As if I’m capable of resolving them…lol Scene: Taking a day off. Reachable on mobile. Reality: Added the second statement to ‘show’ how important & flexible I am. I know you’ll not call me anyways. Scene: Manager presenting something. Do you have any questions? Reality: -silence- - - - Have you ever encountered Managers like these?

Ask me anything except my company name, or things that can reveal my identity. I may respectfully choose not to respond to your question based on my own judgement. Here’s a brief intro about me: I’ve worked as both software engineering manager & software technical architect over the last 18+ years on various tech stacks managing backend, frontend and a little bit of cloud. I have seen ups and downs in the software industry. Currently I’m working as a senior architect in one of the product based companies in India.

Some managers have better reach in the company and this let's their team be at the top of everything. I have seen people get promoted and praised just because of their managers reach to upper management and rest are left for scrambles many a time not because they don't work hard enough but because their manager doesn't cares about their job that much or maybe doesn't has that level of reach in the company These well fit in managers tend to benefit their entire team with more opportunities, better salary packages and benefits than rest. Is this trend everywhere ?

I recently started a new job. I would like to share some of the experiences I have had with my manager. I am wondering if these are red flags or if I am maybe being paranoid or thinking too much. It was quite difficult for me to get into this company and this job. The company is quite great and I was quite excited but some of the experiences I have had with my immediate manager have made me a bit apprehensive. I would like to share them and hear opinions about it. Here are some things which have happened which I have not liked so far - 1. I speak to a Senior Engineer one day and next day my manager asks me if anyone asked me to speak to him. 2. I shared an insight about a new tool which we can use on a deployment pipeline on the overall pod (under my skip manager). My manager immediately called me and started asking my status update and replied 'Discussing 1-1' in the group to prevent anyone getting visibility of the idea. 3. My manager pings me whenever I go offline and recently he asked me in a passive aggressive way, 'Please monitor your Teams status. It was away for most of today.' I now feel kind of paranoid to never get up as I feel my Teams status is being monitored.