A man shared a story disgruntling people who have the title of manager as he felt that the manager only sends an email and has no actual skills. No wonder he is still not a manager, his mindset is so wrong.
Here is the story:
Why do jobs with the “Manager” in the title warrant such high pay? Associate Manager, BD Manager, Product Manger, Project Manager etc.
Correct me if I am wrong, but these people (often) don’t have domain expertise (ie hard skills) and rely on their soft skills which arguably is so easy. ie just write reports (as long as the general proposal/direction makes sense), reply emails, user outreach, “manage” technical people (which may include designers, artists, writers, producers, engineers, on the ground staff doing manual work etc).
In this case, I am not referring to managers who are domain experts like Art Directors, Engineering Managers etc. The thing is – let these non-creative and non-technical managers switch jobs with technical people. The staff with hard skills will definitely be able to ace the hardest tasks of the manager with ease, while most managers can’t even do the easiest day to day job of the technical staff. Something as simple as design a logo, or maybe write a script to automate stuff; let’s see how long a manager – who often earns significantly higher or at least on par with the technical staff – takes to do such a task. You can say managing people is an “extremely difficult” soft skill. I beg to differ.
Soft skills are simply a byproduct of assimilation into your environment and require no special effort to hone. How many people who pride themselves on their “soft skills” have picked up a book, or gone to a class to learn it? Place someone with little soft skills in a social environment, and they will be able to pick it up automatically. Place someone who has no hard skills in a creative, technical environment, and most likely they will be able to produce results.
For those managers who actively try to learn about their domain by reading up on books and taking courses, fair enough. Or managers who actively go above and beyond to improve company culture, processes and the overall team dynamics, then sure, the manager probably deserves the high pay.
But for managers who sit on their high horse and think that the title and pay make them better than their technical staff, think again. The technical staff can replace you with a click of their fingers, it’s just that they choose not to. To people working in creative and technical industries, know your worth!