Good Afternoon!
I love this sub and really enjoy reading about people's experiences with management. Its ver interesting for me to see the same complaints, same gripes and same problems over and over across multiple disciplines. I'd like to briefly as I can share my experiences as a normal worker turned manager and back down to worker.
To begin a little background for me as context. I work in healthcare. For 18 years I was a healthcare professional working in direct patient care. I went back to school to get my MHA (masters in healthcare admin) because I was tired of the everyday grind. I got a job as a supervisor and then I got my “dream job” as a clinical manager at a mid-size physician group (22 physicians, 18 Physician assistants) with 70+ direct reports.
I took over in 2020. 2 weeks on the job we were locked down in covid. It was very difficult and I was utterly lost. End of 2020 my wife left me for another man and left me with the kids as she moved out of state. So there I was, 38, 2 kids by myself with a $1500 rent payment a month. Fast forward to 2021-22 my mental state deteriorated to the point where I had a nervous breakdown. The company kindly allowed me to step down out of my role to a staff role as a clinical provider.
Now looking back I find myself having the unique position of seeing things from both sides. I've come to the conclusion that most managerial attitudes come from 1 of 2 places (a vast generalization but please forgive me as I lay out the concept.). The first kind of supervisor/manager I experienced was the tired professional. I fall into that category. These people were nurses, techs, aides etc that got sick of running around, lifting patients, dealing with the daily bullshit of the patient care experience. These people get into management to literally avoid direct patient care. They're burnt out most of the time and physically can't handle the work. The problem here is (especially at the supervisor level) they quickly find its MORE work. All of a sudden you are on the hook for call-offs and no-shows as a fill-in, the LAST thing you wanted to do. These folks are the ones that dont take kindly to call-offs, being sick or having excuses for child care, they do not care. All they care about is being able to NOT be on the floor. Anything that causes them MORE work (i.e. coverage, employee grievences, etc) causes them to be irate.
The second type of manager I see are the career bosses. They enjoy the level of power they have coupled with the benefits of the position. These are most often people with quite a few psychopathic tendencies which is a benefit to them at their positions. They don't take things personally, they dont think past the bottom line and they will serve with great energy the company shareholders (board of directors, owning stake interests). They have very little thought for the everyday individual. In my experience these people either have no idea what its like to work a job OR they simply have forgotten what it was like. Money must be a fantastic memory eraser.
I'll tell you right now I failed at my job. I tried to make people happy, both above and below me and I found I couldn't make either happy. I never forgot where I came from and so I was running into battles with other management regarding things like increasing pay for employees and improving working conditions but was met with dissapproval. In turn many of the employees were weary of me and I never gained their full trust no matter how hard I tried.
Anyways thats my experience. Anyone have similar thoughts or think I'm full of shit?
TL;DR – I think most people get into management for the wrong reasons and then are miserable because it wasn't LESS work like they expected.