I’ve been management at various companies, and I’ve certainly been subjected to management at the same companies. I’ve been a victim of this disease and I’m not proud to say that I’ve also been a vector for it. That said, management is the disease in almost every fucked up company.

It comes down to management’s reason for existing. Management exists to make sure the people under them do a good job. This assumes that a) you’ve hired people who without management won’t do a good job, and b) that the people in management have any ability to identify what “doing a good job” looks like. But here’s the worst part. Let’s say that you have hired people who do a good job, and management actually knows what it looks like. It’s still against management’s best interest to let good people do their jobs well without intervention. Because if everyone’s doing well on their own, then management has nothing to do. And because management gets paid more than others, they have even more incentive to look busy and useful even at the expense of good people who just need to be left alone to do their jobs.

As a cherry on this shit sundae, if it’s understood that management’s role is to make sure that the people under them don’t make mistakes, then every decision has to be evaluated with a scrutiny that it often doesn’t require. After a screwup, why would any manager explain to their uber manager that the mistake was worth it because it was the most efficient way to learn the right path forward. The uber manager’s only logical response would be: “then why do I need you here if I can just let people find the right path through conscientious and thoughtful trial and error”?

And that after all is the exact right question to ask about almost every single manager in your organization. Why do we need them?

I say put ’em to work.