The middle manager is the biggest culprit of the "quiet quitting" SWE epidemic.
They have 0 incentive to fire. The entire job is bargaining for more headcount so they can get promoted.
They'll say "we are understaffed, we need more people" no matter how little they do.
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If you have multiple levels of this, its often dysfunctional down the entire chain.
The non technical middle manager are the worst culprits. ICs can (and will) swindle them endlessly into their infinite timelines. I've never worked with a good one.
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A competent middle manager should be able to do the job of all their reports and say "if you think that takes 2 months, you need to find another job. It shouldn't take more than 2 weeks." (and be right)
Their managers need to keep them accountable for each report.
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If you think this is too harsh, my bet is you don’t know how bad it’s gotten. Check out r/overemployed to see how many SWEs are fake-working multiple jobs.
There are too many SWEs cashing in $300k paychecks with barely a line of code written in months.
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