Managers usually fire team members rather than take the fall for the team.

Bad managers do that. Good managers accept accountability for the failures of their teams. Delegation makes a leader more accountable, not less.

I'd love to see an example of such an accepted accountability at least once in my life.

>I'd love to see an example of such an accepted accountability at least once in my life.

I think that's the point, you wouldn't see it. If a good manager gets unreasonably or unfairly reamed by his boss, he's probably not gonna tell his team about it, because it would be a blow to morale. If it was indeed the team's dysfunction, he'd try to improve it.

Next time there’s a re-org, look around for managers who net lost reports, or even “decided to move on”.

When I "decided to move on", that included deciding that management was likely not in the cards for me again. Companies that have IC staff+ roles are what attract me now.

And go work for them because they were busy working instead of backstabbing politics?

Meanwhile the most useless people are failing upward into CEO.

I've seen it before. After that manager stepped in to help me, I would've stepped in front of a bus for him. That is the one time I had a manager like that in my entire career.

It's rare, but it does happen.

If you need your job to live, and taking accountability means any non-zero probability of losing your job, would you take accountability? Of course it is easy to answer an hypothetical.

I certainly wouldn't dispute the existence of those managers- I'm thankful to have had some good managers who go to bat for their direct reports.

You had managers who "took the fall" for the team? The thread is about accepting blame and sacrifice, not about advocating for people under you

> You had managers who "took the fall" for the team?

Correct. In addition, sometimes advocating for those under you is a sacrificial act, because you're putting your reputation on the line.

Sounds performative rather than anything real at stake.

> Managers are expected to lay down rhetoric about accountability and contextualizing their team's failure.

It sounds like the management philosophies at our respective orgs are very different.

pay is directly correlated with how much money your boss has. ice cream shops don’t pay $100k salaries. you want to double your salary, brand yourself a “consultant” and sell directly to executives, middle management needs 10 approvals to do anything.