Yep, that is what ended my management career. I became a middle manager a few years before the pandemic, but I'm back to being an IC again. I just couldn't handle managing through that first few months of the pandemic and how my bosses wanted me to treat my direct reports. Unless you are working on some lifesaving or world changing job, which almost none of us are, I just couldn't imagine prioritizing my job over my coworkers. Why put the profits of some people I don't know above the lives of people I worked with every day? It's a messed-up world that this opinion makes me a bad manager.
I really hope that the execs realize that they need to make VPs and directors more responsible for their reports. Not just accountable. These managers should be the first to go in a layoff or a PIP. Only then will this industry change.
> These managers should be the first to go in a layoff or a PIP
I'm not sure what to do with a truly unqualified employee, but implying a manager should be fired if, eg. an employee refuses to work, seems a little much.
A PIP should be used only for project failures in the first place, not for people failures. And, a manager should be responsible for allocating the right amount of resources and tools to get a project done. They should not be able to abscond from this responsibility by Pipping ICs.
If a truly unqualified employee doesn't work, they can just fire them.
Maybe that's one reason I am not a manager, but I do feel my current manager, unlike a couple of others before, is in this ballpark. In these conditions, I do feel there is space for genuine friendships. A true friend is respectful of their friends station in life. If you are friends with someone in more humble financial circumstances than yourself, you go to affordable places for get togethers. If you are friends with someone more junior professionally, you make sure that personal and professional boundaries are clearly separated and that you will never act to their detriment for your own selfish gain. If it's a real friendship, they will also understand that you have your job to do and so do they.
Now if you plan to use people for your own ends, it's certainly very creepy and unfair to imply you care about them on a personal level. But on the other hand, who wouldn't want a senior person at a new company to be their mentor and ally? Act with honesty, compassion and integrity and then friendships are not a problem.