Honestly, I’ve worked at everything from small to medium lifestyle companies, startups, Big Enterprise, BigTech, and now Í am a staff consultant at a third party AWS consulting firm across 10 jobs.
In all of those jobs, I have found line level managers absolutely useless and powerless.
At the jobs where I was responsible for strategy, one of my conditions for employment was I would be reporting directly to a director or CTO.
> I have found line level managers absolutely useless and powerless.
They are doing exactly what they are paid to, which is communicate decisions made above them to the people doing the work.
You are correct - that is a powerless position. That's by design. Work isn't a democracy.
Depends on the effectiveness of your union