Google People and Innovation Lab analyst Jennifer Kurkoski told Manjoo : Middle managers are incredibly important

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Business Insider

Life Is Hard For America's 10.5 Million Middle Managers

Max Nisen Aug. 7, 2013, 2:00 PM 1,838 5

To many people, middle management is a punchline — the physical embodiment of bureaucracy. It's also a significant part of the economy, accounting for some 10.5 million jobs, and one of the most fraught and difficult positions in corporate America, reports Melissa Korn in The Wall Street Journal.
The piece profiles Michelle Davis, a 36-year-old analytics director at FICO, who finds herself in the classic middle manager limbo.
She has "many duties but little authority, people to please both above and below, and days when her schedule is just barely under her control, filled with meetings or consumed with sudden crises," Korn writes.
In addition to the lack of autonomy, the career advancement opportunities are poor. Since companies have slimmed down and cut out many management levels, the leap to the next level is frequently very large and hard to accomplish.
Middle managers are also more subject to turf wars, and rarely a prime focus for their companies. That's despite them being badly needed in order to execute whatever upper management comes up with.


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