Welcome to Management

Dear Exceptional Employee,

Congratulations! You’ve been promoted. You’ll now be managing the building maintenance team.

You’ve been one of our best maintenance personnel for years. You’re excellent at plumbing, carpentry, painting, and everything else you do as a maintenance worker. We know that your technical skills will make you a great leader, as pounding nails and motivating people are essentially the same thing. The masterful way you glue pipes will definitely translate to being the glue that holds this team together. That’s why we won’t be providing you with any training or coaching to help you in your new management role.

You did have some competition for the manager position. One of your co-workers also applied, but you’re a full 8% better than he is technically. The other guy was just good at listening, supporting the success of others, and making sure people have the tools they need to do their job. That’s not what we’re looking for. We want the most technically proficient person possible for this position. We feel that with your expertise, you’ll be able to consistently look over shoulders and tell people what they’re doing wrong, and that they should do it your way. We’ve seen how you’re quick to correct your peers and make sure they do things right. We don’t need you to waste time teaching them what you know. Instead, instill the fear of doing it wrong, which is a much better motivator. We can’t have people messing things up, and we believe that you are capable of conducting the kind of surveillance we’re hoping for.

We’re hoping that you’ll feel good about this promotion. In fact, we hope you’ll feel so good that you won’t even do the math and realize that it’s actually a pay cut for more stress, more work, and less time doing the things you like and are good at. You’ll get paid an annual salary as opposed to your current hourly arrangement. In other words, we'll pay you for 40 hours a week, but we’ll expect 60, and there won’t be opportunities for overtime for you. When you add it up, you’ll work more hours for less average hourly pay. You’ll hate your job. But it’s a promotion, and it’s the only way to progress, so we think you’ll go for it.

Keep in mind that now that you’re a leader, people might not like everything you do, even if we the people in upper management told you to do it. We’ll sometimes have to appease the masses, and may even reprimand you as a scapegoat for doing what we said if too many people complain. We’ll clearly be contradicting ourselves, and when you bring us the email we sent to prove that it was us and not you, we’ll change the subject and maybe even do a little light threatening. Eventually, we might have to assume that you’re the problem and fire your ass directly.

We’re aware that you have no real interest in management, and that you’re just in it for the promotion. We’re very ok with the situation. We know that we could have created alternative paths to promotion that didn’t involve managing people. Finding ways to increase your responsibilities and opportunities as an individual contributor would have played to your strengths and the things you like to do. It would have allowed you to progress and make more money through adding even more value to the organization by doing more of what you’re great at. But we chose the more traditional route. If you want to get promoted, that means managing people even if you don’t have the desire or the skills to do it well. Why do we continue to do it this way? Well, it’s because that’s the way we’ve always done it.

Welcome to management. Good luck with that.

Sincerely,

Upper management