To think lots of office jobs exist just to justify bad managers’ salaries?

[GreyCandidOwl]

I’ve seen whole teams where the work could be done by half the people but they’re kept on so managers can look important. AIBU to think many roles exist purely to protect management?

Think it depends on the field. I’ve worked in different industries where we worked absolutely fine without a manager and others where one was needed.

Saying that, the ones where it worked well without one ime, was when the managers were subpar and shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.

In any organisation I’ve worked at a manager would be most protected be being able to demonstrate that they needed less staff to get the work done not more.

I can’t imagine a company where having an unnecessarily large team would protect anyone’s job.

In the civil service, yes absolutely.
Some managers dont even manage anyone, but a process!
So they're on £60k plus for doing not alot.
They're the ones who have been in a dept for 20+ years and no one actually knows what they do.

No, most organisations are in business to make money (private sector), or to maximise the impact of money spent on services (public sector).

No, not really. Most organisations in the public sector have had headcount reductions and the private sector tend to want to increase profits.

It's an oft-repeated load of nonsense myth that there are billions waiting to be saved. Always from people with very little knowledge.

Not in retail. Managers and staff get cut back regularly so no one is safe.

I can't imagine anyone being so bothered about 'looking important' that they'd want all the faff of having to manage twice as many people as they could get away with. Every direct report creates work for the manager, allocating work, monitoring performance, dealing with issues, supervision, appraisal. Most managers prefer their number of direct reports to be as few as possible ime.

A good friend of mine has a senior manager role, she manages a vital safeguarding process and works her arse off doing it. She needs the “title” because she needs other managers to provide her with timely information that they don’t want to give her and she needs sufficient authority to demand they comply. Not every process manager is a waste of space.