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The Indestructible Law of Capitalist Corporate Management

I've discovered a new and brilliant social law that will change everything we think about the nature of work forever.

Nah, I was just pissed about a stupid job thing last night, so I wrote about it. This is just my take on ideas that many, many people have been saying or thinking or theorizing forever, probably even yourself.

Here's what I call the Law of Capitalist Corporate Management

> Any attempt by a corporate manager to improve something will tend to have the effect of actually impairing the process and the overall functioning of the team, as well as creating absurdities and harming employee well-being.

Why is this the case? Managers, by their very nature, must have something to manage. If it so happens that there is, in fact, very little to do (i.e., things are going well, workers are taking care of themselves, deadlines are being met, products are looking good), they will simply invent some new "innovative" thing and force it upon employees who have no say in the matter, thus "managing" them. It does not matter if this new thing has any relation at all with the real-world goal of the job at hand. It could be a new form to fill out. A new metric to "measure." A new mandatory weekly meeting. Or even completely changing some existing process for unclear reasons — based on "research" or "the latest practices". Once this fancy new thing has been implemented, the manager can claim to have managed, and thus have justified their existence and their potential raise come time for review.

But that's only step one. Step two is when the formerly new thing becomes institutionalized and normalized. The thing that was forced on people is now just an everyday part of the job and is being taken care of by the employees — so the manager once again has nothing to manage. At this point, the formerly "innovative" process is invariably perceived by said manager as having become "inefficient" or some other similarly jargony and negative descriptor, so now the new-old thing has to be updated or changed or even abandoned. So you go back to step one and start all over again.

And this cycle goes on forever, endlessly adding and/or tweaking and/or abandoning and/or returning to some past method — making the actual, concrete work life of everyone involved completely absurd and much worse than it was before. But it _must_ be done because (for reasons that are never made clear by either data or argument) we _need_ managers.

This also has the effect of concentrating all kinds of things upward into management. Information is hoarded, communication is cut off, fiefdoms are created, neighboring fiefdoms are invaded and their projects taken over, scope creeps ever more so managers have more to "do", projects abound and are abandoned in equal measure.

But why does this stupid law continue to operate even though it makes no sense?

Why does all this continue to happen despite its obvious madness? In short, because there's a bait and switch built into the very concept of management. The ostensible reason for a manager's existence and their _actual_ goals are not at all the same. Consider the perspective of an individual manager and what they themselves are trying to get out of the situation. I don't mean their job, their official list of responsibilities, but their actual personal goals and motivations: To get a raise. That's really all they want. Getting a raise in no way requires managers to improve anything; it only requires being able to _say_ that you've improved something, and have "metrics" to back it up.

In other words, the only thing a manager needs to do in order to achieve their actual goal (more money, or at the very least not getting fired) is to convince some other manager that they are, in fact, managing. Their workplace activities are ancillary, which is why they often make no sense and might have nothing to do with the real workplace tasks at hand. It's rather like a peacock's feathers: Completely pointless for any reason other than convincing a peahen to fuck them. Hence the constant, made-up absurd changing processes, practices, meetings, etc.: these are all just beautiful feathers to convince a slightly more senior manager to give them more money and let them keep their job.

To put it another way: The Law of Corporate Management is just the office-work expression of the fact that capitalism is not and never has been about innovation, improvement, progress, or happiness. It is about capital accumulation, and that must continue no matter what, even if it means is reinventing the same thing over and over again in subtly different ways.

What is to be done?

At any rate, how do you solve this management problem? By eliminating managers entirely. People are perfectly capable of managing themselves. But of course you structurally _can't_ eliminate managers, because only managers have the power to hire or fire people — that is the defining feature of a manager. And of course they would never choose to fire themselves. So this is what we have. Unless you take the radical revolutionary route.

But but but … anarchy … organization … [insert objection]!

This is not to say that you don't ever need someone(s) whose role it is to guide the ship, so to speak. Something like a _coordinator_ or a _foreman_. But these kinds of people are _structurally the exact opposite of a manager_. Their job is to _maintain_, not to manage; to be a scheduler; to facilitate communication between disparate people and areas; to spread out responsibilities and delegate; to say "no" to anything unnecessary; to push back against everything unproven, untried or untested; to create time rather than fill time; to spread information out to as many people as possible; and — eventually — to cease to exist. The best coordinators are the ones you no longer even need because they've helped create a well-functioning organization which can be run by the people doing the actual work. Which means precisely that coordinators come and go — they tend not to hoard anything or create fiefdoms or take over anything. They exist only when and for as long as the team decides they need to exist.

So-called "innovation" is never, ever the result of management. New and interesting things happen when a person gets really, really annoyed at something, decides to fix it, and they have 1) time, and 2) freedom. Managers are adept at creating annoyance, but structurally their role is exactly to take away your time and restrict your freedom in order to make you do the things _they_ want you to do, i.e., force you to adopt the new "innovative" process they made up in order to justify their existence. This is the opposite of creation. In fact, new and brilliant things and ideas are often the result of someone getting tired of management and refusing to do what they say.

Caveat

I'm obviously thinking here primarily of _corporate_ management, i.e., office and desk settings where people are sending emails and using their "knowledge" and "skilled labor," such as in the technology sector or the regional headquarters of some large company. Does this also apply to other kinds of management?

Probably, but also probably in different ways and in different degrees, and with modifications particular to each profession. Manufacturing jobs have different working conditions, as do restaurant jobs and transportation jobs. But the the concept of a manager is not different: in _all workplaces_, the role of a manager is primarily to either get more money or at the very least to keep their job.