While I will agree that sociopathy currently is enjoying a surge among managers and executives at all levels, having been a manager myself, I think there's another side to the view here.

Quote Originally Posted by Ultralight
Being a manager means you have to be willing, probably even enjoy, making others miserable with extra work, denied vacation days, guilt over taking sick days, and so forth. You have to enjoy manipulating and controlling people.
As a manager, you are responsible for making sure the work gets done. Sometimes it's not always the amount of work you -- or the people who report to you -- expected it to be. Sometimes emergencies happen. In today's "never-enough-people-on-the-bench" staffing model, most employees have defined responsibilities and skill sets. Having Joe substitute for Joan on a project may mean Joe operating out of his expertise, taking longer and possibly making more mistakes in addition to trying to get his previous workload done.

Denied vacation days/guilt over sick days? Again, the lean staffing model and uncertain workloads make it difficult to allow vacation days whenever people want to take them. I tried hard to honor the "we already paid for the cruise" requests but the "mental health days" sometimes got a 'no'.

Sick days? One of the people reporting to me -- our sole guy on evening coverage -- was prone to calling in sick, sometimes for days at a time. Not much opportunity for me to ask (or draft) someone to take on his shift. Yet our group was charged with being available to support the rest of the company. His absence meant salespeople weren't sending in orders; customers weren't getting responses from tech support -- and my group was not getting paid for the service we were not providing. I suppose handling that would be easier for a sociopath. But not all managers are sociopaths.

Being a successful manager does involve "manipulating and controlling" people. You can say it in the pejorative manner I think it's being used here. Or you can see it in terms of someone being responsible for yoking the energy of several people whose goals don't always match the company's.

Some folks are there to collect their paycheck and they'll do what they have to do, but they'll never look far enough ahead to figure out and take the next step. Some folks do excellent work but the work has to be very well defined for them; others just need their piece of the jigsaw puzzle and they'll figure out what it looks like and how it should fit. Some folks are on their own power trip or are just hacked off at life and their goals are not at all your group's goals. All of these people need to know what's expected of them; all of them need their own form of motivation provided for them; all of them remain individuals in all of their positive glory and negative attributes.

I agree that lots of workplaces suck. Even places that used to be great suck. And sociopaths are far too popular these days. But I would draw the line at a general rule that anyone who is a manager must enjoy making people miserable.