Over all I’d rather have a middle manager than a petite bougie boss.

In the worst case both types of boss will make you do meaningless/stupid work because they are on a power trip and just love watching people slave away at their command. but it is easier to slack off with a middle manager because they are watching their boss and every other employee as much as they are watching you.

A chill manager will not care if you slack off, provided you hit the KPIs. But if you are able to do everything a petite bougie boss expects of you in less time, even a chill petite bougie will just raise the amount of work they expect the next day. So there is no benefit to doing a good job for them because it will just mean more exploitation in the long run.

Middle manager > petite bougie boss

My middle manager leaves me alone to do my work and listens to me when I have concerns about things, literally all I need from a middle manager.

I’ve had better experience with middle-managers, honestly, because those middle-managers are basically an employee themselves so they tend to be friendlier to us lowly workers, and they also create a layer in between us and the upper managers, so we don’t have to deal with the main managers directly, which makes it less stressful. The company I work for got rid of middle managers last year and it’s when way more stressful as a result.

I have worked for both in two imperial core countries.

Having worked for both I would take the manager every time. They’re just there for a wage, just like any other worker. They don’t have any personal interest in the success of the company beyond that, even if they completely believe the profit maximization crap. A manager may genuinely care about the workers under their purview and responsibilities and hierarchical position aside are a worker as well in terms of class position. I have had managers with whom I can openly talk about my struggles with work and how it could be made better for me and other workers, sometimes successfully.

The petit bourgeois business owner on the other hand has a personal interest in the profitability of the business. They’re far more likely to be openly reactionary due to their class position, and while they may pretend to care about their workers but ultimately all they care about is profit maxing (“I have to earn something otherwise there’s no point”). One owner I worked for literally said he would not invest in equipment for a safer process if it didn’t also improve productivity. The owner I work for now only has three topics he talks about: the work, taxes/regulations (bad!), and foreigners (even more bad!). I wouldn’t dare talk with him about my mental health struggles, and my presence as a foreigner doesn’t change the way he slander foreigners in the slightest.

If the company is big enough to have middle managers, but small enough that the owner can be present in a day-to-day operations kind of way, it’s usually a bad time as well. The managers can be good people and advocate for their departments, but then the owner shows up, demands something unreasonable and even completely nonsensical and everyone just goes along with it.

If anyone has any suggestions about how to find a small business which isn’t racist, sexist, ableist, and “don’t tread on me”, let me know. I do like working in a small team and not a huge corporation, but I also can’t take the far-right bullshit every day.

in a capitalist system unfortunately i will choose corporate vs asshole also under capitalism everytime. all those operating with capitalism are like this but especially small business owners. they cross boundaries, are disrespectful and have the nerve to foster a connection but when they dont need you anymore they drop you while corporations are uniformly cold. keep connections for friends and family, not for livelihood

The self interest of a petite bourgeois boss is to extract as much sutplus value as possible from you. The self interest of a middle manager is that you (and your team) help them somewhat exceed their performance expectations (which often means making the work you do percievable and look good rather than doing more work), and other than that create as little work for them as possible - too high performance ultimately gives them more management work and raises their bosses expectations of them as well. Other than that it depends on the individual and the company.

Telling about my personal experience, I’ve had both petit bourgeois boss at a startup, and multiple middle managers, and yes middle managers tend to be better.

However, my petit bourg boss was a shareholder of a startup and he was ok, he was usually friendly and very chill. What made me look for another job was the amount of hours and the low salary, but other than that I had a very good relationship with him and the other shareholders.

I’ve had some bad middle managers, sometimes you get the luck of getting a careerist that wants to make numbers good at your expense, and while I never got directly threatened, I always heard comments about how can I ask for so many days to work in a task “so simple”. Or something like, “aren’t you a senior dev, why are you taking so long?”. Or “I expect a lot from you, I want to bring you to the next level”. So this guy forces you to run like crazy so he can impress his boss and make connections with the higher ups to bid for a higher role in the company. Ah, this careerist also loves shit talking about other middle managers in meetings with higher ups to talk about quality, commitment, performance and any other stuff the higher ups love to hear.

Other than that, there are managers that can be pretty chill, that see themselves as an employee’s mentor, and which wants to back people up when they are in trouble with deadlines. Most of the managers I had were of this type.

In the end, most bosses are under pressure to deliver more, be them Petit Bourg, or MMs, just like we are as workers. If small company does not grow, it can be driven out of business by higher companies, and they are also pressured by investors or who want to see the return for their investments or by interest rates of loans. Bigger companies often have hundreds of investors and careerists, and if your org isn’t profitable, there’s always a risk that in a future quarterly meeting the company decides to axe your org to keep the more profitable ones. Our exploitation does not exist because of individual personality traits of our bosses, but because there are structural issues in capitalism that cause this phenomenon to occur.