I’ve been a middle manager.

It’s terrible, as the article observes. All the responsibilities but with none of the power to actually get anything done.

Enforcing clueless policy bequeathed from executives who have no idea what is going on is the worst, because you have to pretend to be all for it, too, or inevitably one of your underlings will tell Ms. Powerful Exec that, “Mike said your ‘no white shirts in the office except on every third Tuesday’ policy is stupid and to ignore it.”

And so then you have that exec out to get you and your underlings hate you for enforcing the policy.

If someone wants to promote you to middle management, resisting is probably the wisest choice unless you really need the usually-small bump in pay.

Heck, these days many companies promote you without a pay hike because they “pay in experience.”

Never, ever do that. It’s just not worth it.