Performance review season, and other rare acts of management

I've been writing performance reviews for my team this week, and somewhere along the way I realized something uncomfortable: this is one of the only times all year the business says, 'Take a pause, and focus on your team member's individual performance.' In other words: be a real manager.

I'm not talking about being a manager in the org-chart sense. Those reporting lines are very real. I mean a manager in the true definition of the word: someone whose job is to develop—aka manage—other people, to notice where they're doing well, where they're struggling, and formally acknowledge what's happening and help them grow.

That job exists. Most structures today just aren't built for it.

Individual contributors with extra steps

Here's the quiet reality of middle management in most companies: unless you're in a role explicitly built around leading a team, you're an individual contributor with direct reports. Your own deliverables come first, because that's what you're measured on. The managing happens in the margins.

I (try to) fight for those margins. I carve out the one-on-ones that are actually about the person and not the project. I course-correct in the moment rather than saving it up for review season. But I'm realistic enough to admit most of the time I'm swimming against the structure, not with it.

And this isn't just me having a busy quarter. Gallup found that 45% of middle managers reported burnout in 2025, more than any other group in the workforce, while the average number of direct reports per manager has climbed to 12.1; that's roughly a 50% increase since 2013. Microsoft's Work Trend Index found managers spending a disproportionate share of their time in meetings and administration, with coaching and development the first to fall by the wayside.

And those direct reports? They may or may not look to their manager for much beyond approvals and having their backs. Sure, some want career guidance. But plenty just want to be left alone to work and then clock off. And it's getting harder to tell which is which.

The part where I try not to sound old

I'm aware of how the next bit could come across, so let me acknowledge it: every generation of managers has complained that the generation behind them doesn't want to listen. I have no interest in joining that chorus.

But something does feel different, and according to the data, it's not in my head. A Robert Walters survey found that around three-quarters of Gen Z would rather advance as individual contributors than move into management. They've looked at the job I'm describing here—the pressure, the demands, the burnout rate—and they've politely said, 'No, thanks. I'm good.' Hard to blame them. But if someone has opted out of the manager's path, I suspect they also discount the manager's advice.

That would explain something I've noticed. When I offer the kind of career guidance I would have killed for at that age, it often lands with indifference. Not resistance. Indifference. The advice is received, filed, and likely not thought about again.

For a while I read this as a lack of ambition, but I don't think that's it.

Maybe the problem is the packaging

Here's the thing I keep circling back to: most career guidance is built on a career path that no longer exists. It used to be you'd pick a direction, go deep on it, learn and grow, climb a ladder. That's the world where my lessons were won. It's not today's reality.

Today's early career growth group watched people who did everything right lose their jobs anyway. They've watched AI take over the jobs they thought they would do. From where they sit, a five-year plan from someone 20 years in might look less like wisdom and more like out-of-touch.

So maybe it's not that they don't want guidance. Maybe they don't see the value in it. And honestly? They might have a point. Some of what I learned the hard way is genuinely durable: how to read a room, how to push back without burning bridges, how to tell the difference between a bad quarter and a bad company. But other skills are lost in today's working environment

The uncomfortable homework for people like me is sorting out what truly matters before offering any advice.

The quandary nobody's solving

Which brings me back to those performance reviews, and the thing that's actually bothering me.

If the structure doesn't give middle managers room to manage, and the people reporting to them are ambivalent about being managed, then we've built a system where nobody grows on purpose. People still grow. After all, humans are resourceful. But they grow by accident, by osmosis, by YouTube, and by trial and error. The lessons that cost somebody years to learn die with the person who learned them, because the channel for passing them along has been quietly dismantled.

That seems like a genuine loss, and not just a sentimental one. Companies talk endlessly about developing talent, and then structure the manager role so that development is the first thing sacrificed. Employees respond to surveys saying they want growth, and then they meet the available growth with a shrug and dismissal. Both things are true at once. Neither side is villain enough to blame.

I don't have a clean answer. The honest version is that I'm mid-quandary, writing performance reviews that feel like the one structurally protected act of management I'll perform this quarter, wondering whether the guidance I'm putting in them will be read as a gift or as a relic.

If you manage people — really manage them, or fight for the margins to — I'd genuinely like to know whether this matches what you're seeing. Especially if it doesn't.