BrutalTechTruth
Brutal Tech Truth is a multi-platform commentary series (podcast, Substack, and YouTube) delivering unfiltered analysis of enterprise IT, software architecture, and engineering leadership. The mission is simple: expose the hype, half-truths, and convenient lies in today’s tech industry and shine a light on the real issues and solutions. This brand isn’t here to cheerlead feel-good tech trends – it’s here to call out what’s actually failing in your infrastructure, why your cloud bill is insane, how AI is creating tomorrow’s technical debt if not guided, and which “boring” solutions actually work. In Frank’s own direct style: “If you're looking for feel-good tech talk or innovation celebration, skip this one”
Brutal Tech Truth tells the uncomfortable truths behind shiny vendor demos and conference-circuit clichés, bridging the gap between polished narratives and production reality.
BrutalTechTruth
Power Without Authority: The Theater of Modern Management
The façade is cracking. Every day, in companies worldwide, an elaborate charade plays out where managers watch employees, executives watch managers, and nobody actually holds the power to make meaningful change. This recursive paranoia isn't management—it's theater, and everyone involved knows they're merely performing control.
In this searing analysis of modern corporate power structures, we expose what might be the most elaborate collective delusion in business history: the control crisis. What happens when delegation becomes puppetry? When every level of management performs authority while possessing none? When artificial intelligence only multiplies phantom control that never existed in the first place?
Drawing on shocking research from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard, we reveal the hard numbers behind this dysfunction. Middle managers spend 73% of their time in performative oversight activities. Companies claiming "empowered teams" have 47% more approval layers than traditional organizations. Middle managers have decision authority over just 3.2% of their team's actual work. Meanwhile, Microsoft's leaked internal studies show AI tools decrease productivity by 23% while increasing productivity metrics by 41%—we're measuring everything and improving nothing.
The psychological and neurological impact is devastating. Micromanagement activates the same neural pathways as physical pain. Feeling controlled shuts down the brain's creative centers. We've created what philosopher Michel Foucault called a panopticon, but one where everyone is simultaneously prisoner and guard—yet the prison has no exit and the guards hold no keys.
The brutal truth? This entire control apparatus functions as a mass psychological defense mechanism against admitting nobody truly knows what they're doing. Your manager isn't evil—they're terrified, just like you, that someone will notice we're all performing control over systems nobody controls. Listen now to understand the true nature of power in modern organizations, and why stopping this performance might be both necessary and impossible.
You are watching your manager watch you watch your screen. Three levels of surveillance for one line of code. Your manager's manager is watching them watch you. Their manager is refreshing dashboard that tracks the watching. This isn't management, it's a recursive paranoia, and everyone involved knows they are performing control. They don't actually have Frank here. And welcome back to Brutal Tech Truth.
Speaker 1:Today we are dissecting the most elaborate power fantasy in corporate history the control crisis, where every level of management performs authority while possessing none, creating a Kafkaesque nightmare where everyone is simultaneously oppressor and press. But this goes deeper than bad bosses or surveillance culture. We're examining the epistemological collapse of authority itself. What happens when power becomes pure performance, when delegation becomes theater, when artificial intelligence multiplies phantom control that never exists? We're about to find out why your manager is trapped as you are, just in a nicer cage. Let me start with a philosophical framework you must have considered.
Speaker 1:Michael Foucault wrote about panopticon horizon, where you might be watched at any moment. So you behave as if you are always watched. You become your own guard. Modern tech companies have inverted this. Everyone watches everyone, but the body has the actual power to change anything. It's a panopticon, where everyone is simultaneously prisoner and guard, but the prison has no exit and the guards have no keys. Stanford researcher Jeffrey Pfeffer documented this in 2024.
Speaker 1:Managers spend 73% of their time in performative oversight and 73% of their time in performative oversight, activities that demonstrate control without exercising it Status meeting where nothing is decided. Reviews where nothing changes. Dashboards that measure everything and improve nothing. Three quarters of management is theater, but here's what Pafram is. Managers know management is theater, but here's what Paphomis. Managers know it's theater. The engineers know it's theater. The executives know it's theater. Yet we all continue performing because stopping will require admitting that the body is actually in control. Admitting that the body is actually in control. The entire hierarchy is a consensual hallucination maintained by collective performance.
Speaker 1:Consider what delegation actually means in 2025. You have power to own a feature. Accept. The stack is predetermined, the timeline speaks, the requirements are immutable, the success metrics are predefined and the review process is standardized. The deployment window is scheduled. You own everything except any actual decision. That's not delegation. That's elaborate puppetry when you pretend to control, string and touch nothing.
Speaker 1:The MIT's Long Review published data in 2024. Companies claiming empowered teams have 47% more approval layer than traditionally managed companies 47% more. The language of empowerment has become camouflage for unprecedented control. We say delegation while practicing domination, but it's domination without dominators. Everyone is following rules. Nobody created Enforcing standards. Nobody believes in Measuring metrics, nobody values Next examiners.
Speaker 1:The middle managers predict them. Through system theory they are supposed to be signal processors. Information flow up, decision flow down, but modern organizations have inverted this. Data flow everywhere, through Slack, email, dashboard, wikis. Decision flow nowhere because nobody has authority to make them. Mid-managers become noise filters in a system made entirely of noise. A study from INSET in 2024 found that middle managers in tech companies have decision authority over an average of 3.2% of their team's actual work 3.2%. The rest is predetermined by processes, policies, architectures or executive mandates. They are managers who can manage leaders who can't lead authorities without authority.
Speaker 1:The psychological impact is devastating. Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory explains what happens when actions contradict beliefs. Middle managers must perform authority they know they lack. They must defend decisions they didn't make. They must enforce policy they disagree with. The dissonance is resolving through what psychologists call effort justification. Convincing yourself that painful experiences are available made managers become their own Stockholm Syndrome victims, identifying with a system that imprisons them.
Speaker 1:Senior management operates in a different circle of a whole. They are supposed to be strategists, but strategy requires agency. Instead, they are reactive translators, converting market panic into internal chaos. When competitors announce AI initiatives, they must announce AI initiatives. When investors demand blockchain, they demand blockchain. When analysts praise microservices, they mandate microservices microservices.
Speaker 1:The Harvard Business Review's 2024 executive survey revealed that 82% of senior managers feel they are responding to external pressure rather than setting direction. They are not driving, they are being driven by markets, investors, competitors, analysts, anyone except themselves. The captain is tied to the wheel of a ship steered by the wind. But here's the true irony they can't admit this powerlessness because their entire identity depends on performing power. So they create elaborate strategic narratives. They hold off sides where they pretend to decide what was already decided by market forces, tend to decide what was already decided by market forces. They announce bold visions that are really just description where the current is taking them anyway.
Speaker 1:Enter artificial intelligence marketed as the solution but function as an amplifier. Ai doesn't create control, it creates illusion of control. More dashboards, more metrics, more predictions, more surveillance. But good heart's law tells us that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Ai is giving us infinite measures, infinite targets, infinite ways to destroy actual productivity while performing measurement of productivity. Microsoft's internal studies leaked in 2024 showed that AI powered productivity tools decrease actual productivity by 23%, while increasing productivity metrics by 41%. People work less but appear to work more. The tool designed to enhance control reveals its absence. When you can't measure everything, you control nothing. The philosophical implications are profound.
Speaker 1:Hannah Arendt distinguished between power and violence. Power is collective action, the ability to act in concert. Power is collective action, the ability to act in concert. Violence is instrumental, using tools to force outcomes. Modern management has confused surveillance a form of violence, with power. But surveillance without the ability to act on it isn't even violence, it's just voyeurism. We have created organizational structure based on watching without touching, seeing without changing, knowing without acting.
Speaker 1:The neurological components deserve attention. The anterior cingulate cortex processes both physical and social pain. Being micromanaged activates the same neural pathway as physical injury. But here's what's worse Micromanaging others also causes stress. The manager suffers along the manager, it's mutual assured destruction of psychological safety. Studies using fMRI scanning show that when people feel controlled, they perform. The frontal cortex responsible for creative thinking and problem solving shut down. They shift to the limbic systems operating from fear and habit. Micromanagement literally makes people stupider. Then managers complain about lack of initiative, creating more controls, making people even stupider. It's a death spiral of diminishing cognitive capacity.
Speaker 1:The delegation paradox has created what organization theorist Carl Wieck called an acted environment. We create the reality we perceive through our actions by acting as if delegation is impossible. We make it impossible by acting as if delegation is impossible. We make it impossible by performing control. We destroy actual control. By measuring everything, we understand nothing.
Speaker 1:Consider a typical empowered team. They have a charter, mission statements, okrs, raci metrics, definition of dome, working agreement, team contract, social contract, code of conduct. They are so empowered they need to have documents to define their empowerment. Each document is a fence, the space inside all fences. That's where they are empowered to operate A prison cell with motivational posters. The French philosopher Gilles Delos wrote about society of control, placing disciplinary societies Instead of being confined to specific spaces, factories, prison and so is continuous and unlimited.
Speaker 1:You are never done working because work follows you home through Slack. You're never not being evaluated because every interaction is logged. You're never outside the panopticon because the panopticon is your phone, but the lows mean something. In a society of control, the controllers are also controlled. In a society of control, the controllers are also controlled. Your manager checking your comments at 11 pm is having their engagement track. The VP demanding weekend work is being measured on leadership visibility. The CEO proclaiming transformation is performing for a board that's performing for investors, who are performing for a market that doesn't exist except as collective performance.
Speaker 1:The race for the new thing exemplifies this perfectly. Nobody asks if customers want AI features. Nobody analyzes if blockchain solves real problems. Nobody evaluates if microservices improve anything. The new thing is mandatory because not having it is an admission of being behind. But behind what? Behind others who are also pretending to be ahead, but behind what? Behind others who are also pretending to be ahead? It's a race where everyone is running in place but convinced others are moving.
Speaker 1:Game theory offers another lens. The prisoner's dilemma shows how rational actors produce irrational outcomes. Every manager knows micromanagement destroys productivity, but if they don't micromanage while others do, they appear less diligent. So everyone micromanages, everyone. Productivity suffers. Everyone know it's stupid, but nobody can stop because stopping first means losing the game. But what game we are playing? It's not productivity Productivity has decreased. It's not innovation Innovation requires freedom. We have eliminated. It's not even profit. Many of these companies are losing money while performing success. The game is performing, the game we are playing and playing, competing and competing, winning and performance and winning while actually losing.
Speaker 1:The economist Joseph Schampeter wrote about creative destruction. All structures must die for new ones to emerge. But what happens when the structures prevent their own death, when the system is designed to preserve itself regardless of function? We get zombie organizations dead but still moving, failing but still operating, broken but still breaking others. The psychological concept of learned helplessness extends beyond individuals to entire organizations. Extends beyond individuals to entire organizations. When repeated attempts to improve things fail, people stop trying. But organizational learned helplessness is worse because it's collective. Everyone has learned that change is impossible, so nobody attempts it, which makes it impossible, which reinforces the learning. It's a perfectly self-fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1:The British anthropologist David Graeber called these bullshit jobs roles that even the person doing them knows are pointless. But it didn't go far enough. It's not just individual jobs that are bullshit, it's entire management structures. While our hierarchy exists to manage problems created by the hierarchy itself, we created organizational uribors, serpents eating their own tails and calling it growth. The real tragedy is that everyone involved is intelligent. The engineers are brilliant, the managers are capable, the executives are experienced. In any other context, these people will be the amazing things. But distractions transform intelligence into stupidity, capability into importance, experience into irrelevance.
Speaker 1:The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann wrote about autopoietic systems, systems that reproduce themselves. Modern tech organization have become autopoietic dysfunction machines. They take in talented people and produce burned out husks. They consume resources and produce surveillance. They promise innovation and deliver theater. And they reproduce this pattern in every new hire, every new team and every new company. The feedback loops are perfectly calibrated for this function.
Speaker 1:Micromanagement creates disengagement. Disengagement justifies more monitoring. More monitoring requires more managers. More managers create more monitoring. More monitoring requires more managers. More managers create more processes. More processes reduce productivity. Reduced productivity demands more control. More control creates more micromanagement. The circle is complete and self-reinforcing. But there's something even darker here. The system selects for those who perform it best. The engineers who tolerate surveillance get promoted. Manager who excel at theater become directors. The executive who perform transformation becomes a CAO Natural selection for dysfunction, evolution toward pretense. We're breeding a generation of leaders who generally can tell the difference between performance and reality.
Speaker 1:Philosopher Gérard Jean-Valéry Lorde forced the age of simulacra to apply perfectly. First sign reflect reality, reality. They they mask reality. Then they mask the absence of reality. Finally they become reality. We are reached stage four. The performance of control has become more real. The control itself, the map hasn't just replaced the territory we have forgotten. Territory exists. So what happened? What happens when everyone realizes this simultaneously, when the collective hallucination breaks? We are starting to see it.
Speaker 1:The great resignation wasn't about COVID. It was about people suddenly seeing the theater for what it was. The quiet quitting isn't laziness, it's the refusal to perform, enthusiasm for a performance. The burnout epidemic isn't weakness, it's the appropriate response to being asked to pretend indefinitely. But the system has antibodies. Those who point out the theater are labeled, not team players. Those who refuse to perform are not leadership material. Those who demand actual authority are not ready for responsibility. Language itself is weaponized to maintain the performance. We don't even have words for what real delegation would look like because we have been performing failed delegations so long. The solution is a better management, is the recognition that management as currently conceived is a failed paradigm. You can't fix a performance by performing better. You can't solve theater with more theater. You can't create a real delegation in a system built on phantom authority.
Speaker 1:The brutal truth is the entire control apparatus is a mass psychological defense mechanism against admitting. The body knows what we are doing. Every level of management is performing certainty. They don't feel authority, they don't have strategy, they don't believe the micromanagement isn't about control, it's about the terror of its absence. Your manager watching you is really watching themselves dissolve into irrelevance. Your skip level demanding updates is screaming into the void. Your CEO announcing transformation is whistling past the graveyard.
Speaker 1:Everyone is controlling nothing, while performing controlling everything. And we all know it. That's the worst part. We all know it. Theater we all know nobody is in charge, we all know the delegation is fake, the empowerment is hollow, the authority is phantom. But admitting it would mean admitting we have built our careers and collecting pretense. So we continue, continue, day after day, performance after performance, controlling nothing, burning out from the effort of pretending otherwise, burning out from the effort of pretending otherwise. Tomorrow you'll join the stand up where nothing stand up. You'll update, ticket track, nothing. You will be micromanaged by someone being micromanaged by someone being micromanaged by market forces and body controls. You'll perform empowerment he doesn't take for authority without existing. A system that doesn't work. And you know. It's all theater Everyone knows. But knowing and stopping are different things, because stopping will mean admitting.
Speaker 1:The last decade of management, innovation has been elaborated, reflection from the fact that nobody has idea how to organize human beings to build that thing anymore. We didn't forget how to code. We forgot how to work together without performing working together, and that's a much harder bug to fix. Welcome to Brutal Tech Truth, where we tell you what your manager is in level, that your manager is in evil. They are terrified, just like you, just like everyone, terrified that someone will notice we are all performing control over the system. The body controls actually controls. Well, that was all, folks, for today, frank signing off. Have a good time. See you soon. Bye-bye, thank you for being here. If what you heard resonate with you, don't be shy. Smash the like and subscribe button again.