1) This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit. Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby they can spin almost any story they want. And journalists go for clicks, so they amplify the sensationalism. It doesn't mean this is one of those, but a class action complaint should not just blindly be trusted.
2) There is a strong theme of "of course execs lie cheat steal at every turn" and I also think this narrative should be questioned. Ethics aside, the level of compliance in a public company is insanely high. Execs are already rich. To risk jailtime, which fraud can lead to, you'd need to see something more existential than slightly increasing margins on used van sales.
I felt inclined to comment as I've been on the other end of articles like this, and it is astounding the level of mind reading people have done into my intent and actions on things that were factually just not true at all. I also truly would find it very difficult to commit a broad organizational fraud even if I wanted to and my company is only 500 people.
If I had to make a prediction, the case is less black and white than it appears, and if there was fraud, it was probably committed at a non-executive level by the person whose P&L was directly tied to these resales. Or, it was done independently by the much smaller leasing company where this was more existential to them. It is highly unlikely to be a Fed Ex executive-level conspiracy.
I'm sure there are a few counter examples, such as say the VW emissions scandal, but I would counter these were the exceptions that proved the rule and in general when the C-level was involved was much higher stakes.
Sorry, I just tire of narratives where when a corporation does something morally wrong, it’s the fault of nebulous capitalist hyper-optimization and no individuals are held accountable.
I'm tired of the outage-clickbait.
I'm here to learn, not to be emotionally manipulated.
But, upper and middle management don't care about the company as much as the execs. They would much rather show the numbers, earn their comp and fuck off, than worry about long term sustainability of the company or of their reports.
Has anyone really complained about middle management yet?
In this case, though, Fedex has just denied the allegations but not proffered any alternative explanation. Nature abhors a vacuum, and human nature abhors an information vacuum. Corporations habitually refuse to share information unless they are forced to do so legally, so they have only themselves to blame for the subsequent distrust by the public.
I think most high-level executives are competent enough to create legal incentives and disincentives to their organization which typically are legal. The "lie, cheat, and steal" narrative is about functional outcomes and not so much about explicit follow through.
Executives are in positions they can craft goals and to some degree pass responsibility of details of those goals off to others. I can set unrealistic targets that are only attainable by cutting corners and be sure to make it clear I'll drop people who don't meet those targets or reward people who do. I can leave in-depth questioning about the approach (the potentially dirty details) to create a layer of plausible deniability.
It's as if I hire a driver to take me from point A to point B. That distance may be impossible to cover without violating an array of traffic laws. My goal as the passenger though is to traverse the space safely at some price. I don't really care about how it's done, I'll leave that to the driver. I can create pressure on a driver and/or apply selection bias to choosing a driver willing to take on my impossible request. At no point did I say: violate traffic laws, speed, etc. but I know that's what's going to happen to attain my goal. I never incriminate myself by making the goal generalized and as a passenger, I take on no legal risks for my driver violating traffic laws. Suddenly, using a crafted goal, careful selection, and money, I've created a situation for something illegal to happen. Should I be at fault? What if I even added to criteria of transporting me from A to B not to violate traffic laws but I give a wink wink, shove a little more money (incentive) at the problem, or turn the cheek when it occurs so I don't witness it. Am I still not at fault?
A caricature of this behavior in my opinion is Donald Trump who operates completely in the grey areas wherever possible, pushing or promoting questionable behavior but avoiding the provable cases where he's responsible. From my interaction with various executives over the years, this strategy isn't unique. It's certainly not everyone but impossible environments and requests are made on the daily. It happens from the highest levels and gets passed down and down.
The complaint has 4 cited individuals and follows up on an already ongoing lawsuit with a used vehicle dealer that filed a lawsuit in 2017 over being scammed as well.
The complaint class action references 4 affected independent individuals as victims.
But, this entire thing is in parallel with an already ongoing lawsuit by a used vehicle broker that filed a lawsuit in 2017 over being scammed as well.
https://cdllife.com/2021/fedex-battles-lawsuit-over-millions...
This seems incredibly naive. You'd have to be willfully ignorant to think that a) rich people won't break the law to make a tiny bit more money, and b) fraud committed by large corporations often results in jail time.
I agree with you that this article isn't worth very much, but that's only because lawsuits in general shouldn't be trusted without corroborating evidence, not because a rich executive would never do this.
Maybe there was no conspiracy involved, and the fleet mechanics were just swapping out defective gauge clusters (somehow always swapping in a lower mileage cluster).
So the best defense they have is that this was an accident of sloppy record keeping leading to a failure to make legally required disclosures… which is not a great defense.
Asbestos in talcum powder. PFAS exposure and dumping into public water supplies. Monsanto and roundup. Cigarettes health effects. Climate change from burning hydrocarbons. Norfolk southern and the controlled burn in east palistine. I could literally go on and on about the history of execs poisoning people and the planet while knowing full well about it. All to keep the profit margin, but you know this stuff you’re just willfully ignoring it.
If you’re an ethical executive, you’re a unicorn.
When you combine a mercenary mind with oversight from a person who doesn’t believe in “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is” that’s when the bad stuff starts to happen.
There’s also a machismo school of business that lionizes force of will. Telling employees you want something that seems impossible and expecting them to get it. Nevermind that by far the easiest way to cross an impossible finish line is to cheat your ass off.
How many products do we need class action suits on? How many exposes on child or captive labor? How many superfund sites? How many companies going bankrupt ten years later when the truth comes out, before we hold people accountable and call bullshit on the “aw shucks” response to tough questions?
Or maybe a Bachelor of Arts from a business school is not enough rigorous education to run a multinational company.
“No one becomes a billionaire without hurting a lot of people” is still true, though inflation will eventually make us have to change that to “multi-billionaire”.
It's a good thing the ownership class doesn't get away with literally everything because that would drive people to vigilante violence.
It would be easy in a delivery business for an odometer to roll over one or even twice, and if you assign the new kid to get rid of the old trucks he might assume things.
That is not to absolve anyone. The truth can be a liability or an asset, and has to be managed not unlike inventory.
But that’s not what happened here:
> The lawsuit accuses FedEx of replacing the odometers in many of its vans with new ones that read zero miles, using the vans for a bit longer after that, and then selling them at auction with 100,000 miles or less on the new odometers.
That stretches credulity. But also, if you buy a FedEx truck or a police cruiser thinking you got a good deal on a low mileage vehicle, you’re a fucking idiot. Of course they’re going to drive them into the ground before selling them.
That sure is what it seems like. C-level solidarity, even managed to blame the peons with just as little evidence as everyone else blaming the execs...
VW is in the business of selling vehicles, and has a real interest there to push the envelope as much as possible.
FedEx is not in the business of selling used vehicles. These vehicle sales likely don't impact their core business in the slightest - making an organization-wide scandal just silly to even think about.
Looking online, these types of "vans" sell for anywhere between $5,000 and $30,000 (with 4 digit miles)[1]. Seriously... FedEx isn't going to blink at any of this.
These class actions are always brought by bottom-feeding lawyers that use serial-plaintiffs. The reality is the class action bit will be retracted, and the lawyers, err, plaintiff will receive a "go the hell away please" payment. That's the game here...
[1] https://www.auctiontime.com/listings/trucks/auction-results/...
Unironically, earn the comp, and fuck off to let the next person up the totem pole deal with the consequences of their decisions.
Shit may roll downhill, but sometimes, nothing changes til the guy at the top gets a swift boot to the ass in the form of a dose of Real Life (TM).
There's a federal law that requires you to either swear that you know the odometer reading is accurate, that the odometer has rolled over, or that the true odometer reading is unknown. This disclosure is made on every vehicle sale, and there's a standard form.
If you can't swear to the first two, you swear to the last one.
I wouldn't assume that a low mileage fleet vehicle is necessarily beat. Maybe it was assigned to a short route (There's a FedEx route on Lopez Island in Washington, half his day is spent on the ferry), maybe it is being phased out early due to a change to electric. There's a lot of reasons FedEx might sell a low mileage vehicle, and if you have a legal document from a major corporation stating that the mileage is accurate, most people would trust that.
It is getting clearer to everyone (from execs to ICs) that the command structure with layers and layers of management gives rise to pathological behaviors in the organization.
Perhaps this round of recession will bring some change to organization structures - ideally with less middle management.
Evil exists. Stop shoving your head in the sand and realize it's an uphill fight.
It is not surprising that FedEx has declined to submit evidence for scrutiny. It’s not time for that yet. They will be required to do so in discovery and they better hope they can at trial but right now we should not expect to hear anything from them other than “admit, deny, insufficient basis to form a belief and therefore deny.”
It’s just too early for an evidence based discussion. This is the nature of the civil action.
> This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit. Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby they can spin almost any story they want. And journalists go for clicks, so they amplify the sensationalism. It doesn't mean this is one of those, but a class action complaint should not just blindly be trusted.
This amounts to "class action lawyers and journalists are bad so we can ignore what they're saying".
The only exemption is for vehicles older than 10 years. In that case you don’t need to make a declaration, but you still can.
I personally see nothing naive in the parent post. It brings arguments based on knowledge how organization works and appeals to a game theory (stakes do not match). I'm not saying the reasoning is necessarily valid, but it is not naive.
The only part of the parent comment I do not approve from a methodology standpoint is an appeal to "exception that proves the rule". Exceptions do not prove rules, they disprove them.
in worlds where existence is related to health care which costs money which is related to margins, tampering with margins can be existential
As I understand it (sorry, I don't have a citation handy) was that VW was gaming the tests, but in order to make their vehicles' operations MORE efficient. That is, the tests are dumb because they concentrate on start-up emissions with less attention to warm running. VW wanted to also optimize the warm running, but to do that they had to game the software to still appear to optimize only for the cold start.
That is, aside from the ethical problem of cheating the regulation (a big aside to be sure), they were acting more responsibly than most.
00s just became mob rule via social mechanisms and manipulation; cliquish behavior is not something you can shoot or detonate, so we're stuck with people taking out their frustrations on children at school and anybody unsuspecting. The dejected are only going after targets they can reach (a tragic, but logical outcome).
There was one aspiring vigilante in the last few years who drove across the country to assassinate some scummy judge or something and was immediately caught while doing recon. His mistake was going after someone afforded protection. Everything is political and treated as terrorism. It's too risky to vote from the rooftops these days; there are an increasingly-infinite number of ways to fail.
I once helped fix up a manufacturing co that materially overstated net income by >10% for a decade. And it was just a mix of honest mistakes, miscommunications, some incompetence, and a shockingly small amount of fraud (though not 0).
I learned it's really easy for sr execs to run the company badly, one or two junior execs to push the limits, and a everyone else to just be a biiiit lazy - and bam, there's a big fraud.
That said 0 stock is up 5% w/w, so this can't be THAT big
The current round of recession will probably temporarily shrink some companies or cut off some lines of business, thereby flattening the hierarchy in a less harmful way than what I described. But overworking managers is a different bad thing.
Maybe you're advocating for a smaller maximum company size overall, so that a relatively flat hierarchy doesn't overwhelm those managers who do remain? Or for some right of participation by non-executive managers in collective worker action, as exists in Germany and as acted in the original version of the US National Labor Relations Act before the Taft-Hartley amendments, so that some kinds of large-company pathologies can be addressed better?
All of us here work at jobs, possibly in very large corporates. Do we see anything illegal going on? I would reckon that >90% of us have gone through our corporate life without ever being a part of anything close to even illegal, at worst we forward something to legal to be extra sure. So if we think corporations are regularly behaving illegally, we all have simultaneously seemed to have lucked out to be in the one the one ethical and legally compliant organization.
If some part of your worldview is that the world is being filled with greedy, selfish and unethical people, constantly trying to screw over others but you are the exception most likely your worldview is completely off (Most people view themselves as the good guy/ hero of their world). In my experience it is very unlikely for anyone in C Suite to ever risk any actual fraud in their dealings (or anyone in the organization really), however lawyers are essentially parasites on society who feed on productive work to make a living while gaslighting rest of society into believing that they’re playing an important role in protecting it.
If that's the case, then any possible scandal here would be squarely on the company selling the vehicles - not FedEx.
FedEx might just be a tacked-on name. You see that quite often with Prop 65 cases. The plaintiff attorneys add anyone even remotely related to the case, just to drive up pressure and chaos, hoping for quicker/larger settlement offers.
In this situation, even if FedEx has nothing to do with vehicles sales, they might opt to settle and write a check just to make the bad publicity go away. If you think that sounds like a shakedown, you'd be right.
VW's cheating is in essence the cars have two modes to run the engine; compliance mode and performance mode, and they run in compliance mode when the car starts up until the steering wheel is turned (more or less).
In compliance mode, the engine control follows the rules to meet the emissions test standards. In performance mode, operating temperature is allowed to increase, which increases performance, increases fuel efficiency, idles better, etc, but increased operating temperature leads to more NOx emissions.
Additional, for models with diesel emissions fluid, performance mode injected much less DEF than compliance mode; DEF reduces operating temperature as well as directly reacting withe NOx. This reduced use of DEF allowed a smaller DEF tank to be used; regulations require passenger car DEF tanks to have enough capacity for normal use within the regular service interval; if the vehicle was operating in compliance mode the whole time, you'd need to fill the DEF tank between oil changes (or have a larger tank, which needs to fit somewhere).
In the end, the big tradeoff is fuel efficiency (and therefore CO2 emissions) vs NOx emissions; which is a fine tradeoff to consider, but you can't give drivers what they want and regulators what they want without cheating.
OP was claiming the latter is rare. You're saying the former is common. They're not the same thing though.
This is the way this system is setup. Executives pursue profit at the expense of everything else. This is the cornerstone of capitalism.
This is so irresponsible of you to just assert without evidence, and is so out of context to portray VW as the good guys here. They did not break the rules and flaunt regulations to make their system more efficient. They did so to cover up their failure to deliver on a new generation of "clean diesel" tech. VW thought they could do it, they invested billions in it, and they couldn't figure out how to do it without emitting way too many other pollutants. So they built their cars to lie to regulators.
The tests cover an extensive range of use cases, mostly warm running. There were two modes, one that was more fuel efficient but emitted NOx above regulations, and one that was less fuel efficient but was within NOx regulations. They detected when the tires were on suspension that simulates real-world driving for testing. They got caught by academics who wanted to test real-world vs simulated suspension.
Here is actual source, Bloomberg, which isn't some kind of environmentalist or anti-business publication: (https://web.archive.org/web/20160312181801/https://www.bloom...):
"The road tests captured a variety of conditions: high elevations up Mt. Baldy; stop-and-go urban errand-running in San Diego; freeway driving around Los Angeles. The two Volkswagens’ emissions exceeded standards by 5 to 35 times. The BMW’s didn’t. [...] The Lean NOx Trap is a system of concessions. To get cleaner exhaust, you’d need to use a squirt of fuel every few seconds to burn up nitrogen oxide. Or, in the other direction, to get better fuel efficiency, you’d need to spew out dirtier exhaust. Managing this trade-off requires a complex calibration of the onboard computer, the engine control unit, so it can adjust constantly to variables like temperature and speed and optimize both emissions and fuel usage. The trouble was, Volkswagen hadn’t been able to get its new engines to comply with the stringent U.S. standards."
The reason is they had invested in a "clean diesel" engine tech that was supposed to be their market differentiator. VW invested billions into it. Yes, it was more fuel efficient, but it was supposed to also stay within existing pollution emissions regulations. Nobody else made such big investments in clean diesel because they couldn't figure out how to make it more efficient without also emitting pollutants at much higher levels. But everybody was so bought into it that they felt they had to cover it up.
I almost never see this phrase used correctly however.
Before the shift there was an influx of tiny cars with tiny diesel engines which had emissions <= 99grams CO2 / km.
Now it's NOx all around. In fact, The Netherlands has limited daytime speeds on highways to 100km/h vs 120/130km/h just for this purpose.
Maybe I have a naive view of the law, but when you read a report that says your chemicals are poisoning people, and you choose to dump it in public waterways, you’re guilty of a crime personally.
"Street parking is always allowed"
"Not always! Three years ago there was a marathon that went through this street and you weren't allowed to park here that morning."
This exception is so specific and obscure that it "proves" (in a casual conversational sense) that "you can always park here" is a good rule. Not all exceptions prove the rule: if the exception is "except on weekends and holidays and overnight", that's so significant and obvious that it actually disproves the rule.
-Legit cases that describe (or at least ultimately lead to finding) clear and meaningful wrongdoing. There's always some room for arguing one way or the other but ultimately there's some clarity that something meaningfully wrong happened. I think these are probably ~3-5 percent of cases filed. These cases tend to settle relatively early for high dollar figures.
-Cases of clear but unimportant wrongdoing. Technically a statute was violated, but no one was really hurt at all. These tend to settle for small $ figures. Perhaps 20% of cases.
-Important but unclear wrongdoing (evidence supports either finding; among one million documents, some look really bad, while others look very exculpatory). These stick around for a long time and ultimately earn lawyers a lot but cost the parties, on average, a lot of money to litigate. Perhaps 30% of cases.
-Complete/fabricated nonsense and/or fishing expeditions. Cost defendants a fair amount (and brutal for small defendants), but not the end of the world for big defendants. Perhaps 50% of cases.
I do doubt FedEx would be in any way involved in the details of selling leased vehicles. I can say with a high degree of confidence there never was a meeting with FedEx execs where they pitched the idea of increasing residuals by swapping odometers...
> I, ______________________ (SELLER’S NAME, PRINT) state that the odometer now reads ______________________ miles (NO TENTHS) and to the best of my knowledge that it reflects the actual mileage of the vehicle described below, unless one of the following statements is checked.
The seller is only strongly asserting what the odometer reads. If the seller doesn't know anything about that vehicle, then "to the best of [their] knowledge", that reflects the actual mileage.
Also to clarify, none of this is sworn, or "under penalty of perjury"
Do you think the rules that apply to patent litigators and class action litigators are different than the rules that apply to other litigators? I really don't understand what you seem to think is going on here, it's a bit naive imo (all the lawyers that I don't like are the bad ones and they lie!)
and I didn't even make it to your next part of your post, where you think that business executives are the honest ones! They aren't. They don't have their own personal license and livelihoods at risk most of the time, unlike attorneys.
I went to law school and am married to someone who works in litigation at a top 10 law firm, I understand very well how the legal process works both technically and in economic/strategic terms.
This is, as I recall, literally the origin of the term?
This line of argument only works if the majority of a company is exposed to illegal behavior.
If a large company can commit (or attempt to commit) illegal behavior, while making that behavior only visible to a small fraction of people, then this argument falls apart.
For example, how many people were involved and aware of the VW emissions scandal? 200? 400? Out if 200,000 worldwide employees. So >99% of VW employees would have likely reported not having observed illegal behavior. That does not mean that those employees “lucked out” into working for an ethical legally-compliant company. It means the company is smart enough to hide its unethical and disreputable behavior from its employees as much as possible.
It would've taken just one case of a mismatch between the digital and physical odometer without it being mentioned for a huge stink to be thrown up. And it'd also be the auction house's name on the block, because they should check these things themselves. If this is as widespread as they claim it to be, then even the occasional spot checks would show it.
Reporting can literally be done by an "administrative assistant". You could have an administrative assistant for 50 ICs and it won't make a difference. There is no need for layers.
Career management only exists because there are so many layers in the ladder. If there were only 2 levels, and then VP, there would be no need for career management. There is no need for layers for the actual work to get done.
Performance management is another load of crap because it is something that should only be required for determination of rewards or to completely fire people. But this job doesn't need layers and layers of management.
If you want to see the structure top down, the CEO should have VPs who allocate money to teams. The teams should have pieces of ownership that they are supposed to run and maintain. A team lead/captain can run the team.
But that's it. What is the need for kingdoms of apes that don't really do much except pushing work downwards?
It was commonly mis-used to mean “eh that just a minor exception that you should ignore.” But it’s been mis-used so much that now it has both meaning.
A project to cut an ongoing vendors costs is about the only way for a large cap procurement specialist to meet and exceed targets with no possibility of additional valid free market bids. That opens them right up to questions of liability, with managers knowing or avoiding knowledge, workarounds, special advice to other divisions, etc.
You don't have to go to jail to lose a lawsuit.. I worked for a company that put together a whole system for reporting these kinds of ethics irregularities in the companies favor. I don't think that was a charity, they act as a defense or at least lower punitive damages a judge is likely to award when violations still occur.
Underlying U.S. and EU emission standards
The Volkswagen and Audi cars identified as violators had been certified to meet either the US EPA Tier 2 / Bin 5 emissions standard or the California LEV-II ULEV standard. Either standard requires that nitrogen oxide emissions not exceed 0.043 grams per kilometre (0.07 g/mi) for engines at full useful life which is defined as either 190,000 kilometres (120,000 mi) or 240,000 kilometres (150,000 mi) depending on the vehicle and optional certification choices.
This standard for nitrogen oxide emissions is among the most stringent in the world. For comparison, the contemporary European standards known as Euro 5 (2008 "EU5 compliant", 2009[5]–2014 models) and Euro 6 (2015 models) only limit nitrogen oxide emissions to 0.18 grams per kilometre (0.29 g/mi) and 0.08 grams per kilometre (0.13 g/mi) respectively. Defeat devices are forbidden in the EU. The use of a defeat device is subject to a penalty.
While the some book keepers will care, in its grand scheme of operations that amount is negligible to the point where it may cost them more in man power than what they recoup from doing so.
Thou shalt not kill, except all the times thou shalt.
But a private vehicle fleet may use private mechanics, who probably do not report information like that (there's no financial incentive to do so, and there's probably no mechanism to make it easy).
I might be able to tell that this Dodge Dart has had the frame straightened twice and the engine doesn't match the VIN number. But a private fleet vehicle is probably a black box.
There are tens of thousands of companies in the US. The vast majority of them aren’t run by horrible people.
My memory is this came from Cicero and was about a place excluding women by rule, as they pointed to the exception of a woman that was allowed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule seems to support both interpretations, and at least shows I got the speaker right. Not seeing that my specifics are good, though. I would not be shocked to know that I am wrong there.
Say the lawsuit is originally against just Holman Fleet Leasing and FedEx is the one legally liable (Maybe FedEx is the one that is doing something naughty. Maybe there's some contractual language around Fedex assuming all legal liabilities for the vehicles sold.). You're going to spend a bunch of time in court arguing with Holman about if they're even the right party to sue, and your case is either going to get thrown out or you're going to lose. Meanwhile, the statute of limitations is still ticking, so if it takes a long enough time to adjudicate the case against Holman, you won't even be able to refile the same case with the correct respondent. Oops. but if the statute of limitations miraculously hasn't run out yet, that's not even considering the possibility that the kind of person who would roll back an odometer would also have a punishingly short document retention policy, so all the documents that still existed at the time you filed against Holman have long since been shredded and destroyed, so your discovery in the new case against Fedex is going to be a single email saying "yeah, we don't have anything going back that far. Oops again.
Now consider the lawsuit filed initially against both Holman and Fedex. Assuming your list of respondents is complete, the case isn't going to get thrown out because you sued the wrong person. Liability will still be adjudicated (and the case amended to drop respondents as the proper liability holder gets determined), but now you don't need to worry about the statute of limitations running out as you wait for the determination of liability against the first respondent. And the document retention clock starts with that lawsuit and covers the time where you're just determining who hold liability, so now they can't delete those documents even if they other wise would be. Both of them are now going to be legally required to retain all the stuff you list in discovery for the duration of at least their involvement in the case. Sure, they could destroy those records anyway, but that sort of thing is regularly used to infer guilt of the respondent with the worst possible inferences when it's destroyed in violation of discovery.
This narrative is "middle-middle management lies, cheats, and steals at every turn and sometimes on other people's turns too".
And while we might question that narrative about execs, we know that it is unfailingly true of middle management. It's not unexpected, that's what happens when perverse incentive is piled on top of perverse incentive. Someone was racing for a bonus. And discovery's going to show that there was some absurd uptick in how many OEM odometers for this model were ordered in the problem years, far in excess of anything that had happened previously.
I've learned over time, it doesn't matter how righteous your defense is - all that matters is the money it'll cost to make the issue go away. Turns out, it's almost always cheaper to write a check than defend yourself.
seems the former, so you can see why the public is unimpressed
Corporate America unfortunately does not worry about jail time. Instead fines are primarily paid from shareholder cash.
I wish jailtime was an impediment. It's not
A company the size of FedEx has accountants and actuaries watching leases of this scale like hawks. It's simply not believable that Fedex never "noticed." And if they noticed they were getting much better than normal resale values but didn't ask why, that's very much the definition of complicity.
Shoveling around money and work is only a small piece of the job.
A good line manager does things like help resolve interpersonal and inter-team issues, helps address the issues causing underperforming team members to underperform so that they can improve instead of be fired, handles firings and layoffs when necessary but only as a last resort, makes sure team member career goals and skills get considered as opportunities arise, shares concerns and updates both up and down the chain, advocates upwards for necessary staffing and worthwhile raises, oversees hiring for the team in collaboration with the recruiter and tech lead, explains downward for applicable constraints and works with the tech lead how to apply them to the tasks at hand, and so on.
These have all been my goals in my line manager jobs. Notice I said nothing about technical matters or project management or driving execution. That’s tech lead stuff, with some oversight from the manager to make sure business needs are met.
People need management just like computers systems do, but the skill set is totally separate. Computers always do what they’re told, even if software bugs sometimes mean you didn’t tell them you think you told them. People have feelings and needs. Very different.
For a team of more than a few members, management is a full-time nontechnical job. For a 2-4 member team, yeah it can be split.
A good middle manager does the same kind of thing as I said a good line manager does, but managing managers and their teams/orgs instead of individuals.
A bad middle manager does what you think a manager does, and/or several other failure modes.
If you are a representative of a company that has written records indicating that an odometer was replaced (there is no possible way that fedex doesn’t keep maintenance records), I would argue that “the best of your knowledge” means accessing all those records and ascertaining that the odometer reading is true.
It’s not penalty of perjury, it’s penalty of federal law. Lying there is breaking a federal law specifically written to prevent this sort of odometer fraud.