The places where I've seen the worst middle managers are:
* VP hires a middle manager who's a bad fit, but VP doesn't want to admit it
* A manager is promoted into a higher role primarily as a retention mechanism, rather than because a true business need exists
* A manager is promoted into a higher role in an organization that rewards following processes over getting results
* A middle-management layer used to be necessary, and has grown less necessary, but the org is reluctant to do away with it
* There is a perceived need for the middle manager to prove themselves fast and hard both upward and downward, and there's an inherent conflict in how to do that
None of these necessarily reflect the skills of the middle manager; rather, they represent organizational problems.
I don't know if I'd be able to characterize the places I've had bad managers at by the existence of them, but some common elements among those bad managers are that they're anxious, passive, stressed out people who go from IC to Director, but can't then stay out of the kitchen, and aren't great communicators.
The best manager I've ever had engaged me on a technical level and asked for my help outside of my immediate responsibilities just frequently enough, had been through the same shit code I now had to deal with and left me to it, and was forthcoming, transparent, and collaborative during 1:1s.
The worst manager I've ever had tried to repeatedly trick me into admitting fault regarding some inane pet issue they were clearly stewing on, failed to identify any kind of clear success criteria for any given task, and possibly just put me on mute during 1:1s.
"Failing upwards" - I thought it was like the tooth fairy, santa or the boogey man that they tell kids to scare them.
Then I went to work on a high performing team in a high performing organisation and discovered that even in that environment there were people promoted to get them away from stuff they were a) terrible at and b) had made a total mess of.
* VP hires a middle manager who's a bad fit, but VP doesn't want to admit it
* A manager is promoted into a higher role primarily as a retention mechanism, rather than because a true business need exists
* A manager is promoted into a higher role in an organization that rewards following processes over getting results
* A middle-management layer used to be necessary, and has grown less necessary, but the org is reluctant to do away with it
* There is a perceived need for the middle manager to prove themselves fast and hard both upward and downward, and there's an inherent conflict in how to do that
None of these necessarily reflect the skills of the middle manager; rather, they represent organizational problems.