Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. This week we wanted to share an episode from our archives.

That's one of our most popular episodes, perhaps because it talks about a problem that many of us have had.

It's called Why Are There So Many Bad Bosses? I hope you enjoy it.

And if by chance you have already listened to this episode,

do stick around to the end for a career update from this person.

My name's Katie Johnson, and I'm a data scientist.

Johnson is 33 years old and lives in England.

She grew up near Bristol, went to university in Birmingham, and held a series of increasingly impressive jobs at a series of companies.

These were all what are known as IC jobs.

I see standing for individual contributor, which means what?

It is someone who makes, as opposed to managing people who make.

Johnson loved being an icy.

She loved analyzing data, and she was really good at her job.

But after a while, she thought it might be nice to become a boss.

Yeah, I wanted to manage more and more people.

And you wanted to manage more people because why?

You were just power hungry like the rest of us? I think there's a couple of reasons. So the first

is that I wanted to start getting more autonomy over what I was working on. I would be working

on stuff in my IC role and I think this isn't the most important thing. And I thought that

if I became the leader of the team, then I would get to pick what I worked on. Okay, that seems

sensible. The other reason was to have more impact at the companies I was working at. So you could

describe this as having a seat at the table. Also sensible. I guess the final reason is that

...