Why Middle Managers Feel Squeezed Between Bosses and Staff

At 7 a.m. in Hanoi, 36‑year‑old Tung, head of sales at a tech firm, opens his inbox to find 17 unread messages—three urgent requests from his director and fourteen pleas from his team about staffing shortages, client cancellations and unrealistic targets.

Before he can start work, his director calls and insists the department must hit 100 % of its sales target this month, reminding Tung that last month’s results were unsatisfactory. Tung replies quietly, fearing that admitting his team’s problems would make him look incompetent.

Two months of midnight work, constant phone alerts and an employee’s resignation push Tung into insomnia and chest tightness. A hospital later diagnosed him with an anxiety disorder and prescribed medication and psychotherapy.

Dr. Nguyen Khac Dung of Dai Nam University’s Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences describes this predicament as a ‘sandwich’: middle managers are squeezed by pressure from above and demands from below. He calls it a classic case of role conflict and role overload, where managers are held accountable for results they cannot control.

Lan, a 39‑year‑old retail manager in Ho Chi Minh City, thought promotion would ease her workload. Instead, she became the ‘shock absorber’ for customer complaints, sudden sick leaves and rising regional sales targets despite staff shortages. She now keeps her phone on vibrate day and night, loses sleep, drops more than three kilograms in two months and argues with family members.

A 2024 CoderPad survey published by Forbes found that 36 % of technology workers do not want to become managers, mainly because they value work‑life balance. A 2022 Future Forum survey reported that 45 % of middle managers felt burnout—the highest rate among post‑COVID employees.

Economic volatility adds another layer of pressure. Hoang Minh Tri, CEO of a Hanoi human‑resources consultancy, says senior leaders face market and shareholder demands and pass that stress down to middle management. In March, the Ministry of Health proposed monitoring people under intense work pressure to detect early signs of mental problems.

After three weeks of treatment, Tung changed his strategy. In a weekly briefing he presented his director with detailed workload data and suggested hiring more staff and revising the sales plan, acknowledging that pretending to be super‑human would only collapse the whole team.

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