should I accept a job without a manager in place?

A reader writes:

I have been interviewing exclusively with one company, and they finally offered me a sales position. On paper, everything looks fine, compensation, territory, requirements, responsibilities, etc. The negative is there is no Sales Manager in place. They are being very selective in hiring for that position so I don't know who my manager would be. 

I've decided to turn the job down for fear of the unknown. What happens if my manager's style is different than mine? What if his/her expectations are different? What happens if we don't get along? The questions and concerns kept building.

I don't know if I made the right decision. I'm happy with my current manager but don't love the product I'm selling. I'm not looking at any other jobs. I have had bad managers in the past so I'm worried about that repeating. Once I let the company know of my decision not to accept, they told me, "You don't get to pick your manager" and "the world is evolving and changing where people come and go -- there are no guarantees anywhere." Who's right here? Should I have done/do anything differently? 

I'd argue that the manager should be a huge factor in evaluating any job offer, right up there with compensation and the type of work. The old saying "people don't leave jobs, they leave managers" is true; your manager will be an enormous factor in your quality of life and can make you either miserable or thrilled to come to work every day.

Now, of course there's an obvious difference: You could be excited about the manager and accept the job, and then the manager could quit a month later, which is what this company was pointing out. That's always a risk, and there's no way around that -- but what bodes badly in your situation is that the company is deriding your concern. And that's a red flag.

When you're interviewing for a job where the manager hasn't been hired yet, the best thing you can do is to get a really solid sense of how the company expects their managers to approach management. I would address it head-on -- for instance: "Normally I'd be paying quite a bit of attention to the manager for this position, her style and approach, and making sure that we're a good match. Since there's no manager in place yet, I hope I can instead talk with you about what the company seeks and values in a manager."  You want to know what the employer's management philosophy is, what other managers in the company are like, and what they look for when hiring a manager. You want to know whether the company wants all its managers aligned on things like expectation-setting and performance management, or whether each manager run things differently. You want to hear about times in the past when a manager hasn't worked out and why. 

And throughout this conversation, you are listening for thoughtfulness -- has the company even thought about these issues or are they winging it? If they haven't thought much about this stuff, you have little reason to assume that their hiring process will lead to a great manager. 

If an employer doesn't seem to understand why you're asking these questions, or why this would be a concern for you, that's a huge sign that this is an employer that doesn't appreciate the value of good management. 

In this particular case, the company who you turned down falls in that category. When they told you "you don't get to pick your manager," they were displaying a fundamental disregard for the impact of management and why an employee would care about that management.

Plus, they're also wrong: People pick their managers all the time -- by leaving them.