I ended up in a managerial position at my company somewhat against my wishes due to various circumstances and I don't know how to reconcile this with my leftist beliefs. I do what I can to give my team raises whenever possible, and encourage everyone to take as much time off as possible, but I can't help but feel like a traitor to the cause. I have a mortgage and a kid on the way so leaving this job isn't really an option, but how else can I be a ally to the worker movement?
leaving this job isn’t really an option
If that's true, it's a big problem. Since you're presumably making ok money, you need to adjust your finances and save up enough that quitting is an option. At that point, you will be less motivated by fear and can start saying 'no' to your own bosses more often. At that point you can serve as a good buffer for your team.
Don't protect the company interest vs. workers and I don't really see a downside on a personal level. The evil of being a manager is that it typically means you're expected to help the owners seek profits by keeping wages low, getting more production per investment, helping break labor organizing, yada yada yada. But there's enough corporate bullshit out there that you might be able to avoid all of this for ages. The likeliest situation to put you in a predicament will be decisions above your head to fire / lay off. That's the point at which you might feel better about yourself if you stick your neck out to fight for your coworkers.
What matters isn't your label, just your relation to production and how you treat your fellow workers.
You are still a worker, being a manager doesn't make you a class traitor automatically. I'd rather have class conscious manager than otherwise.
Do everything you can to make the job easier for the people you manage and always be on their side and etc which is what you say you are doing.
Agitate for unionisation and/or raise class conciousness.
Launder your guilt by initiating or joining mutual aid/commies in your area.
A manager is the filter between workers and the capitalists. Your job is to make sure the shit falling down stops with you. Do not let the workers come into contact with the elder gods upstairs.
Also, if you can, encourage leftists and union talk, or at least turn a blind eye.
If you don't have hiring/firing privileges, you can generally join a union still. If you do, many unions have associate groups for those who are sympathetic but don't meet the criteria for being a worker. For instance, the IWW has it's General Defence Committee as a way of allowing active support while air gapping managers from organisers.
I've had one boss who was basically a coworker. He looked out for his team (us), kept on some people that any "competent" manager would have fired as dead weight because he didn't want them going without a paycheck, and would give us inside information on whenever any kind of layoffs or fires were coming up (along with letting us know how he'd kept us off the cutting block). He would "reject" PTO requests from people who were sick and then tell them to take the time off, just off the books so it didn't cut into their vacations or whatever.
That dude was great, just be like that. With the exception of the HR aspects (handling promotions and staffing issues), managers would still be necessary in even the most utopian visions of society.
Everyone else has already given good answers, as someone in tech with a pretty based manager I'd recommend occasionally dropping a couple leftists dog whistles to give your workers a heads up that you're with them and got their back. Or outright tell them that your job is to shield them from the shit at the top and not to snitch on them to the people with firing powers. Or both honestly.
But this is the same "servant leadership" advise that capital gives managers. How is the worker supposed to know which is solidarity and which is capitalist bullshit?
Usually if you back it up with your actions, and also accompany it with jokes about the bourgeoisie (incl. wishing violence on them) or anticapitalist and labor history anecdotes, like the battle of Blair mountain or making disparaging remarks about Amazon trying to reinvent company towns or whatever, it helps to differentiate.
I am sure you know all the memes and I'm definitely not going to pretend I know how to do your job so I'll just say don't commit the obvious sins like relying on crunch, wasting time with useless meetings, don't make false/over ambitions promises and you'll be better 70 or 80% of the corporate IT culture out there.
Save and invest wisely so that you can quit and focus on other things.
I've had the same issues, as I may be getting hired for a type of management position.
the way i rationalize it is similar to what others are saying here: protect your workers, give them autonomy, sneak in some leftist shit, and otherwise try to make things easier/less difficult.
