How to Survive a Bad Boss 148
Lam1969 writes "Computerworld has a three-page spread on how to deal with bad bosses. A common type is "the overgrown technologist who gets rewarded for brilliant technical work by being promoted to a position for which he's not qualified." Another type reported by a reader is the boss who's in over their head. The article says some bosses can be "fixed," but at other times it's better to hunker down or cover your ass so the bad boss can find other targets."
Re:In Summary (Score:4, Interesting)
The article seems to focus on the "overgrown technologist", seems he's the kind of boss that will go away in 6 months to a year and be happier for it; a better article would be how to deal with an abusive boss that upper management likes. They are often blind to the negative impact a boss like this can have on an organization.
Getting promoted to your incompetence level (Score:5, Interesting)
My father used to be a Dale Carnegie Course [amazon.com] instructor and always talks about workers getting promoted to their level of incompetence. The basic theory in a huge unchecked corporate environment is that when a worker starts doing their job too well they get promoted as a reward for their hard work. When they learn their new job and start doing that job too well they get promoted again. Eventually they get promoted to just above their incompetence level and spend the rest of their lives floundering as a middle manager getting made fun of by their subordinates.
Re:In Summary (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely true. I left a company that I worked for after six years because the new boss insisted on doing things his way or everyone can take the highway. (Not that his way was any better than the normal way.) Upper management loved him since he got the numbers in no matter how many people he stepped on in the process. I was the third person out of a dozen senior staff members who left during the first year of the new boss. You would think that losing that much talent would forced upper management to reconsider. They did. The new boss became the new director. Go figure.
Re:The answer is simple (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad bosses cause bad working environments. You do not want to be around either. Move up or move out. It's that simple. The job market is better than you think.
Amen to that. Another thing to consider though is if you're putting in 60-80 hours a week at a job that you hate, quitting and taking a new job may provide you with quite a bit of free time that you probably never knew you had as well.
Top-down vs. bottom-up (Score:5, Interesting)
promoting people to there highest level of incompetents !
As long as they do a good job they get promoted
and then they get stock in a position where they don't do well.
The way to solve this is to use a bottom-up organization and make every employee
stock holders.
In at bottom-up organization the project group chose there own project manager.
The project manager chose a department manager and etc. to the top.
But every member can challenges his manager for his position,
and then the group vote between the 2 candidates.
It is all described in detail on
http://www.thenewagesite.com/jjdewey/molecular/bu
Re:RE Bad Boss (Score:4, Interesting)
I told him that if he really wanted me to, I'd do it, and do my best at it, but that it would most likely be a "disaster of biblical proportions". Yes, I actually used that exact phrase. I told him that I'm well aware of my limitations, and that it would be a good idea for someone else to take the position. Luckily for me and for him, he listened to me then.
Re:Work for small companies... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no boss worse than the boss's kid, if s/he hasn't been brought up through the ranks properly. I've experienced this (straight to V.P. 6 months after finishing college), and it's by far been the worst boss to work for. The company owner was an amazing boss, but his children just didn't seem to have a hot clue about anything. You can't just plop someone in a desk with the attitude of "I'll own this someday, so everyone should listen to me".
I was in this particular situation just as we were doing our Y2K upgrades. It got compounded by the fact that the kid thought he was an IT guru because he knew how to burn a CD.
Personally, I'd take government work over working in another family owned business. And that's saying a LOT, as anyone who's worked for the government will attest.
Re:This is my story (Score:1, Interesting)
tell me again why i shouldn't remove my sys admin's access after he says he's leaving?
Re:I Am A Horrible Boss (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Work for small companies... (Score:5, Interesting)
Generally at small companies you can be on much better terms with everyone, be friendly with everyone you work with and you can resolve issues instead of ignoring them or hiding from them like this article suggests.
Keep in mind, though, that this is only true if your boss is a reasonably rational person. Small companies are owned and dominated by entrepreneurs, who are often eccentric enough that true nutjobs can fairly easily hide within their ranks. I've worked for some doozies.
Lessee, I worked for one guy who never worried about the flaws in his business plan (which, granted, were not obvious to the casual observer) because he'd had a vision from God that told him his company must succeed because he was doing God's work. He was smart enough to keep his mouth shut about this claim, but when one of my coworkers found some papers describing his vision, many things made a great deal more sense to us. I wonder if God also told him to buy his daughter a new car with the month's payroll budget (all of it!)...
Another guy I worked for suckered a normally shrewd businessman (David Neeleman, CEO and founder of Jet Blue) into starting an Internet business back in the mid 90's. Each of them put up $500K... but after a few months Neeleman realized that his supposed partner was penniless, and he had blown most of Neeleman's $500K on extremely expensive hardware. Not only did the nutjob (and he was CRAZY) extort some more cash out of Neeleman to make him go away... shortly afterward the office building BURNED TO THE GROUND, with all of that expensive hardware inside -- except that investigators could find no remains of the hardware. Everyone knew what must have happened, but there was no proof. I personally looked through the remains of my office and found what was obviously the case of the ~$2K PC, but no remnants at all of the ~$15K SGI workstation that had been sitting right next to it.
I had another boss who was basically a good guy, but was just unable to handle the stress when his business didn't go well. Since he'd put everything he had into it, he got very, very stressed out when it looked like it was going to fail, and he took it out on everyone who wasn't working more than he was (and he was only sleeping like four hours per night).
I've also worked for some really great small-company bosses. My experience with small companies is that, on average, they're no better and no worse than big companies. But the standard deviation is much, much larger.
Re:The answer is simple (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If democracy is so great .... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with corporate cronyism is that a large number of boards are made up of the largest investors or are close friends with the largest investors. Thus, the elite voters are close to the people being elected. This has trended towards a pattern of corruption in every single social group that has allowed elite voting rights.
If you want to investigate a democratic model of company management, look into syndicalism. Of course, nothing's perfect and syndicalism has a lot of flaws such as a lack of strong profit motive to keep the company alive and management being based on popularity and charisma instead of capability. (A truly meritocratic model of corporate governance simply doesn't exist and cannot exist due to the impossibility of objectively determining merit.)
Then again, even in a democratically run company, I still feel that publicly traded companies cannot have a higher ethical goal in the long run since the majority of shareholders will always have profit as their primary motive. That's a topic for a different discussion, though.
Re:In Summary (Score:3, Interesting)
When I left the company, I had worked 12-hour days for 28 days straight because my boss demanded it. Never mind that the company policy say that I should only work six days a week and HR was looking the other way when I complained about the situation. That's being "stepped on" while getting the numbers.
Re:I Am A Horrible Boss (Score:3, Interesting)
It's like anything - learn it. Learn how to do it well. And stop complaining.
Tech-heads complain because people can't figure how to program a VCR. And quite rightly - it's a piece of piss. But non-techs decide in advance: "I can't do this", when all they really need to think is: "Ok, this device has been designed to make it easy to achieve common functions. Look at the buttons, interpret the symbols, keep trying untill you figure it out..."
It's the same with management, just do it. And do it well. If you're as bright as you claim, then you can be a great manager.
Most people leave their boss, not their company (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I Am A Horrible Boss (Score:2, Interesting)
People are reasonably easy to understand. Just provide them with the tools they need to do their job and a direction to follow. Then check in on them from time to time to make sure they are heading where you want them to. This is the hard part. TRUST THEM. Yes, every now and again they will stuff up, but give them space to do that and then the encouragement to have another go. Also remeber it is your job to run interference for these people. They don't need your boss on their tail. They need YOU.
As for promotion to 'management' to pay you more. If they paid you more than the cap without being in management, they devalue managers. This is something that managers don't wish to do. It would lead to people being paid based on productivity and even out the pay scales.
eg. I am a widget maker that can manufacture 1000 widgets a month. My manager is bad. With a good manager, I could manufacture 1100 widgets a month. if that manager was in charge of 20 widget makers, then the company can afford to pay that manager twice my salary minus profit margin. This would reflect badly on the bad boss. He would complain of being treated unfairly and demand twice my wage because he holds the same position as a good manager.
Now if I build a jig that allows me to double my personal production, I expect there to be no flow on to the managers income.
But since the managers are all friends with the bean counters and have duped the world into beliveing their propaganda, we will never see this. The fact they won't pay you more is just feeding their propaganda machine, without which they would not be able to drive their nice shiny new car.
It's a perfect reaction. Quit. (Score:3, Interesting)
Quote from www.QuitYourJobDay.com:
The prevailing view is that you need a job to survive and that you need the job more than the employer needs you. What most people don't know, and those who profit from your skill and effort certainly don't want you to hear, is that your employer needs you to survive as well.
Do you really think there are less jobs than there are people? Do you really think you can't quit? Right now HR has the upperhand because the workers refuse to recognize the true value they bring to the company. That's going to change.