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How to Survive a Bad Boss
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."
The article seems to imply that most bosses don't change, yet it's suggesting workers to change job.
I believe a common scenario is some people have bad boss, and they just live with it and see who retires first.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
A main problem I have seen with hiring from within is that many people who are VERY good at their jobs and have a lot of skills have no management skills.
Like it or not you can be the best (fill in the blank: engineer, developer etc) and still be an awful manager...
On a related note, in one of my first jobs, I was yelled at for not stapling reports with the staple at a 45 degree angle to the side of the sheets.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
It's all very well saying "focus on the work", but the whole problem with bad bosses is they won't let you do that, whether it's by micromanaging you, constantly interrupting you, forcing you to change technical decisions, or just plain giving you the wrong work to do. I'd rather have a boss call me names every lunch break than a boss who seems friendly but fucks things up when I'm trying to work.
My father used to be a Dale Carnegie Course 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.
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
Sure you're not confusing "mailmen" with "Klingons?"
I think the best way to survive a bad boss is to get a new job. Life seems too short to spend it under the thumb of an incompetent ruler - that is, assuming you care about getting stuff done and being productive.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Just don't go to work. That's what I did when I had a bad boss. He was so bad I went about a year turning up only once in a while when I felt like it. Eventually I left and did something else - I don't think he ever found out. He was well on the road to a caffine + stress induced heart attack so it was probably best that I just kept out the way.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Just last week I was diagnosed with two partially-healed ulcers. A stomach problem over the holidays (read: bleeding) prompted me to go to the doctor. I'd been putting it off for 2 years after parting ways with a particularly nasty job that had an overabundance of office politics. My working life since then has been peaches and cream compared to what it was back then. I now have the best job I've ever had. Yet I still have two ulcers that have not yet healed themselves.
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.
Some quicklime and a construction dumpster... or perhaps a elevator thats in need of fixing... or a air tight tape safe...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
But are you planning to use poison, a cold weapon, a firearm, or an explosive device?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
...in my experience, I've only ever had trouble with bosses in large companies. Be it absentee bosses who would rather leave you to your own devices without any sort of direction, or micromanagers who prefer to "drop-by" 20 times a day.
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. I've worked for a number of small companies, and have been fortunate that each of them has been a wonderful experience, and the people I worked with have all been team-focused and aware that if a team isn't working well together, that's going to be a great hinderance to the success of the business.
On the other hand, there's always a feeling of inertia around large companies. That your co-workers are just the people you run into at work and shouldn't be anything else. A bad boss can get away with how they are because they only worry about how their superiors see them, and then could always fire you on a whim if they wanted should they feel threatened.
This is not a sig.
The problem with "bosses" is they come from the same base as everyone else. My experience has been and continues to be, for any discipline, less than 5% or so of players in that discipline truly know how and what they're doing.
That leaves the temperament and maturity of a "boss" as the essence with which you must deal. I had always been pretty lucky with managers and had good working relations with all but the last -- who turned out to be a little Nazi... He cared more about his image, and less about the work his team produced. He cultivated an "always busy" look for his group, but they produced far less with far less quality than other groups around us.
I constantly took him and the team to task for their hubris, and faux work facade, and became unpopular with Mr. Boss.
I rolled the dice at a bad time, it was at the same time IT decided to lay off 20% of the work force, and I had curried no favors to better my chances with this goonie. I don't know had I been a kiss-ass with him I would have fared better, but I was part of the 20% (after a illustrious 21 years with this company) let go.
Bottom line: in today's world, there isn't much you can do if you want to stand on priniciple -- unless you're lucky enough to have landed a great boss who knows what he or she is doing -- there aren't many of them. It's a shame and a crime when the truth, as stated in the article, is:
It's probably one reason so many things are fucked today -- it's probably one of the reasons things like DRM even manages to get any traction -- it's probably why half the decisions being made are done so because of money under the table.Here is my story: Ask Slashdot article
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
That's right, I said it.
Technically, I'm gifted. I can analyse a situation and come up with a solution almost immediately, often without a full grasp of how I arrived at the answer. That is where the problem lies. I don't have the patience to explain things to people, and I get frustrated when they don't "get it" as quickly as I do.
I don't want to be the boss, but my bosses keep trying to put people under me. Just let me work, pay me, and I'll make sure your network is safe and secure, and runs 24/7. Just don't give me direct reports. It just makes them miserable, and me a nervous wreck. Don't blame me when they quit six months from now because I'm a bad boss, because I told you up front that I was.
Quit trying to promote me. I know you want to retain me, but why not just remove the arbitrary salary caps per job classification and give me the salary I deserve without having to tie it to "management". Keeping the auditors happy is justification enough for the 10% raise you gave me this year. Sarbanes Oxley and GBLA is a bitch, and I manage the IT side of it for you. You've never once had a bad audit. Isn't that alone worth paying me what it takes to keep me without saddling me with arbitrating personality conflicts, managing vacation schedules, keeping track of overtime, and all the other petty bullshit that goes along with having "underlings"?
Don't you get it?
Thats how a top-down organization works by
s iness1.php
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
No matter how big, or bad the boss is, there's invariably some weakness you can exploit, and some way you can defeat them and move on. Maybe you should talk with other people in the area, to see if they can give you any helpful advice. Maybe your strategy for dealing with the boss is suboptimal: If a boss tends to concentrate on what's right in front of him, maybe you should go behind his back, and generally avoid him, or at least keep your head down and don't get noticed. Or you could watch for patterns in what he does, and take advantage of that. Don't confront a boss unprepared; make sure you've got the things you'll need when dealing with him, and if possible, some extra lives. And if there's just absolutely no other option, you can check a walkthrough.
Remember that you're smarter than he is, and that only by persevering can you defeat all the bosses and rescue the princess, or whatever. But if you quit playing, then he's won.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Yes, of course, because we're all foot-lose and fancy-free, we all work because if we didn't we'd all just sleep all day, and jobs just come along! But seriously, for the vast majority of people out there, this is not really a realistic option. Usually, personal situations like family with children prevent it, but there could be many other things. Economically, most people today live a few paychecks away from living on the street, and might as well be indentured servants. This is why it simply is not uncommon for people in our society to snap and kill a few people on the way out the door. Bad bosses should not be the problem of the worked bee; it should be management's problem, that's why the "professionals" in Human Resources make the big bucks, right?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Corporations aren't democratic because they're plutocratic republics. Shareholders get different levels of voting power based on how much they own of the company and elect a board to represent them and manage the company. You can't have a democracy when one-man-one-vote is not in effect.
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.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
When people quit a company, I think that in about 80% of the cases people leave their boss. In how far the boss is a product of the company remains open to question.
But seriously, for the vast majority of people out there, this is not really a realistic option.
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.
Sure, we could "afford" the huge house, BMW, boat, hot tub, vacation property... but I'd much rather have my freedom (besides, we're saving up to get those things). Should the time ever arise, I could tell my work to shove it and not even have to think twice about it. My wife could do the same thing on the same day and not even have to think twice about it. Absolute worst case, welfare would more then cover all of our day-to-day costs (thanks to no house payment, no debts).
And we are nothing special. We are not from old money (though we both have 4 year degrees and good paying jobs), we've earned all of this ourselves. We simply realize that "It's only $5 for a Starbucks" can quickly add up to THOUSANDS of dollars a year (hell, just ask Starbucks! There's a reason they can afford to put one on every corner...). We feel that sort of discretionary income is best applied to home loans or car loans or savings accounts. Course, you could say "But you need to LIVE!" and we do! We've been on 4 overseas, and 3 domestic vacations in the last year. How!? No house payment, my friend. No car payment, just the credit card (which is mostly extraneous bullshit that could be dropped in hard times) and home owners-related bills.
For the love of [insert deity of preference here]... you spend at least 1/3 of every week day in your job. If you hate it, then the second you wake up, you are loathing having to go into that place again. When you get home, you are loathing that you have to go into that place again tomorrow. Come Friday afternoon, you are loathing that you have to go into that place again come Monday.
Gee-whiz... do you think that affects the rest of your life in any measurable way? Does the fact that your driving your new BMW to that place make it more palatable? Does your huge house with the huge screen TV make it easier to commence with the daily loathing in the mornings/afternoons/weekends? We'll get all of those things in due time, and when we have them, they will not be trapping us into a life filled with many material things and nothing much else. We will own them, they will not own us!
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!