The Fine Art of 'Boss Science'

BoredStiff writes "NYMag has up an article that explores Boss Science and the minds of American corporate leaders. In the real world, bosses are known to suffer from a long list of social pathologies: naked aggression, credit hogging, micromanaging, bullying, you name it. Leadership research shows that subtle nasty moves like glaring and condescending comments, explicit moves like insults or put-downs, and even physical intimidation can be effective paths to power. Research also shows that employees tend to see the jerk as boss material. The article goes on to discuss some of the science bosses apply to making an operation run smoothly: 'A researcher reported that one law firm deconstructs its HR needs by personality traits. It insists on extremely bright employees who are also extremely insecure. 'They want them to think that working really hard matters,' he explains. Through this prism, personality types can even be mixed and matched to make a team function more efficiently.'"

Comments

Conversely

[BWJones]

Or! You can find the best talent there is, treat your employees with respect, compensate them fairly (or very well if they are particularly valuable) and work from the perspective that a place of work is a place of education where people will gather skills and hopefully work to the best of their ability. The danger of this is that they will not stay because they are hired away, but honestly if your employees are not being recruited by everyone else out there, they are not the best and brightest.

Re:Conversely

[mdkess]

I think one of the big issues with this is that becoming a manager is the only way that an employee can advance their career. So when your brilliant engineer decides that he needs more money, his or her only option is to go into management, and the company ends up losing a talented engineer and ends up with a bad manager who probably wishes they could be an engineer again, and all of a sudden doesn't like his job anymore. Also, you might have an average engineer who would be a great manager, but the system fails again in this regard because this guy won't get noticed.

Re:Conversely

[BWJones]

Sure, you can do that and sleep like a baby...

Or, you can stay far enough in front that nobody else knows or is ready for what you are doing. Admittedly this is easier in the hard core sciences (where I live). When you start making widgets or providing services, all bets are off here.

And what's more, once someone starts bending the rules, everybody *has* to do the same or be left behind to shrivel and die.

Alternatively, you could act in an honorable manner and expect, no demand that those companies who work with you/for you/supply to you also act with honesty and respect for their employees and customers.

Yes it would be nice if the world was fair. It might even be the sign that we're a civilised society. However currently the world is what it is (i.e. certainly not fair at all) and that is one of the most important lessons to be learned, bitter as it is.

This is the problem we are currently facing with big business and politics. Everybody has come to expect that our politicians and industry leaders are pathological liars with no ability or willingness to do the right thing. Is this acceptable? If we accept this, does it mean the fall of our culture/civilization? The USA is only a couple hundred years old you know...

On a side note, it might be useful to remember that the legal system doesn't have anything to do with being fair.

Funny, in civics class back in high school and college, fairness was what we were taught the legal system was all about. The establishment of rules and laws that enabled the Constitutional structure that this country was built upon.

Would you expect physics to be fair ?

Physics is what it is... A set of rules and laws that govern a reasonable set of expectations that are set in a framework of understanding. Law should be like that, but we have this little notion called free will. Humans fsck it all up, but physics itself is pure. The trick is that humans can be punished when they violate cultural laws while physicists are celebrated for violating physical laws.

Re:Conversely

[Dun Malg]

People are trained from the cradle onwards to compete against against one another, never to cooperate. That's not actually true. People are taught to cooperate for most of their formative years. Cooperate with your team, compete against the other guy's team. This is as old as the cavemen. Our tribe good, their tribe bad. It can be seen at scales from "family" to "nation". Seriously, haven't you ever met one of those creepy fucks who've been taught by their sicko parents to "win at all costs"? Full of anger and jealousy at the slightest victory by someone else? That's what someone "trained from the cradle onwards to compete" looks like.

Coincidence?

[zyl0x]

Boss Science reminds me of another acronym.. can't seem to remember it, but I'm sure it had something to do with upper management..

Re:Coincidence?

[spottedkangaroo]

Canonical abbreviation. NASA is an acronym because you pronounce it. FDA is a canonical abbreviation because you don't. Sadly, the distinction is nearly gone, but there used to be a difference, and it wasn't all that long ago.

Works for elections too!

[Hoi Polloi]

"employees tend to see the jerk as boss material."

And voters tend to see the jerk as presidential material.

What matters then?

[touch0phgmail.com]

It insists on extremely bright employees who are also extremely insecure. 'They want them to think that working really hard matters,' he explains.
Then what really does matter in the workplace?

Re:What matters then?

[node 3]

You're hired!

Re:What matters then?

[Anomolous Cowturd]

Getting shit done.

Some people can get shit done without working really hard.

Some people work really hard and never seem to get anything done.

Which would you rather employ?

Re:What matters then?

[Mab_Mass]

Or, to put it another way, the only thing that should matter to an employer is that you add more value to the company than it costs to pay you.

Emphasis here on should. Too often, people only care about how many hours you put in and think that more hours is the sign of a better employee. I personally side with an old boss of mine who thought that someone working constant overtime is a sign of a problem. Either that person's boss is piling on too many tasks or that person is in the wrong position.

Then, there was another boss I had who took the attitude that management is a service done to those "under" you, where the manager's role was to shelter them from higher level BS and help them get the job done.

I had another boss once who told us that we shouldn't be "afraid" to come in on evenings and weekends. He was an asshole.

Now, I'm rambling. -1 offtopic

Bah!

[Stanistani]

I have no patience for analysis. I use cheat codes, defeat the bosses, and win the game.

Re:WWJD?

[Jake73]

I see this all over the place. WWJD...WWJD...What Would Jake Do... Why does everyone care so much what I would do?

It depends upon the job.

[khasim]

Heros I can take working for me. They tend to work very hard, are people pleasers and can often be trusted (they make good classified materials risks).

Those aren't the heros I was referring to. I'm talking about the ones who skip steps that they know aren't needed ... and then show everyone how great they are when they fix the problems. Even though those problems would have been caught earlier or prevented if all the steps had been followed. On the other hand, heros make good firefighters (real ones, who put out real fires).

These people I *don't* want to work with. They are always sabotaging productivity in the name of something happening where they are at the center of attention.

Drama r0xx0r in advertising and entertainment and fashion and so forth. If you're doing tech, drama SUCKS!

Fine, but allow them the opportunity to see failure as a learning experience.

:D
Not when you're managing a nuclear plant. (Which is also a bad match for the heros and drama queens.)

What personality types you want on your team (if you even want a team) depends more on what the job is. If you get the right mix at the right job, you won't even need a boss. But that's extremely rare.

But I think the biggest problem with that article is that it mentions some of the different types ... but then doesn't try to look at the "jerk's" relationship with those other types. What happens when you have two narcissistics on a team? They can't BOTH be the boss. What if you have two assholes? Two jerks? THREE?

And they only really covered one type: the narcissistic who won't even stick around but hops to a new job as soon as one is available.

Now imagine working for a perfectionist jerk (do it over and get it right this time).
Or a drama queen jerk (watch "The Devil Wears Prada").
Or a hero jerk (nothing leaves his desk until it's a crisis).

One of the greats.. but still an @$$hole

[Kris_B_04]

When I began my career as a programmer, I got a job with a great, but small company. The boss had built it from nothing. He had built his life from nothing.. .and he LOVED to tell everyone about that. (We would get lecture upon lecture about it, in fact. ;) How if he could do it, anyone could do it.)

But he was a good man. He actually could separate business from personal and he was great when he wasn't in "boss mode". His company got larger and he ended up in "boss mode" more often and that was when people started thinking of him as more of an asshole.

In the beginning, before he got "older" and "comfortable".. (Millionaire maybe now?), he was sociable as well. He took care of his employees and they were happy. He had monthly picnics and ice cream socials. Took us all to baseball games and all sorts of great stuff. He even had parties in his own home! Then, we think he got greedy. (more more more money!) and he started treating his techs like monkeys. (Any monkey can do this.. why pay graduates when we can train anyone off the street and pay them dirt cheap). He started treating the rest of his employees poorly as well. He still tried to keep up the "act" but his heart wasn't in it anymore.. and his employees started noticing that..

I (and others) saw the change coming. I got out of there, but there were tears. LOL (Hey, I'm still a girl dammit). He had taken good care of me and my son, above and beyond.. but that was before... that was earlier. Yes.. I actually hugged my boss on my last day... ;)

So, in this rambling, what I'm trying to say, is that not all bosses are assholes.. and maybe it becomes a learned trait. Maybe the system and society wear them down... maybe they become that way because that is what is expected or maybe they see those who are assholes really moving up the corporate ladder. Whatever the reason, it truly has become a job description for many bosses. And the more people who see it as a means to an end, the more people will pull that out of themselves just to get where they want to go. Yes, there are a lot who were "born" as assholes and never change throughout life (with what we are seeing, what motivation IS there to change?), but it's not a steady progression. It's not all defined under one stereotype... it is my belief that society MAKES the assholes because we allow them to BE assholes.

Kris

management and pay scales

[King_TJ]

Right... I think a good bit of what really happens is, people join the ranks of "management", and then they discover that they have more control over their payscale than they ever did before. If you're an engineer for example, the best you can probably hope for is that all of your hard work and willingness to pull long hours when needed gets noticed, so you get a few extra percent when your annual raise comes around. But your pay is still pretty much fixed, based on what *management* has decided the range of pay will be for that position.

Once you're part of management, you can position yourself so your team of people beneath you accomplishes goals that you can then at least partially claim credit for, thereby giving you "easy reasons" for your own pay raise. They do the work, and you share in the reward. Furthermore, you have all these other tools at your disposal (in many cases). You get the say-so in deciding if your team should hire on additional staff, or cut back, or simply stay put with a "hiring freeze". When you dislike an employee's personality, you can make him go away. The rest of the team just has to put up with these problems, or else potentially face disciplinary measures including docking their pay! And of course, you can juggle all the numbers to put yourself in the most positive light possible, to further justify your own pay raise. (The rest of the people working beneath you probably don't even have access to those numbers, much less authority to present them to top-level execs.)

Re:management and pay scales

[xtal]

A few secrets:

- Management typically sees engineers as a means to an end, and an interchangable means at that. You pay market rate for engineering and they get the job done. Engineers do NOT make companies money - products do. If you want to make money as an engineer, you do NOT do it as an employee. You do it the way lawyers do - the retainer and contract model. Engineers are STUPID for agreeing to be employees. You sold your soul (and market power) for an easy paycheque.

- Profit comes from managing capital, NOT engineering. Managers are paid more because they manage the capital. That's what makes companies work.

I don't agree with all this, but it's based on my observtions of how the world works. If you want to make money as an engineer, look at how lawyers do it. Otherwise, you better be an entrepreneur, or willing to work the corporate management ladder.

Re:management and pay scales

[Grishnakh]

The retainer and contract model doesn't work with engineering, simply because companies don't expect to handle engineering that way, since other engineers aren't already doing that.

The contract model (without the retainer bit) does work, but only to a certain extent. Most contractors work for another company that just subcontracts them out to other companies, taking a cut of their pay. It isn't much different from an employment agency.

Independent contracting (often called "consulting"), however, is another matter. However, the problem here is that this only works if you're an expert in something, and have established yourself this way. For people fresh out of college, this obviously won't work; the only feasible way of earning money is to become someone's employee at this point. Worse, for many (most?) projects, the project is simply too big to contract out to independent contractors working at home. It could be contracted to one of those contracting companies I mentioned in the paragraph above, but as I pointed out the engineer is still someone's employee, it's just a different corporate structure.

Personally, since I hate management and the inefficiency that comes with working in a large corporation, I hope to eventually become an independent contractor. I've already signed up to do my first job on the side which I'll be starting very soon; hopefully it'll go well and within 5 years I can be doing this full-time instead of being someone else's bitch, err, employee.

BTW, one way I've found which works pretty well for getting more money in engineering is to quit! At least now, when companies are clamoring for experience engineers, (and this was even more true during the dot-com boom) they'll pay a lot more to someone new to get them to take the position, while they'll give out only meager raises to loyal employees. So by changing jobs every 3 years or so, you can increase your salary quite handsomely as long as the market rates keep increasing. The only thing to beware of is leaving too soon, since companies catch on (even though the whole matter is intellectually dishonest; if they valued their employees, why wouldn't they give them better raises than market rate?).

Re:management and pay scales

[syousef]

Management typically sees engineers as a means to an end, and an interchangable means at that. You pay market rate for engineering and they get the job done. Engineers do NOT make companies money - products do. If you want to make money as an engineer, you do NOT do it as an employee. You do it the way lawyers do - the retainer and contract model. Engineers are STUPID for agreeing to be employees. You sold your soul (and market power) for an easy paycheque.

There's a lot to be said for stability if you can find it. When you're young and times are good, contracts and retainers serve you well. When times get leaner, or there are other priorities in life, having a secure job is a much better proposition. I think it's obvious you're young and probably don't have family commitments. I think you'll change your mind if you're ever ill for a substantial period, or have a sick child, or there's a large downturn. Summarily calling engineers who take full time paid jobs stupid is at best arrogant.

Yes.

[KingSkippus]

I've worked at two jobs where I've seen the reality of bosses to this extreme of badness.

A couple of examples: At the first one, my boss used to walk up and down behind our cubes every five minutes or so to make sure we were at our desks and working. If we weren't, she would start asking our neighbors where we were, when we would be back, etc. (And we were all hard-working professionals.) She even asked me to go to the men's room once to try to track down one of my coworkers. (I refused, and fortunately, he got back to his desk before it got ugly.)

I'll never forget once in a meeting, her boss suggested a change that we make to one of the reports we generated. He wasn't ugly about it, and he wasn't complaining; he was just trying to make it a little better than it was. Right there in front of him and all of us, she said, "I've told them that they're supposed to be doing that. I don't know why, but they just won't." (Of course, this being a new change, she was flat-out lying.)

At my last job, I honestly think my boss was crazy. As in, seriously, mental problems. He would yell and scream at people who were actually trying to help him with something. I'll never forget when he pulled me into a meeting and reamed me up and down because I was doing my job--are you sitting down?--too well. He told me, "This is really great quality work, but great is the worst enemy of good. I really need you to just do what you're working on, you know, good enough, and then move on to other things."

God, how I love leaving that company. He was on vacation when I turned in my notice, and I told the Human Resources lady (who, incidentally, I had talked to on two separate occasions about his behavior with absolutely nothing done about it), "Look, I know this is bad form, and if the circumstances weren't so extreme, I wouldn't do this. But the truth of the matter is that I do not want to ever see my boss again, so I will not be working out a two-week notice. Friday will be my last day."

Fortunately, I've had a couple of very good bosses to compensate for these horrible experiences. My current boss is a gem, and you all should be so lucky to have one like him. I guess we all have our professional ups and downs, and I've had some real doozies on both sides of that spectrum.

ObSpaceballs

[sconeu]

Evil will always win because good is dumb!