Slashdot Mirror
Your Incompetent Boss Is Making You Unhappy
HnT writes A new working paper shows strong support for what many have always suspected: your boss's technical competence is the single strongest predictor of workers' well-being, way ahead of other factors such as education, earnings, job tenure and public vs. private sector. On top of other studies which have already demonstrated that happy workers are more productive workers (e.g. this 2012 paper.), it does make you wonder how long organizations can afford to continue promoting incompetent bosses in today's very dynamic and competitive business world.
You seem to have missed the point. I don't think it's a mystery that the competence of your boss contributes to your workplace happiness. The important thing relevant to this study, however, is that the competence of your boss is the single strongest predictor of workers' well-being, way ahead of other factors such as education, earnings, job tenure and public vs. private sector.
That's not a "duh", and it's a valuable piece of data that companies can use to try to retain valuable employees, a direction in which they can invest resources to avoid costly turnover and the constant expense of training new employees and/or avoid loss of productivity due to miserable employees.
This kind of thing seems to happen a lot in big companies. People that are deemed "talented" in technical jobs are "promoted" into management jobs. Other managers see this as some sort of reward for being so good at what you do. Often the technical person has risen as far as they can in terms of salary and responsibility and the only place left to go is management.
That's the conundrum. Do you stay in your current position, effectively dead-ending yourself career wise, or do you make the leap into management for greater potential riches?
The problem, as I see it, is that very few companies offer a track to senior management by sticking to the technical path. Inevitably, someone will try and steer you towards project management or some other management job. Google is a notable exception to this.
Many technical people are just not well suited to management jobs. Too many meetings, too much posturing, too many political games...too many whatever. Putting people like this in management jobs helps nobody - especially the technical person that is Ill suited for management.
So what to do?
I think that salary ranges are part of the problem. It guarantees that eventually a person will "top out" salary wise at a given job. At that point you can either go the management route or, more likely, go to a competitor that offers more money. Your hand is kind of being forced. Instead, why not continue to give this employee raises? If they have hung around long enough to get to the top pay scale and they are good at what they do then why force them to have to make that choice?
I have been a technical manager and I can say without hesitation that one great developer is worth more than 10 average ones. If I have a great developer on my team I'm going to pay them really well. If he ends up making more than me then so be it. In the end, I will look good because this rock star will carry the team. It's a win-win.
Since I was able to get off a wise ass crack joke for a first post, let me follow it up with something actually insightful for you other readers out there.
What makes a "good" or "bad" boss anyways? Well, this article is one that I've always lived by, and it explains things quite well for both us techies and for those who are not of the tech mindset and skill set.
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
Hadn't seen, read big chunks thru carefully and scanned the rest. Looks like it has potential to stand alongside the old bell labs star performers study/doc. Thank you 1e6.