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Ask Slashdot: What Is Your Horrible IT Boss Story?

snydeq writes: Good-bye, programming peers; hello, power to abuse at your whim, writes Bob Lewis in a send-up of an all-too-familiar situation: The engineering colleague who transforms into a greasy political manipulator upon promotion into management. "It's legendary: A CIO promotes his best developer into a management role, losing an excellent programmer and gaining a bad manager. The art of management isn't so much about assembling a dream team, helping others be successful, or solving technical problems. It's about aligning everything you do in service of the business -- the business of yourself.'" What tales do you have of colleagues who broke bad all the way to the top?

7 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. "I just had a great idea - " by sheramil · · Score: 4, Funny
    "... if we copy all the files from the windows 98 install disc.. AND the windows NT install disc.. onto the same machine.. then we can boot into Win98 OR NT! Pretty neat, huh? Can you make that happen?"

    "er... not.. as.. such."

    To be fair, he wasn't an IT manager; he was a wannabe biker who'd gotten the drinking and coming in late part down perfect. But he was in charge. Glad I don't work there any more.

  2. Re:Too smart for his own good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We have whiners like you where I work, too. Usually we just wind up subbing the project out to India and it gets done quickly and cheaply even with a revision or three we wind up ahead.

  3. Horror Story by puddingebola · · Score: 5, Funny

    My boss (CIO) promotes me from his favorite developer to management, of which, admittedly I know nothing. After a few months he calls me into his office, wants to discuss my management style. He feels I'm not being assertive enough. Throws a knife down on the desk says, "Now, I want you to stab me." I say what. He says, "Stab me, go on, fucking stab me." I tell him I'm not stabbing me. He comes around the desk and tells me if I don't stab him, he's going to stab me. Then he gets up in my face and starts screaming for him to stab him. Finally, I snap and pick up the knife and try and stab him. He breaks my arm in two places and breaks two of my ribs. Then he claims in court that I attacked him with a knife. Well, I can tell you, I won't work in management ever again.

  4. documentary by Bruzer · · Score: 5, Funny

    I watched a documentary about a guy who was slacking off at work (not showing up for work actually) and when the performance consultants interviewed him he actually got promoted to manager while they laid off a few of his friends or peers! Some other stuff happened in the documentary but I am pretty sure that was the relevant part.

    --
    "Tempt not a desperate man" - Willy S.
    1. Re:documentary by tsstahl · · Score: 5, Funny

      You should tell your story with more flair. It would really make the atmosphere around here more fun.

  5. Re:Not a direct boss... but an egomanic though by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Funny

    I live in an at-will state, where people can be fired for anything.

    The ironic thing, from what I was told by someone still working there, a month after I got the boot, some skulker went from office to office and "liberated" a number of laptops, with nobody challenging the person because of what happened to me.

    "Someone." So, I assume you got good money for those laptops :-)

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  6. Re:Oh, Lord, do I have a tale. . . by Salgak1 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh, and for the record ? 52 days, 4 hours. . ..