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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?
I worked for someone with a pathetic leadership style. He would ask for a project estimate, and we would do a good job developing the estimate. The estimate might be for 3 months of work. He would do his own analysis, and decide it will take 2 days. So he gives us 2 days, and we are late after that. He might have the skills to do it in 2 days, but my team did not. The bigger problem is he thought he was so smart that that he understood the requirements better than we did. Well, everyone would jump through hoops trying to get it done quickly, and screw it up so bad it took twice as long as the original estimate to complete and fix. He thought this was a great motivational tool, since it had everyone working like crazy. Problem is they were being very inefficient, and wasting time and money. Not to mention that being constantly stressed out didn't help their health or promote teamwork.
Your best worker should get a raise.
Your worst worker should stay to do the dirty work.
The average worker is the one you (may) want to move into management.
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I only ever had one really horrible boss. What fun: it was my first job after college, so I didn't understand yet how to defend myself from the idiot.
He was a 55-60 year old guy who clearly believed that his best days were behind him, and he was just killing time until retirement. And he just had to talk about the good old days, the days before he became such a useless wreck. So he would call me into his cubicle and start in on a story. After a few minutes, something in his first story would remind him of a second story. And something in that second story would remind him of a third one...
I was not allowed to act bored, or say "I've really got to do X", or - god forbid - yawn. I kept myself awake by tracking his recursions. His record was seven stories deep. I give him credit for one thing: he never lost track of where he was - he always finished off every story at every level of recursion. This often took 3-4 hours. Per day. Every day.
I eventually learned to dodge him on most days, so that I could actually do my job. I got my guidance from parallel managers, but mostly learned to do my job independently of his (non-existent) supervision. This pissed him off no end, and he gave me a scathing review. Which I took to the "big boss", who asked around, found out that my situation was pretty well known, and that I actually did good work despite my boss. My idiot boss was never allowed to supervise anyone again. Sadly, he had too much seniority or political connections or whatever, so they didn't fire him. Also sad: it took me 2-1/2 years to get to this point.
I don't generally hold grudges, but in his case I do make an exception. He's long dead, but I looked up where he's buried, and if I every find myself in the area, I will piss on his grave.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I was working as a Major Incident Manager for a very large consulting company working on a huge government project. The management in the consultancy company were generally terrible, on my first day my colleagues took me out for a drink - they pointed out a bunch of people across the room and mentioned that it was the configuration management team who had all just been fired because management weren't happy with the way the process was going...just as my first example.
Another time I had someone from second line support come to my desk and point out that some of the monitoring was showing red, I immediately directed one guy to check from an end-user perspective to see the actual impact for users, another guy to pull the logs, and a third to dig deeper into the monitoring - they all scurried away to start assessing the situation. In the mean-time I leaned over the partition to my boss who was sat next to me, and mentioned the issue - she stuck her head up like a meercat, looked around, and said (quoting word for word), "I can't hear any shouting, I can't see people running around, I can't see people panicing, I don't feel this is being managed properly!". She then asked me if I'd informed her boss yet - I told her we were still evaluating the situation (again, apparently unacceptable), so she immediately snatched up her phone and called him saying the monitoring was red and we were in a crisis. Just as she finished her call the guy from the end-user perspective came back to my desk and reported that the issue was completely transparent to end-users. I passed this news to my boss who threw her hands up and said, "But I've called X! Now it's nothing?!". Yes. Quite.
A third story would be from the time her replacement (she was eventually demoted then fired) pulled me to one side and started screaming and swearing in my face because he didn't feel I was motivating technical staff to fix issues quickly enough because I wasn't in their faces screaming and swearing at them until any issue was fixed (yes - this is exactly what he meant). I'm sure any techies here will be happy to agree that this is not an appropriate motivational technique to get the best from your staff...but there you go.
I could go on - but instead I'll just summarise to mention that in the 12 months I worked there everyone in my team quit or was fired and replaced twice over except for me and one other guy...when my contract finished I wasn't sad to leave.
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
Couldn't fault the guy for his technical knowledge, especially *unix, but he was useless with people. The reason I left the company was because I was suddenly brought into a disciplinary meeting with three points... /someone/ in the team had complained. There were 5 of us, including myself and him. I decided I would apologies to each person in the team individually and found out that he had made the complaint up.
1. I talk to much and
2. Managers/Directors had complained that I looked scruffy when I walked around in my plain black jacket which I wore when it was cold (old WW2 era buildings). Can't say if this one was true or not but no one ever said it to my face and I was on good terms with most others.
3. "This won't go in your official record but.... I don't like your beard and I want you to get rid of it."
Three weeks later I handed in my notice and he genuinely seemed shocked! He just didn't know how to talk to people, shouted at me in front of the team for not fixing a backup error and that backups were /his/ responsibility and his job was on the line if it didn't work so how could I let it slip through?!
One of those type who should be locked away in a server room to manage their Unix boxes and not interact with people...
My beard is even bigger/better now.
My old boss used to work on Vax's and got promoted up the company to become the IT Director. He was so useless at his job as he did not know anything about PC's & Servers so was knicknamed "Cant Understand New Technology - Boss" . His best debacle came when I (IT Manager) was refused to purchased several SCSI drives to replace into out RAIDed file server what were about to fail. I wrote the requisition out along with an urgent worded memo and arranged a meeting to get it signed, but he was in his usual mood of "Leave it with me" attitude which meant he'll ignore it all as usual. This time I did not argue about the importance as after he is the IT Director of a large military enterprise company and he knows best. Anyway, the day duly came when the SCSI drives failed and thus the entire file server infrastructure went down across the company. I just sat at my desk awaiting the panic which arrived within 10 mins after he had received lots of phone calls from departments as they could not get to their files and he starts question why I was not not fixing the problem in front of approx 50 employees. I duly stood up and said I could not rectify the issue as the requisition paperwork along with the URGENT memo was still being waited upon for his signature and I calmly explained that once he has signed it I can then place the order, however as express in my memo there was a 4 week delivery time as the drives had to come direct from Seagate as they were not domestic off the shelf components found in any 2 bit computer store. Needless to say, the Managing Director turned up to find out why he could not access his files and we all had to have a meeting to discuss what to do. The Managing Director immediately sacked the IT Director for gross negligence and I got the signature to proceed with the purchase of said drives. I managed to get the drives quicker from Seagate as I had to fly directly to the states to pick them up and fly back which was a jolly nice trip. The ex IT Director could not find
My boss 18 years ago:
"All of our projects are behind! We will have 3 status meetings every day with all people involved until we catch up!"
So literally at least 4 to 5 hours a day were preparing and presenting status reports for the boss. Gave us 3 or 4 hours to work on the projects.
Eventually I stopped going to all but one meeting and finished my projects. He tried to fire me for that. Fortunately his boss had more sense.
An awesome, horrible IT boss.
Yeah. He was awesome.
He'd let us slack off all day. He never complained about us being late, even by two hours or so. We got games onto the work computers, played over LAN, he'd sometimes join. He would assign tasks, then push deadlines for us as they flew by. He'd deflect any unreasonable requests from the outside, overestimate the time needed, very rarely asserted any control over us. If not the fact that apart from him we had a team leader, who was energetic, competent and could have a good grip over all projects, I don't think we'd ever get anything done. That meant we weren't entirely spoiled rotten... but yeah, we were spoiled. But yeah, huge vacations, gaming on rigs more powerful than anyone had at home, slacking off, coming late, and a boss who never even frowned about this, shielding us from any upper management and other "external threats" very efficiently. We loved him to bits for that.
You've got to admit he was horrible for the company though. Projects going over budget and way past deadline, simple stuff billed like severe overhauls, and all the goodies corporation could provide for the employees for free...
Some time after that there was a grand restructuring, all the teams dissolved and reassembled from scratch, and I got assigned elsewhere, he got an entirely different team to spoil, but hell, I won't forget him. Awesome guy for the employees, horrible for the corp.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
. . . got hired on to be Security Guru and ISSO for a Federal Agency. Because clearances had to transfer, it took two months for me to start there.
I get there, find the guy who hired me had moved on. The guy in his cube was a fellow contractor. He looks at me, and says:
"Security Guy ? I give you 30 days, 45 tops. . . "
The new boss is a GS-14, who was a GS-10 a year earlier, and a Cisco tech, who married a Supergrade, and immediately got promoted. And who had 37 positions on her teams. . . . and had churned through 70+ people in those slots over the previous 9 or so months.
First problems surfaced when I was asked to specify my standard work hours. . . and was told that overtime must be approved in advance, in writing. And then the mangler requires me to attend additional team meetings that STARTED at 2 1/2 hours past my standard day. And told me I must adhere to my written hours, and could not charge overtime for the meeting, but my presence was mandatory. That was the first clue.
My immediate project was a prototype virtualized Blackboard deployment, Windows-on-VMware. Fairly straightforward, but we want to now test it on the production network, it had performed well in Dev and Test. So our ISSM told me that all we needed was what traffic out to the production net was required, from what IPs to what IPs, and the names of our test boxes. This was Wednesday morning. He also told me to have it to him by noon on Friday, and he'd approve it.
Basically, a not terribly-complicated spreadsheet, about 4x4. about 40 total pieces of data (several were multi-port/multi-protocol connects, your typical Active Directory traffic. . .). 20 minutes to compile, another 5 to write an intro and embed the spreadsheet into a 1-page document. Manager ALSO required us to have her approve, in person, all documents sent outside the group.
I bring her the page. She asks why we weren't using Telnet. She calls one of her pet engineers (an Exchange guy) to look over my work. Half an hour later he
shows up, notes that he doesn't understand it. So she calls a TEAM meeting for the next morning. Meeting goes 6 hours. 1 page doc is now ten pages. Still not happy, she calls another for Friday at 10AM (data was due by noon).
Meeting lasts until quitting time. Doc is now 21 pages. STILL not approved. New meeting, 9AM Monday morning. Finally, Tuesday, at ~1:30 PM she approves it. 37 pages. We send to the ISSM, who immediately rejects it, as not what he asked for, and days after the deadline.
Manager calls me in, starts screaming at me for damaging HER program. I pointed out, I had the original request in writing, had data ready two days in advance, her processing and add-ons got it killed. She continued to scream at me, enough that people came by to see that everything was alright.
I had enough. I told here that I quit, walked out of her office, down to my cube, logged out, packed my stuff, and left.
Only job I ever walked out on in nearly 45 years of work. .. .
Sorry, you all fail. those may be bad, but this guy wins the prize.
His name is Jack, he's a big, fat, boisterous, Jewish a-hole.
We used to have a joke that if he didn't physically threaten to kill you on a regular basis, you weren't doing your job.
And no, we're not talking about some side comments or jokes or anything along those lines. We mean cold,serious, murder.
We had the territory rep from Cisco come in one day with some support staff just for a "friendly" visit, and there was Jack, chest to chest with the guy yelling and screaming, shaking his fist in the guys face, threatening to murder him, right there, in the middle of the office floor, with all the staff watching and listening.
I had my thumb on 911-speed dial, just waiting for a fist to connect and I'd press the call button.
Thankfully Jack never actually hit the guy, but he was blacklisted by Cisco, they revoked all support, and refused to do business with the company any more.
And all the other vendors, except one did the same thing.
He managed to get blacklisted by every vendor in the business.
Congratulations! That's really hard to do! He should get a prize.
Thankfully Jack isn't working there any more, but it was really hard to get rid of him, because he owned both the data centers, the actual office buildings the company used.
I had to deal with that asshole for 2 years.
He'd regular threaten to murder staff throughout the day, every day.
You needed a very thick skin, and the ability to tune him out and ignore him in order to get through the day.
We had two bottles of single malt scotch in desks to help us out, which we used regularly.
I'm so glad I'm out of there, but I'll never get rid of the scars caused by that place.
And for those who asked why I stayed, I couldn't find any other work that would pay the bills, low economy.
And why no one ever charged him or called the police, well, losing the data centers would shut the company down, and all the other staff were in the same situation, all with families to support.
BTW the one company that didn't blacklist Jack, was Jack's favorite - Nortel, and they're gone now.
So next time you think you have a bad job or a bad boss, just think about Jack, and thank your lucky stars you've never had to work for an asshole like that.
Yes, Jack, you're an asshole, and everyone knows it.
I've been working for a long time in a highly political private company. I'm extremely lucky that I've been allowed to advance in my career on a technical track, but most people foolishly pick the management path. The actual work we do is really interesting and it's a fun job as long as you don't let the politics get to you, or heaven forbid, get involved in it. If you let it get to you, you're going to be miserable. If you do your work and don't step on any landmines, you're golden. It's not government IT, but the politics are very close -- think appointed VPs who can do no wrong, and whose appointments are basically gifts.
Most of my horror show IT boss stories revolve around people promoted into management positions who have no aptitude for it. I've held supervisory and management positions, and I can tell you first-hand that tech and management are completely orthogonal skill sets. I'm not sure what's different about IT, but it seems like there's just no easy way to retrain people to deal primarily with machines instead of people. Unfortunately, most organizations are built around the assumptions that the only way to advance in your career is to manage those doing actual work, and that everyone actually wants to climb the ladder. I was smart enough to realize that I wouldn't be effective no matter how much retraining I did, and luckily the company was interested in keeping someone with good technical skills as a "lead" without the political crap. I actually think it's for the best, because the company just went through its once-a-decade middle management clean-out. Moral of the story: If you want a job, keep your skills sharp and keep learning.
The other stories involve "white knight" MBAs coming in and managing departments through Excel. I worked at one place where the new CIO came in, and within 2 weeks announced that the entire department was being outsourced after a 6 month transition period. His speech basically amounted to "you're too expensive, capex vs. opex, right-sizing,..." The instant the meeting was over, every single person worth hiring was on the phone pulling the emergency cord, arranging new jobs and quitting (including me...I wasn't going to end up with the Scarlet Letter U (for Unemployed) on my record.) Instant dead-sea effect...the outsourcer ended up sucking at their job, got kicked out and the department was in-house again. Luckily the CIO got fired...that akways drives me nuts when executives keep messing up and end up at another company after getting a huge payout. Why can't we worker bees do that?
My first day, Monday. I'm being brought around to the other programmers and board designers and introduced. "Hey this is X, he's our new guy in software." Almost every person I met looked up and said "Hi." In the tone of voice you usually use when you find your car has a flat tire. Some didn't even try to shake my hand. Some didn't even look up at me.
Took me 3 months to find out why everyone was like that. I made some friends there and they finally told me what was up one day while we were at lunch.
Our manager had a meeting the Friday morning, previous. He told the entire IT staff that he was having some work done on his house over the weekend, and that he would like the entire team to move shingles up to his roof. Right now. And oh yeah, did I forget to mention that all vacation requests have to pass my desk for approval? See you all at my house.
It gets better, or should I say worse.
He made them all take a vacation day to do it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"He was dumbfounded that I would even suggest such a thing."
I've dealt with this over and over working for large companies. Once a company grows beyond a certain size, the ability to buy anything is paralyzed. I routinely buy stuff like hard disks, USB drives, little peripherals like that out of my own money for that very reason. You can't just go down to NewEgg or Micro Center with your credit card and submit an expense report -- it has to go through purchasing who will spend a week researching the cheapest price or steer the sale to whichever "preferred supplier" bribed them this year.
"Same boss was chatting with me in my office when he suddenly noticed that my desk was bigger than his. "
True story from a friend who worked for a major European airline...this airline actually had a written policy stating what furniture and accoutrements were available to staff at the various levels. There was a team of people that would actually go around and fit offices with the new hard-won accessories when people were promoted, just like getting a new patch on a military uniform. The policy had strict guidelines stating office size, how big the desk was, whether you got an additional chair or cabinet, what grade of carpet you had, at what exact level of service and seniority you got a door, which desk accessories and quality level thereof you were allowed to have, etc. When people end up working for an organization for a long time, stuff like this becomes extremely important...it establishes a clear hierarchy.