Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With a Terrible Tech Manager?
snydeq writes: From the Know It All to the Overwhelmer, succeeding beneath a bad manager takes strategy and finesse, writes Paul Heltzel in his round-up of bad IT bosses and how to keep them from derailing your career. "While there are truly great leaders in IT, not all inspire confidence. Worse, you can't always choose who will lead your team. But you can always map out new paths in your career. With that in mind, here is a look at some prototypically bad managers you may have already encountered in your engineering departments, with tips on how to deal with each of them." The six "terrible tech managers" mentioned by Heltzel include: "The Know It All," "The Pushover," "The Micromanager," "The Unexpected Boss," "The Fearful Manager," and "The Overwhelmer." Have you ever worked for any of these managers? If so, how did you deal with them?
I had a supervisor who assigned me two separate projects that had a one-month gap between them. I documented that I would take them with the understanding that there will be trouble if the two projects overlapped. The inevitable train wreck came when the first project overlapped the second project, both projects got delayed and later reassigned to other people to straighten out. Supervisor tried to throw me under the bus but I had documentation that he didn't lift a finger to help me. What happened? Supervisor got promoted out of the department and I didn't have a project for 90 days.
Next supervisor told me not to document any of his activities. Of course, I documented that and everything else. Soon I was being written up for insubordination for... you guess it... documenting his interference with my project. When he gave me the "his way or the highway" speech, I resigned as soon as my current project was done. I was the third out of a dozen senior employees who headed for the exits that year. Supervisor rode the company into bankruptcy.
I was reorged and placed under a kiss ass manager-ette. My solution: I called up my old manager and asked is I could go back to work for him. Viola. Done. I think she was in to some "categorize work tasks in to a flow chart" thing . I couldn't take the situation. I am an adult. I think she may have given head to someone at the top.
This lady was like a Marissa Mayer on knee pads.
Got out, kept my sanity, survived well.
You can't change crappy managers. Best to distance oneself.
He very openly says he knows nothing about code, so he wants things explained in simple terms.
You have the best type of manager.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.