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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 send him a link to Breitbart. Before long he's spending all day tracking down pizza parlors and gay frogs, and staying out of everyone's hair at work.
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
Left out a kind of terrible manager: The Complete Psycho. Unfortunately, too common.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
First you bring up the issue with the boss's boss. If nothing is done, then you quit. If you're good at what you do in technology you shouldn't have trouble finding work anyway. If you're useless or burnt out, maybe you can apply to be the next terrible tech manager. Many of them started that way and got "promoted out of the way".
Get out if you can! It's not worth your health and sanity to stay for a bit more money.
I had a sinister boss during a past slump, and had to wait a while to find another company. Economic slumps suck: choices die faster than summer daisies in Death Valley.
Table-ized A.I.
He had all of the theory and none of the practice. I eventually quit, but he "decided to leave" a little later.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
I've had a boss that was all of these. Very frustrating.
I've often wondered why folks in tech expect 24x7 access to their employees. If you work at Burger King, you don't have to put in 90 or 100 hour weeks - or if you do, it's with overtime pay. But if you're in tech, this seems to be the default expectation and don't you dare ask for overtime or even a bonus. Gosh no. Don't expect profit sharing either.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
That should solve everything.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And have appointments out of the office at odd times. A colleague started that, and promptly got button-holed by the VP Financial (who had been our receiver in a former startup). The VP then started a reference check on the problematic boss...
davecb@spamcop.net
Seriously, you're not going to get anywhere under a terrible manager. Moving to a different team will look petty and personal (even if it is). Moving to a new company lets you start over fresh.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But if you use neither, then how would you know?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I was driven out of every job, mainly because I didn't respond properly when ordered to "do it wrong or you're fired."
Just an FYI, I have been absolutely willing to "do it wrong" (nothing unethical, of course), but it doesn't seem to help. If a manager doesn't like you, it's not because of the work you're doing, it's because he feels threatened, or has inter-personal issues, etc.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
... I guarantee you those bastards (or bitches) came to realize that when I was happy, they were, too.
It's like training Pavlov's dog.
For one son of a bitch in Reston, Va., I programmed our fax machine to forward to his cell.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
See: https://www.amazon.com/Snakes-...
If you get that, you're basically fucked. Document what they've done to you (and your team) and quit (which is what the book tells you to do).
It's a tough world out there.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
You deal terrible IT manager the same way countless people have dealt with their bad managers. Stop pretending bad tech managers are somehow different.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If your wealthy and smart start you own company.
If your not wealthy or smart?
Your stuck with having to understand your boss and have to try and reason with them.
Try and understand your boss and their origins.
Overeducated for the role and wanted to be promoted in the past but failed?
Had some connection with others in management that secured their role but they are not a productive boss?
Someone who once had good ideas but has less to offer every year?
They use their own boss as a method of advancement and just keep staff around to fill in the role of been a boss? Their own advancement is the project not anything that needs to be done.
The boss has issues from university, never went to a good "university" in the traditional way, was too poor to enjoy university, did not fit into any social setting at university. Was smart but did not have the correct level of wealth to fit in? All that can shape the mind and issues a boss projects. Poverty made them have many, many issues decades later.
Social acceptance issues? Even been a "boss" just does not wash away that feeling of not been accepted by management.
Lack of ability to learn new skills. The boss is using past success to just stay in place for a few more years. They don't want to lean new methods. They have staff for that.
They have the wrong education. It was ok years ago and got them the job but they feel different from their better educated peers.
They had a good memory that as able to fake their way past university exams, the interview and the social skills to become a boss.
Even average staff know they have a lack of ability needed in their role. So the boss takes steps to hide that issue.
Most people have traits they bring up from university and as they enter the work force. What was your boss like? Could they even study on their own or did they always need help? Could they work on a project or did they always need a lot of support?
Once you understand your boss aviod the things that make them unhappy.
If your wealthy and happy don't remind your boos of their own poverty filled past.
If your boss is smart, learn from them.
If your boss is lacking in skills, don't be the person that knows too much about their past.
Other traits are the boss who has to talk about their new found wealth and what they are doing socially. The charities, social events, music, art, a new car.
If you are wealthy and enjoyed all that as a given, it becomes almost comical to sit and listen to your boss trying to buy their way into society. Try to be positive and just be happy for your boss. If you boss finally has the wage to enjoy opera or some other social event just smile and ask them all about their experience.
A normal boss will work hard, bring new ideas, have the educational background to study and keep learning new things, want the best for the company and all staff. They will want to share their own skills and learn.
If not something is wrong, just take the time to find out what. Poverty, educational issues, a well hidden lack of talent.
Good interviews and hiring on merit with background investigations will usually detect any of the bad traits. Always interview, hire on merit and look into pasts, then a company can avoid staff issues.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Pliers for the fillings...
All the others (haven't run into them all, but...) I dealt with just fine. But the person who interrupts me all day long, to the point where I just get into the problem and am pulled out of it for trivia? Never figured out how to deal with them.
// boss sends email
/// boss pokes head in as I'm reading email, "have you read my email yet?"
//// should be a stand your ground type law for bosses like this
/ Typical example, Quit bugging me, send me email,
Look for another job, life is too short to fight this kind of thing and HR will always side with the manager first because usually those rats are good at their game and will already have dirt on you (real or made up, does not matter) in case you talk and spin it to HR in your file the second they smell that you will start complaining. Your career will be stalled completely as long as that manager will be your boss anyway. Move on.
because that's generally how anyone horrible at their job seems to get that position in the first place. They hide out or "follow the rules" long enough for someone to leave or there is simply no one else to fill the role.
In many of my anecdotes as a contractor, its seems the last people standing in a company (the primary shit stain of sales or the senior dickwad of software) are almost always the most worthless people that just new how to hide well....the good people bailed or were blamed and fired long before.
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 had a terrible manager a long time ago but fortunately he knew nothing about my job (systems and database administrator on a VAX system). He'd come over and talk to me and I'd just bury him with VAX specific jargon. As long as the VAX ran fine (and it always did) I was left alone. Others in the department weren't so lucky because he thought he knew something about PCs and the phone system and he was a micromanger. He lasted less than two years as head of IT but got moved to other departments and had similar problems (a manger can manage anything, right?). Eventually he got fired when he go caught trying to return an expensive camera system that he'd "borrowed" without approval. It was needed for some tests.
The one time he did get to me (and the others in the department) was when he insisted that all email go through him for approval. This was in the days before ubiquitous internet email so we had two systems, the local VAX email and the corporate system called sysm. That only lasted for about a week. We buried him in emails then complained when he wasn't able to keep up and deliver the messages in a timely manner. At the time I was changing usernames on the VAX to the new corporate standard so I was sending out 20 or 30 messages a day telling users about the new usernames they'd have the following morning. Users were complaining and I told them "Talk to Ted, he was supposed to forward the message on to you".
Several years ago I had a manager whom I could not stand and who was not fond of me. I chose to apply for a position in a new department and moved there.
If the person is a manager, they're adept at playing the game. They're going to beat you at office politics. Unless you have knowledge that they're stealing or otherwise ethically/legally compromised, don't try to fight them. Get out.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm not sure why but they are missing the Toxic manager in there.
I used to have a manager that would ensure that whoever he nominates to be the lead on a project would fail to accomplish most, if anything in the project.
First very unrealistic time tables for the project, which was essentially a rewrite of an existing CMS from scratch. 3 months.
He booked easily 60% of my time in various meetings. Spent a lot of the rest of the time planning and designing features to "stay ahead of the curve".
Of course during that time I still had to make sure that the legacy systems still worked.
Then pulls me aside to say that "my" team feels that its weird that I am not programming on the rewrite.
And of course, keep changing who is on the project team to ensure complete discontinuity.
Then came the low performance review and this is when I realised how much of a shaft was waiting for me. I quickly transferred to another team within the company and a recruiter thankfully called my cell phone shortly after.
Essentially the manager I had stayed in place because the team was responsible for generating most of the revenue for the business and he always had someone to preassign the blame.
2 years after I resigned he was made the lead of a new team. Those team members refused to work with him within the first month. HR eventually wisened up and looked at the part performance reviews and exit interviews that targeted that manager, he was demoted and told that he can keep working in his corner until he can find a job at another company.
The major lesson I learned is to never tolerate a bad manager. As soon as you can, leave.
...I actually enjoy these managers.
Hacking management behavior is loads of fun. Give me 6 months with any manager and I can provoke damn near any reaction I want, all the while they think it's their idea.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Then have him go in and check it.
Make sure you unscrew all the lightbulbs in that area.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I had a manager who tried to micromanage me. I can play that game. I became incapable of making the simplest of decisions. I kept going to his office every few minutes to ask stupid questions, like what color he wanted a particular header in. I made sure to only ask one question at a time for maximum impact. So every few minutes I'd interrupt him with something stupid. I had actually expected to get fired, not win the battle. Imagine my surprise when he finally just yelled, "just do whatever you want", and left me the hell alone.
-- Will program for bandwidth
This is something that should receive more emphasis, I think; a lot of managers don't understand that they aren't leaders - and that they are not even supposed to be leaders. Management is something that requires a certain set of skills - you are required to manage people, ie. you tell your staff what tasks they have to do, you evaluate their performance, you communicate with the wider administration, so your team members don't have to bother with the trivia of administration. In many ways, a manager is a secretary for the team. No leadership is required.
Leadership, on the other hand, is a very simple concept: if you go in front and others follow, you lead. A good leader is often a member of the team, somebody who comes up with ideas about ways to do things. You can see how these concepts can easily get into conflict - a manager will very often not know enough to actually lead, because their expertise is management, not whatever the team is working on; this is what leads to many of the problems people talk about: the manager trying to lead highly skilled workers, who know far better what they are doing and how it should be done.
I'm not sure what can be done from the employees' side about a bad manager - managers certainly need to be able to understand their own limitations and have to trust that their employees wan't to do a good job and are capable of doing it. Quite possibly a manager shouldn't really try to lead - that should be delegated to somebody in the team (or somebody new, who can then become part of the team). This is perhaps one thing the military has got right: you have the officers, who do whatever it is officers do, and they leave the actual leadership to sergeants and lieutenants; this is system that works, simply because it has been tested quite literally to destruction.
I had a boss who was technical but in a different field. The thing was, he knew what he didn't know - so he used to listen and delegate. If you wanted to make the case that it should be done this way, or that way, or not done at all he'd listen to you.
He'd give you a damn good roasting if you got it wrong. But it was your decision, so why not?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So, I've worked with all flavours of these managers listed, yet none of them are the most frustrating manager I've worked for.
The most frustrating manager was the guy who read all the books, always knew what to say, tried to be your friend, but never actually let you do the things you wanted to get done. He'd never say no, but make you resubmit your requests 10 times with various tweaks almost like he wanted you to give up.
Then in staff meeting's he'd complain that no one was being innovative except his favourites who can do no wrong.
He'd give you just enough information to do the thing he asked, then give you a bit more information with an enhancement request. If I had that information up front I could have done it all at once instead of two cycles taking twice as long.
He was also vindictive, if you didn't tow his view of the company line, you were basically shit listed and he would do everything he could to transfer or fire you.
I did not enjoy that work, and I left the company because of it.
Alas, it is better to have an ignoramus than a manager who thinks he his a tech, and that he actually *thinks* he knows something.
Often you leave both.
It depends from company to company, but you must understand that no matter what, the outcome might be that you need to seek employment elsewhere.
I have had a boss who was a terrible people manager. I went to HR and explained the situation. Somebody else did the same. HR spoke to the manager and I must complement him that he changed and became a better manager. I knew however that it could have ended that I would have had to leave.
Another manager had no clue as to what the job of our team was. And I mean no idea. So I ran the department as if I had his position and took decisions in his place. The first meeting I went to, the other managers asked if my manager knew I was there. I bluffed and told them that if he didn't know, would they think I would be there.
That was the end of that. He was left out of the loop and things worked great.
No I never reported anything to him.
At a third place I had a manager that was incompetent. Any questions that where a bit harder than the time of the day where send to me. I was unable to do anything, because my N+2 was holding a hand above her head. Going to N+3 would be futile as he would point to N+2.
Once N+2 was fired, N+1 was left without protection. I knew that the new manager would give her 3 months to change and that she would be fired after 3 months. I was correct on the week. The cry of joy in the department when it was official was weird. Nobody was sure if they where allowed to be happy and if she was still in the building.
So be sure that whatever steps you take, the result might be that you need a new job. See also if others experience the same that you have, because perhaps you just are unable to work for your manager and the issue is between the two of you, not with him.
That does not mean you are a bad employee or he is a bad manager. It means that sometimes people are NOT compatible and it would take to much work for both to force it to work.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I start building a case against said bad manager. Last job we managed to get a VP of Engineering fired.
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.
They made a documentary about this. Jason vs Freddy
Jason is a psychopath and Freddie is a sociopath. Freddie even at one point gets angry that Jason kills so indiscriminately.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
That's one that's not mentioned and really hard to deal with. Found common in startups, the Hurricane Boss is a brutiful combination of all of the above, cranked up to eleven.
I had one, a precocious Frenchman, who once walked back to my team's area, clapped his hands (in a way only a precocious Frenchman can), and commanded, "I want rounded corners and dropshadows. On everything." And then left. Fifteen nerds stopped dead in their tracks, concentration broken, pulled out of the zone. For rounded corners and dropshadows.
I moved my team as far away from the windows as possible as that was where he liked to loiter, but I never could protect them from the Hurricane. Productivity? Focus? Not here, my friend.
"The mind is a terrible thing to, um, uh, oh bollocks." -- Me
So how exactly is this terrible? Sounds like the best I could hope for.
Rule of 3s: If you've had 3 bosses with the same problem, it's not their problem, it's yours.
Either you are dealing with your bosses wrong, or you are working in the _wrong_ industry. FYI If you are working for an industry that makes pure commodities (e.g. life insurance), your boss will be a marketer and you will be seen as pure overhead.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Where exactly did I say it was?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."