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Surviving a Tyrant at Work
- jarjoura 9y agoSomething I think the article misses to point out are the cliques that form with the groups who appear to execute well under the tyrant vs the groups who are sabotaged. The colleagues who feel sabotaged become resentful and then make it harder for things to get done. Then depending on the office culture, this can spiral into a toxic mess where everyone goes behind everyone's back to get stuff done and then no one gets anything done.
- neumann 9y agoDo you sit in my office!?
- marktangotango 9y agoIndeed, it can be very much worse than the present article even imagines. I’ve seen incompetent, tyrannical managers scape goat and fire developers because the teams failed to make releases. Never mind the mountains of technical debt, lack of tests or even the most basic documentation that made even the most trivial changes into bug fests.
- madmork 9y agoyes. really good point. I've seen that happen to a minor degree. I'd start by carefully documenting everything that's agreed and changed and then raising to issue to senior management on both teams so they can sit down and discuss it. Worse case you also flag this to HR and during the 360 review process but there's only so much you can do ....
- mtkd 9y agoLife is too short to work with tyrants.
- osullivj 9y agoYes! The #1 determining factor of my productivity and contribution across my career has been my boss, and quality of relationship with boss. Don't waste your precious time trying to please assholes.
- jarjoura 9y agoI don't know if that's universally true. Some of my best work has been under tyrants. I think as long as we have shared expectations and the "tyrant" genuinely believes in the success of the project, I do not think you should always avoid working with them. Life priorities always change and obviously you should be careful of burnout, but if you have the bandwidth to work on a project with them in your life, I don't think you should avoid it just because.
- ellius 9y agoI think it’s a question of whether they’re a tyrant for themselves. A lot of people that act like tyrants are clearly just in it for the power trip.
- bitL 9y agoYou might be co-dependent. You see it often with narcissists that need their crowds of admirers, and co-dependents that need to admire somebody. It doesn't work for most people though.
- jarjoura 9y agoEh for a time that was most definitely true.
- DavidWoof 9y agoI've probably had more problems trying to work with bosses who were couldn't make decisions at all and avoided all confrontation and let the project slip to the level of the lower common denominator. By any reasonable definition, Linus Torvalds is a "tyrant", and the resulting quality of linux speaks for itself. All successful projects of sufficient size probably need a tyrant at the top someplace who can and will make final decisions and enforce them, otherwise everything falls apart in conflicting requirements and bike-shedding. Ahh, you might reply, but these are "toxic" tyrants, a phrase this article never bothers to define, allowing everyone to just project their own vision of a bad boss onto it.
- Waterluvian 9y agoDid I miss the part where a tyrant boss is defined or did that not happen? I'm not exactly sure what that is. Just a boss you don't like?
- whathaschanged 9y agoYes, which is why you see words like 'toxic' bandied about.
- vosper 9y agoToxic is so over-used these days that I think it often means "anyone I don't like at work".
- bitL 9y agoI had a colleague that ended up in a mental hospital for a while after their boss bullied them for a few years and flashed colleague's major achievements to own bosses as their own. The colleague didn't like their boss for sure. I guess that might be one hint to "tyrant boss"? Would that work for you?
- gerbilly 9y agoFrom the OED: 1. A cruel and oppressive ruler. 1.1 A person exercising power or control in a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary way. 1.2 (especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized absolute power without legal right.
- Waterluvian 9y agoHmm. My boss is Ancient Greek...
- rglovejoy 9y agoWhy not just quit and get another job?
- amriksohata 9y agoHis is truly the only way, if he owns the company he will soon lose business if more people do this and if he's middle management then his bosses will see where the problem is
- amriksohata 9y agoThis is
- saas_co_de 9y agoWhat if you really like your job? What if you have invested years in building your product and want to keep working on it? What if you have lots of stock options that are vesting in the coming years? There are lots of reasons why people would want to stay at a job. Also, you are going to run into assholes in all walks of life. Learning to deal with them gives you options and puts you in control. If you lack that ability then your only option is to walk away.
- ht85 9y agoThis is kind of a zero sum game though, someone else will take your place under the tyrant. Yes some of us are lucky and work remote, have a large portfolio of nice enough clients, and not have to deal with corporate overlords. Let's be real though, this is a very small portion of the workforce. Not to mention that if you go through the trouble of changing, which is bothersome for many practical reasons, you won't be able to tell if it is better or worse before you've been working for a while, which is a pretty discouraging for risk averse people.
- neumann 9y agoIn my case. Been trying to! Even with a good resume, if you have other constraints like geography, it can take a long time to find another position. Like, going on 6 months now. And with dependents, you need the income until you have another option. And, sure, I thought about quitting and pulling taps at the pub for a while, but that would make it likely harder to go back to my field of work. So, you suck it up, and navigate the quagmire of a dysfunctional workplace and spend your spare time networking and looking for other opportunities.
- amriksohata 9y agoBe a problem solver not a problem bringer. Er.. so you want me to do his job too? I can give him options if he mature enough to take them and not blame me for then later
- bitL 9y agoOfc, why do you think that person is your boss?
- DonbunEf7 9y agoThis site's JS made me very sad. A lot of points in this post are about appeasing toxic behavior and working with difficult bosses. Why? Appeasing toxicity only increases toxicity.
- harryf 9y agoThis needs a massive up-voting. In my experience an abusive boss-employee relationship is made of two halves; a) An abusive boss b) A subject who accepts the abuse So what are your options if you don't accept the abuse. Most people say "Quit". In my experience it's far more effective to deal with the abuse directly so that the abuser knows that you're not willing to accept their behaviour. Of course there's a fear of being fired, but IMO that tends to be over-estimated. Getting you fired in many companies is not an easy process. Your typical tyrant doesn't want to make work for themselves and like most bullies if you show resistance, they'll leave you alone. How you show resistance really varies - YMMV. For example if they make fun of you in public, making fun of them back _immediately_ is pretty effective - even if you're not funny showing you're willing to be loud in a group is the point. Calm one-on-one feedback is probably the best approach e.g. "I understand you might be under a lot of pressure at the moment but I don't like how you spoke to me this morning. I found it rude / aggressive / etc. and it makes me think about what my next steps are if this should continue". Local legal situations might mean you want to do that together with HR although the moment you involve HR, you've already escalated... And of course you need to have the courage to act, but once you make the first step, it all gets easier. Life's too short.
- potta_coffee 9y agoMy abusive boss was my CEO, who I reported to directly. I attempted to deal with the abuse directly, after appeasing for a while. I just couldn't feel good being treated the way I was - CEO was passive-aggressive to the extreme and treats every other than herself like they're idiots. Anyway, two days after politely and diplomatically attempting to stand up for myself, I was fired.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
- flyinghamster 9y agoHow about surviving toxic tyrant websites? Gray-on-gray text, popup overlays when you scroll far enough, random redirects when you click away the overlay... WebExtension NoScript, you can't come fast enough.
- purplezooey 9y agoYeah really. I want my 5 minutes back.
- madmork 9y agodo you know how rich I'd be if I could do that? ;)
- karmel 9y agoCan we all agree that choosing a photo of Kevin Spacey when talking about bad bosses is in really bad taste at this point in time? I get the House of Cards reference, but...
- praneshp 9y agoI dont agree that choosing a photo of him is in bad taste. What I disagree with is choosing a House of Cards reference though; he played a memorable (IMO) tyrant boss in Horrible Bosses.
- trgn 9y agoHe also did in Swimming With Sharks!
- madmork 9y agoactually we can't. Spacey's antiques are EXACTLY the reason I chose the photo. or do you think Tyrants can't also sexually harass others at work?
- dredmorbius 9y agoArticle is unreadable as presented, and fails to render in Outline.com, Pocket, or a console HTML-only browser.
- madmork 9y agoThanks for the feedback. I'll notify Wix.
- djrobstep 9y agoNo mention of the actual best solution: unionizing
- madmork 9y agoUnionizing? In the United States under Donald Trump? in this day and age? Somehow I don't see that happening ;)
- tibbon 9y agoOne thing I haven't figured out is how to deal with such a person who shifts expectations, even with good documentation. 1) Have meeting where you establish the walls should be painted this specific shade of blue. 2) Document this in an email summarizing the meeting and the todos 3) Start painting the walls blue, maybe even finish 4) Toxic Boss comes back and wonders why the walls aren't green. Apparently, they had been looking at the color swatches while sitting under a red tanning light, and expected for you to know what they meant. 5) Go back and paint the walls green. 6) The toxic boss now looks at them and wonders why they aren't red. And you need to paint the ceiling black, because they had a meeting with a potential client at a trade show, and black ceilings are the new hot thing. Clearly, you can fit all of this painting, and repainting, into the original timeline (despite your protestations), because the toxic boss told the client you'll be shipping it by date. No amount of documentation works here. When you point out to the toxic boss your original agreement, they look puzzled at you, wondering why you aren't team player, and why you aren't listening to customer needs enough. There's another team at work who paints signs, and they are fine with daily changes. You talk to the toxic boss about making a process for iterating on this and documenting expectations better, but then they say you're too rigid and process will slow things down- they are an idea person, and just like thinking about colors, not the details.
- madmork 9y agoThat's a great example. One solution here might be to find an intermediary who works well / gets along with the Toxic boss and involve them in process somehow. You might just go to them for advice and try to understand how they they work with the person and what process has worked well for them. Another one would be to try and meet with your Toxic boss outside the office in a more neutral setting where you can have an open and honest conversation about what's going on. What I've found is people behave and open up differently outside of an office setting. You could also discuss your problem with other folks who work for this person and see if they are coming up against the same problem. If they are, then there are clearer grounds for you all to bring the problem to someone else to try and present it objectively coming 360 review time.
- tomjen3 9y agoSounds like you need to go over the head of that boss, or find a place less toxic.