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Bullying bosses negatively impact employee performance and behavior

96 points by EndXA 8y ago

expertentipp 8y ago
Pity that it takes research to state the obvious. Pity that unless specific well defined behaviour is explicitly penalized, bullies will continue with it - with poker face and shrugging on any attempt to call out their abusive practices.
- deleted 8y ago
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erentz 8y ago
What is a workable solution to this problem? How does a company prevent it? In the US if you're working under a bully, you can't really call them out because they'll punish you, you can't go to HR because they'll defend the bully and you'll be poisoned now in the eyes of other managers. You can't go to your skip level, because they're permitting the behavior, and if they're not then (too often) you'll be the lone voice saying this as everyone else is afraid and just wants to keep their jobs. So the skip level just assumes you're the problem. And so on.
- pram 8y ago
  All true. The only winning move is not to play (quit)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- oceanghost 8y ago
  Bullying in most cases is a business strategy.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - hinkley 8y ago
    See also Amazon. I’ve heard too many stories and seen it first hand (it didn’t work on me, but they sure tried). I’m pretty worried about the future of software in Seattle. So many new grads learning bad habits and then moving on to other companies. It’s a lot to unlearn.
    - pkaye 8y ago
      My college friend told me about his terrible experience working in Amazon AWS. This was not a developer position and he has degrees from major universities and solid prior experiences. The experience was so degrading he quit after a few months and took some time off to recoup. He is now much happier working somewhere out of tech industry.
      - hinkley 8y ago
        Yeah I meant to point out that the form of bullying seems to be shame based rather than intimidation. But I count them both as bullying. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words hurt the worst.
      - natalyarostova 8y ago
        I wish Amazon had a better way for teams or projects to fail gracefully. Part of the companies strategy/competitive advantage is the ability to quickly spin up new projects/teams in a decentralized way. However, that also means lots will fail -- which is fine. But then for the individual managers on those teams, they often become stressed, toxic, and bully their subordinates.
    - bitcoinmoney 8y ago
      Can you provide more details about how it didn’t work for you? Just want to learn how you handled it
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  You keep a file with all the bullying (dates, emails, anyone else in the room, etc). Collect all that then plan your exit. During your exit interview explain the bullying and give them a copy of the file. Be polite and professional. You’ll be burning bridges, but you don’t wanna go back.
  - moomin 8y ago
    Let’s be frank, quite often not only do HR know, they’ve been actively protecting these people for years.
    - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
      I realize that. What they may not know is how many people have left directly because of that bad manager.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    >During your exit interview explain the bullying and give them a copy of the file. If it gets to the point where I'm quitting because of it, why would I bother giving them the record of evidence? Why would I want to improve the organization that I am leaving? Put explicitly, if the work culture is such that I don't have reasonable avenues to improve the situation without quitting (e.g. via HR and skip level), then I really don't care to help them out when I've given up hope for them. If they want to improve, they should set it up such that the only way to improve is by employees quitting. People usually don't quit capriciously. It's a tough decision, and a lot of work to find a desirable alternative job. I don't want to give them charity on my way out, especially if they've wasted a significant amount of my off-work time looking for a job.
    - protomyth 8y ago
      Maybe you like some of your co-workers, or maybe you just want to leave a better situation for the next person. Some folks just don't like entropy. Frankly, I don't think it would do any good at all anyway. HR will just ignore it, and some damn fool might decide to call you a troublemaker later on. HR does love its status quo.
- revenge 8y ago
  Leak video evidence. This is only going to keep getting worse unless we make examples out of them.
  - ummonk 8y ago
    Two party audio recording laws need to be repealed. Especially in the #metoo era. People need to be able to document abusive or illegal behavior without breaking the law.
- captainbland 8y ago
  Trade unionism springs to mind. If the hierarchy is broken, you've got to organise against it. Yes you can quit and join somewhere else, but if the behaviour is actually spreading then eventually you're going to run out of good employers to work for. The only other thing is the company pushing an anti-bullying drive from the very top level with a shakeup of the management structure to break up any structures which keep the behaviour in place, but that's unlikely if the company believes that management bullying is either a non-issue or actively condones it (perhaps because they believe that the bullying behaviour keeps workers in line).
- honkycat 8y ago
  Get a new job, unfortunately. I worked at a place where the CTO churned the entire staff twice in two years. He was a pathetic asshole, came from a wealthy background and waltzed into the executive class. He got hired and fired me so he could hire his friends. ( Which was honestly a good call, they needed a senior angular developer and I was a DevOps / Back-end engineer making it work. ) But what he said when he fired me has stuck with me ever since: "We have a different definition of what quality is. You no longer work here." I have excelled at most of the jobs I have held. This dude's rudeness absolutely blew my mind. He still works there. I'm sure he is doing well. The executive class never pay for their mistakes, only us lowly workers.
- adrianmonk 8y ago
  How does a company prevent it? Don't promote bullies to management. If it's true that it hurts performance, then it's irrational even from a self-interested business perspective, and you are just shooting yourself in the foot.
- muttled 8y ago
  I suppose you could leave a review somewhere like GlassDoor? You're not allowed to single out bosses, but detailing the culture could help someone else from making the same mistake, and can force the company to change their ways if it's preventing them from hiring good people.
vermooten 8y ago
In other breaking news: the Pope is a Catholic.
Panino 8y ago
> abusive supervision, which is becoming increasingly common in workplaces, said Liu-Qin Yang, the study's co-author That abuse is increasing might be less obvious than the conclusion in the article link text. Good to have data on both of course. My wife currently works for a place with a new senior director, a malevolently toxic psychopath. Her direct supervisor's hair has gone from brown to grey in only a couple months, and from conversation it sounds like yearly employee turnover has increased from maybe 10% to around 90%. This is impacting my wife's health and happiness, so I'm encouraging her not to give customary 2 weeks notice after getting a new job. I think the circumstances warrant it. As an aside, Wim Hof Method breathing has made an incredible difference for both of us and I feel so fortunate to have come across it during this challenging time. It makes stress management so much easier, while the nice things are so much brighter and more joyful.
- kokokokoko 8y ago
  I'd also be curious about the criteria for "abuse" and "bullying". I imagine there are technical definitions but I did not see any in the abstract. I've found there is massive deviation between what co-workers I've worked with define those personally as. To the level where one might consider a behavior helpful and uplifting and another would consider that identical behavior abusive and emotionally crushing.
  - moomin 8y ago
    Hint: if a worker perceives it as bullying, it probably is. It’s the responsibility of those in charge not to behave that way. The fact that people exhibit variance is part of the job of being a good manager. Bottom line: if you’re being described as an abusive boss, you’re bad at your job. And you don’t get to take credit for the amazing work that may be being done below you by people who are professionals despite your behaviour.
    - cma 8y ago
      > Bottom line: if you’re being described as an abusive boss, you’re bad at your job. There is such a thing as highly over-sensitive people. There are people who suffer from things like high paranoia, and their paranoia will often be directed at any authority figures in their life. I think you should have left things at "probably".
kram8 8y ago
Who would need a study to state the obvious? In which Universe is a bullying boss help a company? The only example that comes to my mind is when a corporation wants to reduce workforce but doesn’t want to pay severance pay. But this puts people’s health at risk and who in his right mind could want this? I’m working for a SaaS company who takes very much care of its employees and I’m asking myself if I am just naive...
- sgillen 8y ago
  Even if something seems obvious to you it’s still best to verify it rigorously. From a cynical point of view a bullying boss might be able to extract more working hours out of employees, or get them to upsell products at places like Best Buy.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    Absolutely, 'What everyone knows' has been so frequently wrong throughout history, a few people get ill and suddenly that harmless old lady who lives alone outside the village is on the bonfire... Humans are terrible at attributing cause and effect without a rigourous way of reproducing it.
- simple_phrases 8y ago
  Abusive people act abusively because it often gets them what they want at the expense of everything else. An abusive boss might get increased productivity from their subordinates in the short term at the long term expense of the organization itself.
- hodgesrm 8y ago
  > In which Universe is a bullying boss help a company? It is interesting that this question is not studied in a more systematic way. There are situations where having a 'thug' manager is the most effective approach to getting good outcomes. For instance, the same personality that is hard on reports can be very effective in standing up to customers. Viewed from the perspective of the company as a whole, this might be a reasonable economic trade-off, which explains why such a management style would be tolerated. (Confession: I am a consensus-style manager. The only time I've been fired on a project was a case where my manager judged he needed somebody to crack heads to get the project done. It was painful personally but I think he made the correct decision.)
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finaliteration 8y ago
I just put in my notice at my current job (which I’ve only had for six months) due to an abusive boss. I’ve always been great at my job, received a lot of praise for my work, and generally felt motivated to give and do way more than was asked. Not at this job. My manager’s behavior and attitude totally dragged me down and I’ve been the least motivated I’ve ever been. I’ve been depressed and stressed and basically shut down at work. Because of that, I’m going back to an old job to work for a manager who was much more positive and supportive. The adage about employees leaving managers absolutely applies in this circumstance.
- selfselfself 8y ago
  Been there done that... and it was the best decision I made for my career. Good luck with yours!
- flashgordon 8y ago
  Hey mate. Can you share some of the behaviours (while not giving away any personal details) as that would helpful for managers and employees in better identifying it and with it?
  - finaliteration 8y ago
    Sure. Just a few things that stand out: - Constant criticism and nitpicking. Essentially I feel like nothing I do is right and even the smallest mistakes get a private Teams message about how I shouldn’t have done X, and then any apology from me is basically met with “Ok” as a response rather than any sort of empathy. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like small mistakes in a new position were never allowed. - Micromanaging and controlling. They referred to themselves as a “dictator” on more that one occasion and had a “my way or the highway” attitude. I was hired on at a senior level and essentially ended up with close to zero input on design choices, so basically I stopped giving my opinion because I knew it would always be met with being shut down. - I also felt singled out and was essentially told not to socialize in our Teams channels. This cut me off from the team quite a bit and made me feel totally isolated. I’d also try to suggest things globally so that knowledge could be shared and discussed with everyone. Again, I’d get a follow up message on Teams about how I shouldn’t be doing that and any suggestions like that need to be discussed with the manager first. That’s just a few things. Overall, it’s just a feeling of not having any autonomy and any attempts to gain any being shut down. I want to say they maybe feel threatened, but I don’t like to jump to that conclusion. Maybe it’s not yelling and screaming, but it’s a more passive-aggressive type of abuse and toxicity that in some ways digs deeper because it’s not easy to pick up on immediately or as visible.
bitL 8y ago
What would you do if you had an abusive boss in a dream workplace like Google/FB or even higher rated companies like Lightbend/JetBrains and your boss & HR teamed up on you? (Purely hypothetically/asking for a friend) Would you even have any desire to continue in tech if the "world's best company" gaslighted you and tried to destroy you? Is there any known way for an institution to detect and remove abusers given victims are afraid to talk (rightly so)? What if something really dark resurfaced from your favorite director's past? Cover it up and pretend it didn't happen?
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  Big companies like Google usually have internal mobility programs which, in my experience, work pretty well.
  - bitL 8y ago
    Do you know more about it? I am building a company and want to avoid the "kiss up" effect when I only get heavily filtered/biased info from subordinates that are afraid of being presented in bad light, and team up together to "adjust" facts, discarding innocent people in the process.
    - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
      Alas I don't know the internals of it, I'm as far from the HR department as it can be. But here's what I've noticed: - regular performance feedback, not only from the bosses, but from the peers as well. First, it gives you a good understanding of internal connections and relations. Second, it makes much harder for some bad mid-level boss to say "this guy has always been a loser": it had to be backed up by the historical evidence. - internal mobility is explicitly encouraged. Bosses know that having a one of your guys in another department improves your communication network and makes dealing with that department much easier.
goldenkey 8y ago
I have an abusive manager horror story from 2014-2015 Seattle Amazon. I opted to quit rather than being subjected to further abuse. The manager's name was Maulik Patel. He had the worst attributes you could ask for in a manager. Unsupportive, jaded, and emotionally draining. He kept threatening to fire me but never would...for something like 4 months until I said fuck it and quit. His main reasons were that I wasn't fast enough despite finishing the tickets in my sprints pretty much all the time. He had a vendetta against me for being hired to do the job he couldn't. He had flat files of libraries like jQuery and KnockoutJS and d3 committed into our repo. He used the synchronous ajax call flag to download language files...freezing every page for a quarter of a second. There was no way to upgrade all our libraries or fork them properly without undoing all of his mess. I put us on Bower for web packages and rerolled everything. He was pissed about that. Pissed I fixed his mistakes. He would say things like I am level 4 so I need to pull tickets from the next sprint when I am done with the current sprint. Fundamentally he did not understand what role management had in planning and how to do it properly without antagonizing individual contributors.. Maulik attacked team members including me with qualitatives like slow and fast. He would spread his hands like he was showing a quantity and say you are here but need to here [moves hand higher.] It was his first time as a manager. When I took the job Jeff Grote was actually signed on to be my manager..but Jeff pulled a bait and switch early into my start..sticking Maulik as a middle manager under himself. Coulda all been avoided if Jeff did me proper. When I left I sent an email to the team explaining my grievances which I felt they deserved but which is for sure unprofessional. I probably shoulda went to HR but I had heard bad things about HR at large companies. Couldnt have been worse than not getting severence or unemployment. Live and learn... Care to share any similar stories? Would probably make me feel better to hear how someone else dealt with a bad manager scenario. If not its fine. Here's an email I had sent to Jeff (his manager): Jeff, I'm coming to you about Maulik's behavior. Literally, it's so bad that even when I come home, or I'm off on weekends, I'm thinking about how to deal with the guy. It's totally unsuitable for job satisfaction. My job satisfaction isn't even reflecting the tickets I do anymore, it's literally tarnished, shit on, by the passive-agressive comments Maulik makes on the regular, he usually sticks a smiley face at the end of his insults as if that makes them less offensive. When I came onboard, the javascript and front-end workflow and ui, and code, were absolute chaos. I am not one to cry over spilled milk. I fixed 90% of it and did not insult Maulik, because I understand that it isnt productive to do so. However, I don't know why Maulik feels the need to stomp on me for what amounts to the smallest kind of things. If you look at my ticket resolving rate, I'm like a speed demon, Ashley can vouch for this. So I'm getting my job done. But either Maulik has a personality or managerial deficit, he is somewhat envious that I am doing a category of task right (front-end) that he only was shoddily able to do. Or he has no idea, is oblivious, and thinks his unelegant and critical behavior is conducive to being a good manager. And it isn't, I can tell you, based on my satisfaction and willingness to do good work. He's going against that with his continued vitriol. For example, this timezone issue. He has 100 other issues to deal with. And he chooses to spend 20 minutes researching and finding a different library than the one I used (Which he may not have found...20 minutes could end up empty handed..) Just so he can trump me. And it's a habit with Maulik. He ended up saying "This kind of research is what is expected from an Amazon engineer." All too common for me to talk to him, and then he ends up using corporate culture rhetoric to crap on me. "Andrew, most people don't last long here. A lot of people get fired. Amazon culture, you need to learn it" Intimidation tactics, dismissal of my concerns, and basically abusing the idea of Amazon culture to avoid taking personal responsibility. I really need you to step in here and deal with Maulik. He's a new manager and is showing it. A good manager is supposed to improve the teams efficiency, correct? He's actually making me not want to work, because of the amount of vitriol I get for performing well. It's anti-correlated. It's negative reinforcement.

96 points by EndXA 8y ago

Pity that it takes research to state the obvious. Pity that unless specific well defined behaviour is explicitly penalized, bullies will continue with it - with poker face and shrugging on any attempt to call out their abusive practices.

deleted 8y ago
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erentz 8y ago

What is a workable solution to this problem? How does a company prevent it? In the US if you're working under a bully, you can't really call them out because they'll punish you, you can't go to HR because they'll defend the bully and you'll be poisoned now in the eyes of other managers. You can't go to your skip level, because they're permitting the behavior, and if they're not then (too often) you'll be the lone voice saying this as everyone else is afraid and just wants to keep their jobs. So the skip level just assumes you're the problem. And so on.

pram 8y ago
All true. The only winning move is not to play (quit)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
oceanghost 8y ago
Bullying in most cases is a business strategy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- hinkley 8y ago
  See also Amazon. I’ve heard too many stories and seen it first hand (it didn’t work on me, but they sure tried). I’m pretty worried about the future of software in Seattle. So many new grads learning bad habits and then moving on to other companies. It’s a lot to unlearn.
  - pkaye 8y ago
    My college friend told me about his terrible experience working in Amazon AWS. This was not a developer position and he has degrees from major universities and solid prior experiences. The experience was so degrading he quit after a few months and took some time off to recoup. He is now much happier working somewhere out of tech industry.
    - hinkley 8y ago
      Yeah I meant to point out that the form of bullying seems to be shame based rather than intimidation. But I count them both as bullying. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words hurt the worst.
    - natalyarostova 8y ago
      I wish Amazon had a better way for teams or projects to fail gracefully. Part of the companies strategy/competitive advantage is the ability to quickly spin up new projects/teams in a decentralized way. However, that also means lots will fail -- which is fine. But then for the individual managers on those teams, they often become stressed, toxic, and bully their subordinates.
  - bitcoinmoney 8y ago
    Can you provide more details about how it didn’t work for you? Just want to learn how you handled it
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
You keep a file with all the bullying (dates, emails, anyone else in the room, etc). Collect all that then plan your exit. During your exit interview explain the bullying and give them a copy of the file. Be polite and professional. You’ll be burning bridges, but you don’t wanna go back.
- moomin 8y ago
  Let’s be frank, quite often not only do HR know, they’ve been actively protecting these people for years.
  - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    I realize that. What they may not know is how many people have left directly because of that bad manager.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >During your exit interview explain the bullying and give them a copy of the file. If it gets to the point where I'm quitting because of it, why would I bother giving them the record of evidence? Why would I want to improve the organization that I am leaving? Put explicitly, if the work culture is such that I don't have reasonable avenues to improve the situation without quitting (e.g. via HR and skip level), then I really don't care to help them out when I've given up hope for them. If they want to improve, they should set it up such that the only way to improve is by employees quitting. People usually don't quit capriciously. It's a tough decision, and a lot of work to find a desirable alternative job. I don't want to give them charity on my way out, especially if they've wasted a significant amount of my off-work time looking for a job.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Maybe you like some of your co-workers, or maybe you just want to leave a better situation for the next person. Some folks just don't like entropy. Frankly, I don't think it would do any good at all anyway. HR will just ignore it, and some damn fool might decide to call you a troublemaker later on. HR does love its status quo.
revenge 8y ago
Leak video evidence. This is only going to keep getting worse unless we make examples out of them.
- ummonk 8y ago
  Two party audio recording laws need to be repealed. Especially in the #metoo era. People need to be able to document abusive or illegal behavior without breaking the law.
captainbland 8y ago
Trade unionism springs to mind. If the hierarchy is broken, you've got to organise against it. Yes you can quit and join somewhere else, but if the behaviour is actually spreading then eventually you're going to run out of good employers to work for. The only other thing is the company pushing an anti-bullying drive from the very top level with a shakeup of the management structure to break up any structures which keep the behaviour in place, but that's unlikely if the company believes that management bullying is either a non-issue or actively condones it (perhaps because they believe that the bullying behaviour keeps workers in line).
honkycat 8y ago
Get a new job, unfortunately. I worked at a place where the CTO churned the entire staff twice in two years. He was a pathetic asshole, came from a wealthy background and waltzed into the executive class. He got hired and fired me so he could hire his friends. ( Which was honestly a good call, they needed a senior angular developer and I was a DevOps / Back-end engineer making it work. ) But what he said when he fired me has stuck with me ever since: "We have a different definition of what quality is. You no longer work here." I have excelled at most of the jobs I have held. This dude's rudeness absolutely blew my mind. He still works there. I'm sure he is doing well. The executive class never pay for their mistakes, only us lowly workers.
adrianmonk 8y ago
How does a company prevent it? Don't promote bullies to management. If it's true that it hurts performance, then it's irrational even from a self-interested business perspective, and you are just shooting yourself in the foot.
muttled 8y ago
I suppose you could leave a review somewhere like GlassDoor? You're not allowed to single out bosses, but detailing the culture could help someone else from making the same mistake, and can force the company to change their ways if it's preventing them from hiring good people.

vermooten 8y ago

In other breaking news: the Pope is a Catholic.

Panino 8y ago

> abusive supervision, which is becoming increasingly common in workplaces, said Liu-Qin Yang, the study's co-author That abuse is increasing might be less obvious than the conclusion in the article link text. Good to have data on both of course. My wife currently works for a place with a new senior director, a malevolently toxic psychopath. Her direct supervisor's hair has gone from brown to grey in only a couple months, and from conversation it sounds like yearly employee turnover has increased from maybe 10% to around 90%. This is impacting my wife's health and happiness, so I'm encouraging her not to give customary 2 weeks notice after getting a new job. I think the circumstances warrant it. As an aside, Wim Hof Method breathing has made an incredible difference for both of us and I feel so fortunate to have come across it during this challenging time. It makes stress management so much easier, while the nice things are so much brighter and more joyful.

kokokokoko 8y ago
I'd also be curious about the criteria for "abuse" and "bullying". I imagine there are technical definitions but I did not see any in the abstract. I've found there is massive deviation between what co-workers I've worked with define those personally as. To the level where one might consider a behavior helpful and uplifting and another would consider that identical behavior abusive and emotionally crushing.
- moomin 8y ago
  Hint: if a worker perceives it as bullying, it probably is. It’s the responsibility of those in charge not to behave that way. The fact that people exhibit variance is part of the job of being a good manager. Bottom line: if you’re being described as an abusive boss, you’re bad at your job. And you don’t get to take credit for the amazing work that may be being done below you by people who are professionals despite your behaviour.
  - cma 8y ago
    > Bottom line: if you’re being described as an abusive boss, you’re bad at your job. There is such a thing as highly over-sensitive people. There are people who suffer from things like high paranoia, and their paranoia will often be directed at any authority figures in their life. I think you should have left things at "probably".

kram8 8y ago

Who would need a study to state the obvious? In which Universe is a bullying boss help a company? The only example that comes to my mind is when a corporation wants to reduce workforce but doesn’t want to pay severance pay. But this puts people’s health at risk and who in his right mind could want this? I’m working for a SaaS company who takes very much care of its employees and I’m asking myself if I am just naive...

sgillen 8y ago
Even if something seems obvious to you it’s still best to verify it rigorously. From a cynical point of view a bullying boss might be able to extract more working hours out of employees, or get them to upsell products at places like Best Buy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- noir_lord 8y ago
  Absolutely, 'What everyone knows' has been so frequently wrong throughout history, a few people get ill and suddenly that harmless old lady who lives alone outside the village is on the bonfire... Humans are terrible at attributing cause and effect without a rigourous way of reproducing it.
simple_phrases 8y ago
Abusive people act abusively because it often gets them what they want at the expense of everything else. An abusive boss might get increased productivity from their subordinates in the short term at the long term expense of the organization itself.
hodgesrm 8y ago
> In which Universe is a bullying boss help a company? It is interesting that this question is not studied in a more systematic way. There are situations where having a 'thug' manager is the most effective approach to getting good outcomes. For instance, the same personality that is hard on reports can be very effective in standing up to customers. Viewed from the perspective of the company as a whole, this might be a reasonable economic trade-off, which explains why such a management style would be tolerated. (Confession: I am a consensus-style manager. The only time I've been fired on a project was a case where my manager judged he needed somebody to crack heads to get the project done. It was painful personally but I think he made the correct decision.)

deleted 8y ago

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finaliteration 8y ago

I just put in my notice at my current job (which I’ve only had for six months) due to an abusive boss. I’ve always been great at my job, received a lot of praise for my work, and generally felt motivated to give and do way more than was asked. Not at this job. My manager’s behavior and attitude totally dragged me down and I’ve been the least motivated I’ve ever been. I’ve been depressed and stressed and basically shut down at work. Because of that, I’m going back to an old job to work for a manager who was much more positive and supportive. The adage about employees leaving managers absolutely applies in this circumstance.

selfselfself 8y ago
Been there done that... and it was the best decision I made for my career. Good luck with yours!
flashgordon 8y ago
Hey mate. Can you share some of the behaviours (while not giving away any personal details) as that would helpful for managers and employees in better identifying it and with it?
- finaliteration 8y ago
  Sure. Just a few things that stand out: - Constant criticism and nitpicking. Essentially I feel like nothing I do is right and even the smallest mistakes get a private Teams message about how I shouldn’t have done X, and then any apology from me is basically met with “Ok” as a response rather than any sort of empathy. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like small mistakes in a new position were never allowed. - Micromanaging and controlling. They referred to themselves as a “dictator” on more that one occasion and had a “my way or the highway” attitude. I was hired on at a senior level and essentially ended up with close to zero input on design choices, so basically I stopped giving my opinion because I knew it would always be met with being shut down. - I also felt singled out and was essentially told not to socialize in our Teams channels. This cut me off from the team quite a bit and made me feel totally isolated. I’d also try to suggest things globally so that knowledge could be shared and discussed with everyone. Again, I’d get a follow up message on Teams about how I shouldn’t be doing that and any suggestions like that need to be discussed with the manager first. That’s just a few things. Overall, it’s just a feeling of not having any autonomy and any attempts to gain any being shut down. I want to say they maybe feel threatened, but I don’t like to jump to that conclusion. Maybe it’s not yelling and screaming, but it’s a more passive-aggressive type of abuse and toxicity that in some ways digs deeper because it’s not easy to pick up on immediately or as visible.

bitL 8y ago

What would you do if you had an abusive boss in a dream workplace like Google/FB or even higher rated companies like Lightbend/JetBrains and your boss & HR teamed up on you? (Purely hypothetically/asking for a friend) Would you even have any desire to continue in tech if the "world's best company" gaslighted you and tried to destroy you? Is there any known way for an institution to detect and remove abusers given victims are afraid to talk (rightly so)? What if something really dark resurfaced from your favorite director's past? Cover it up and pretend it didn't happen?

AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
Big companies like Google usually have internal mobility programs which, in my experience, work pretty well.
- bitL 8y ago
  Do you know more about it? I am building a company and want to avoid the "kiss up" effect when I only get heavily filtered/biased info from subordinates that are afraid of being presented in bad light, and team up together to "adjust" facts, discarding innocent people in the process.
  - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
    Alas I don't know the internals of it, I'm as far from the HR department as it can be. But here's what I've noticed: - regular performance feedback, not only from the bosses, but from the peers as well. First, it gives you a good understanding of internal connections and relations. Second, it makes much harder for some bad mid-level boss to say "this guy has always been a loser": it had to be backed up by the historical evidence. - internal mobility is explicitly encouraged. Bosses know that having a one of your guys in another department improves your communication network and makes dealing with that department much easier.

goldenkey 8y ago

I have an abusive manager horror story from 2014-2015 Seattle Amazon. I opted to quit rather than being subjected to further abuse. The manager's name was Maulik Patel. He had the worst attributes you could ask for in a manager. Unsupportive, jaded, and emotionally draining. He kept threatening to fire me but never would...for something like 4 months until I said fuck it and quit. His main reasons were that I wasn't fast enough despite finishing the tickets in my sprints pretty much all the time. He had a vendetta against me for being hired to do the job he couldn't. He had flat files of libraries like jQuery and KnockoutJS and d3 committed into our repo. He used the synchronous ajax call flag to download language files...freezing every page for a quarter of a second. There was no way to upgrade all our libraries or fork them properly without undoing all of his mess. I put us on Bower for web packages and rerolled everything. He was pissed about that. Pissed I fixed his mistakes. He would say things like I am level 4 so I need to pull tickets from the next sprint when I am done with the current sprint. Fundamentally he did not understand what role management had in planning and how to do it properly without antagonizing individual contributors.. Maulik attacked team members including me with qualitatives like slow and fast. He would spread his hands like he was showing a quantity and say you are here but need to here [moves hand higher.] It was his first time as a manager. When I took the job Jeff Grote was actually signed on to be my manager..but Jeff pulled a bait and switch early into my start..sticking Maulik as a middle manager under himself. Coulda all been avoided if Jeff did me proper. When I left I sent an email to the team explaining my grievances which I felt they deserved but which is for sure unprofessional. I probably shoulda went to HR but I had heard bad things about HR at large companies. Couldnt have been worse than not getting severence or unemployment. Live and learn... Care to share any similar stories? Would probably make me feel better to hear how someone else dealt with a bad manager scenario. If not its fine. Here's an email I had sent to Jeff (his manager): Jeff, I'm coming to you about Maulik's behavior. Literally, it's so bad that even when I come home, or I'm off on weekends, I'm thinking about how to deal with the guy. It's totally unsuitable for job satisfaction. My job satisfaction isn't even reflecting the tickets I do anymore, it's literally tarnished, shit on, by the passive-agressive comments Maulik makes on the regular, he usually sticks a smiley face at the end of his insults as if that makes them less offensive. When I came onboard, the javascript and front-end workflow and ui, and code, were absolute chaos. I am not one to cry over spilled milk. I fixed 90% of it and did not insult Maulik, because I understand that it isnt productive to do so. However, I don't know why Maulik feels the need to stomp on me for what amounts to the smallest kind of things. If you look at my ticket resolving rate, I'm like a speed demon, Ashley can vouch for this. So I'm getting my job done. But either Maulik has a personality or managerial deficit, he is somewhat envious that I am doing a category of task right (front-end) that he only was shoddily able to do. Or he has no idea, is oblivious, and thinks his unelegant and critical behavior is conducive to being a good manager. And it isn't, I can tell you, based on my satisfaction and willingness to do good work. He's going against that with his continued vitriol. For example, this timezone issue. He has 100 other issues to deal with. And he chooses to spend 20 minutes researching and finding a different library than the one I used (Which he may not have found...20 minutes could end up empty handed..) Just so he can trump me. And it's a habit with Maulik. He ended up saying "This kind of research is what is expected from an Amazon engineer." All too common for me to talk to him, and then he ends up using corporate culture rhetoric to crap on me. "Andrew, most people don't last long here. A lot of people get fired. Amazon culture, you need to learn it" Intimidation tactics, dismissal of my concerns, and basically abusing the idea of Amazon culture to avoid taking personal responsibility. I really need you to step in here and deal with Maulik. He's a new manager and is showing it. A good manager is supposed to improve the teams efficiency, correct? He's actually making me not want to work, because of the amount of vitriol I get for performing well. It's anti-correlated. It's negative reinforcement.