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Half of us have quit our job because of a bad boss (2015)
- thomasjudge 7y agoIt's probably higher than that...
- harry8 7y agoBased only on anecdotal evidence (and yeah the plural of anecdote is not data) I'd sugges that figure wildy, wildly underestimated. I'm trying to think if I know /anyone/ over 35 who hasn't? Maybe, but I have to think quite hard.
- TylerE 7y agoIt's probably closer to 100%. People quit bosses, not jobs.
- noitsnot 7y agoThat's a nice meme from LinkedIn but I'm sure there a few other reasons including a better paycheck, flexibility, or even benefits.
- ryandrake 7y ago> paycheck, flexibility, or even benefits At many, many companies, your manager directly decides or at least influences all three of these, so if you quit due to them, you're also quitting because of your manager.
- majormajor 7y agoFew direct managers have the ability to give you a raise that a new employer would, in cases where you're being underpaid relative to the market. They also rarely have much influence over work flexibility or benefits.
- steelframe 7y ago> Few direct managers have the ability to give you a raise that a new employer would I'm usually very up-front with my reports on this. I make it very clear that I cannot compete with other companies on an immediate short-term compensation bump, so if they prioritize "money now" over everything else, then they should go out and interview. However in the four years that I was a manager at my previous company, nobody on my team ever took me up on the advice to switch companies to get more money faster.
- const_throwaway 7y ago>immediate short-term compensation bump Did you believe you could deliver better long term compensation? This phrasing suggests that, it's a clever way to suggest something without promising it.
- steelframe 7y ago> Did you believe you could deliver better long term compensation? Usually, but not always. Of course it's impossible to predict 4+ years into the future, because so many factors can come into play on that time scale.
- emeraldd 7y agoExternal forces (spouse moving, money, other life changes) would be the other big factors. It's going to come down on one side of that fence or the other.
- JohnFen 7y agoThat's a cute saying, but it's not a universal truth. I have quit bosses before. But I have also quit jobs where I had excellent bosses before, because the job (or the company) had problems.
- ergothus 7y agoIt also depends on how the question is asked. I've left jobs where I respected my manager...but not someone higher up the chain. At least once the manager left almost immediately after I did, for the same reasons.
- jghn 7y agoThis is a good point. I’ve never left due to a direct manager but definitely have left due to leadership above them
- mcv 7y agoI haven't. I was once fired because of my idiot boss. I didn't quit. Maybe I should have, but getting fired meant I could fight it just enough to get some severance pay out of it. He fired me the day I returned from a month long illness. Before that, he was sometimes annoyed he saw me leaning back while watching my scripts write my code for me. None of the jobs I quit were because of my boss. One was because I really needed to do something more interesting than maintaining a bunch of legacy sites. One where I volunteered to get fired was because I wanted to start my own company.
- grahamburger 7y agoI've never quit because of a manager. Maybe I'm just lucky. I've been able to work reasonably well with all of my managers, even the ones who saw things very differently from how I do. I've only ever quit a company because I had a better offer and they wouldn't match it.
- Bootwizard 7y agoI left my very first job out of college because of it. I think you're probably right. I'm glad I got it out of the way early, I'm a few years into my next job now and loving it.
- apple4ever 7y agoI think all of the jobs I've left since I graduated College 15 years ago were because of managers, except the very first one.
- eledumb 7y agoNot everyone has the freedom to quit their job, small towns, limited skill sets, transportation issues, family issues, etc. etc. etc, otherwise the number would probably be at 75%.
- mattsfrey 7y agoWould likely be 100 if you remove all factors keeping somebody from quitting a job.
- ISL 7y agoOnly if all bosses are bad :).
- mjfl 7y agoBut what if all employees are humans. And like humans, they are irrational in their criteria of what makes a boss "good". For example, they want bosses that never demand work from them and let them go home early every day. Even if they get this, their standards will adjust and they will take the same level of issue with smaller things. Being a boss and attempting to be liked by your employees is a lost cause and foolish endeavor.
- raihansaputra 7y agoBut this is not true. If this is true no reputable company would have employees staying >3 years. If you're hired at a reputable company >1 year, chances are you do get offers or you have a greater chance to get it. Good bosses are rare, but they do exist.
- WalterSear 7y agoI've had a number of great bosses, whose example I attempt to emulate in all my interactions - with both subordinates and superiors.
- lnsru 7y agoMy 3/4 bosses as intern were great. One guy was really incompetent, but he got me when the manager, who hired me, quit. So it’s almost ok. After graduation the quality of managers varied greatly. There was a guy with 20 yeas experience, who took my mentoring very seriously. He fired me when I started my own company. Good decision actually! A boss before him was a great narcissist, if I were smarter, I would be able to play him and got higher. Not really the one to run from. Then there was a bunch of old dudes (totally incompetent) building big corp’s first electronics. They had no experience in the field and were really annoying. I quit. There was small company later with whole family in management: 2 sons, dad and mom. And a 2nd engineer. It was a part time position, so I was able to stay and suffer. No chance to stay with them for a 5 day workweek. My current manager is very restrictive. I can do things only old good way, all cost saving efforts and innovations are not needed. Heck, I could save company my early salary dozen times, but all the ideas were rejected.
- ska 7y agoThat seems surprisingly low.
- rdiddly 7y agoThe other half doesn't want it to somehow get back to their old manager, that they left to escape them!
- sarcasmatwork 7y agoLast job was because of low pay and bad leadership. Fortunate I was able to move internally to another group with a pay increase.
- sys_64738 7y agoI remember asking my manager to stop talking over me in a con-call. I was gone within a month
- gamesbrainiac 7y agoI quit my job because of my manager. There was a policy of instilling fear to gain control. There was also a push to reduce remote work in the company despite the said remote teams performing well. I quit because the manager was incompetent, but also because the policy was one of instilling fear into employees.
- x220 7y agoHow did they instill fear?
- gamesbrainiac 7y agoSalami tactics. - Reduce flexibility over time - Every expense needs to be justified a hundred times - delaying approval of vacation days to the point that you take a vacation, and it is still not approved - Adding unnecessary process where none is required - Adding compromised people to the team (limited contract, needs the job desperately, needs a raise for kid's education etc) - Strict butts-on-seats policy - Constantly saying that we are going to remove technology <x>, where <x> is what you are hired for. Company will still need <x> for the foreseeable future. And there are more, but I don't want to re-live dark moments. I hope no one actually tries to implement this stuff, because it shows that your manager is a control-freak, and you need to run for the hills.
- x220 7y agoYou might be interested in reading this: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/10/14/the-gervais-principle-v-heads-i-win-tails-you-lose/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/10/14/the-gervais-principle-...
- gamesbrainiac 7y agoThat is very long, what is the TLDR?
- 7y ago
- vwuon 7y agoThat's cool because it means you can actually do that if your manager is bad. In some countries there are no jobs so all you can do about having a bad manager is... nothing.
- standardUser 7y agoThat is true in the US for a lot of people, and it was especially true during the recession. The fact that we've been in a situation where most skilled workers can easily job hop for that last 5 or so years is an aberration, not the norm! And frankly, we should probably take advantage of the situation while we still can.
- JohnFen 7y ago> The fact that we've been in a situation where most skilled workers can easily job hop for that last 5 or so years is an aberration, not the norm Are you talking about workers in general, or software development in particular? In software development, I don't remember a time in the last three decades where a skilled dev couldn't find other employment with relatively little trouble. Of course, in some periods it was easier than in others.
- const_throwaway 7y agoI was a dishwasher/line cook in my 20's, I could hop jobs on a dime. Got fired one Friday, and had a better paying job Monday and that was in 2008. I wasn't even that good.
- BurningFrog 7y agoAlso some jobs makes it very costly to quit. Like if you have tenure at a University or are in public union. Seems to me those jobs also often have really bad personal chemistry.
- m00dy 7y agoThere are a lot of people over 40 in tech and some of them are ignorant. They try to manage something they don't know or can't fully understand. I think that's one of the reasons.
- sosborn 7y agoThis is not limited to the tech sphere, nor is it limited to people over 40. It’s actually really simple. Some people are great managers and some are awful. You know only know where people fall in that spectrum once they have been given a chance to perform those duties.
- JohnFen 7y agoAge has nothing to do with that.
- Infinitesimus 7y agoThat ageism is unnecessary here. You could equally say there are a lot of people under 40 and a lot of them are ignorant and do not understand business goals. Experience is a pretty good teacher in a lot of cases and a good manager must handle the balance between their own knowledge limits and learning how to enable their team effectively use their varying skills to deliver results.
- GoToRO 7y agoHow is that ageism? the older you are the more experience one would expect you to have. If you are over 40 and you learned nothing then what did you do? Younger people that have no experience... well that's to be expected.
- Guthur 7y agoIf you enjoy your work then the next thing that's going to likely drive you from your job is a human factor and which human will you consistently have to interact with, your manager. And so it does in some way stand to reason. Also as a middle manager I can relate to some of the struggles. You will have potentially competing points of view from what your team would like to do and what the company wants them to do. But also as an additional point of view. As a manager you may have worked your way up the hierarchy learning your craft and honing your skills. Unfortunately very few of these may actually relate to management but at some point you reach that level of seniority and then the company says "here's a team, I'm sure you'll be fine" and leaves it at that very little training or coaching you just now have to learn on the job. Unfortunately unwinding mistakes at a managerial level is very difficult because it invariably had that human component and sometimes we struggle to forgive and forget.
- digsy 7y ago>Unfortunately very few of these may actually relate to management but at some point you reach that level of seniority and then the company says "here's a team, I'm sure you'll be fine" and leaves it at that very little training or coaching you just now have to learn on the job. Thats my experience. Being a manager of role x is not the same as being in role x. Becoming a manager is a career change.
- steelframe 7y agoCan we get a (2015) tag on this?
- annoyingnoob 7y agoI've left jobs for two reasons: 1. I got a much better offer, unsolicited 2. The company had no future, which maybe is due to management but not a particular manager.
- rexpop 7y agoManagerial abuse is endemic to industry. It's simply in the businesses medium-term favor to 1) punish employees for exercising freedoms, 2) instill fear, and 3) reify management's power fantasies. It's like any abusive relationship[1], only compounded by the profit motive. > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ― Upton Sinclair 1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/224552.Why_Does_He_Do_That_ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/224552.Why_Does_He_Do_Th...
- shadowtree 7y agoSure, but it takes two to tango. Humans are great in selective memories, post-facto rationalizing their own failings. Once you've been a manager you'll understand the other side of this.
- rgoulter 7y agoI think good people try to take responsibility for themselves before blaming others. So, yeah. But the manager has more power than subordinates, so it's not quite symmetric. -- I don't often hear of managers leaving because of bad subordinates.
- sorum 7y agoFunny how little things change. In their 1999 book "First, Break All the Rules", Gallup laid out their findings from over 1M interviews that: - People join companies for the vision, brand, comp etc...but they leave because of their direct manager - The direct manager determines how long an employee stays and how productive he/she is during their tenure The 2 main parts of the book look at: a) how you attract and retain the most talented employees, what things matter to them the most (compensation didn't make the cut) b) traits of great managers Book still holds up, worth a read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50937.First_Break_All_the_Rules https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50937.First_Break_All_th...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jmpman 7y agoI’ve quit because my boss didn’t have the political clout to protect our team from the expected next wave of corporate mandated layoffs.
- leftyted 7y agoClearly there are bad bosses. But there are also bad employees and a good boss probably seems like a bad boss to a bad employee.
- notadoc 7y agoThere are tons of horrible managers (and horrible employees) out there, do your best to avoid them.
- cmdshiftf4 7y agoThe definition of a "bad" boss is totally subjective and at the mercy of an individual's motivations at a given point in time. Some bosses are bad in a sense that they conduct or behave themselves in ways that transgress laws, but they'd be a minority of those deemed "bad".
- baldfat 7y ago"People leave managers, not companies" https://getlighthouse.com/blog/people-leave-managers-not-companies/ https://getlighthouse.com/blog/people-leave-managers-not-com...
- kentbrew 7y agoKey passage from my last two letters of resignation: "There is exactly one person in the world who is allowed to speak to me in that tone of voice, and I am MARRIED TO THAT PERSON."
- quantified 7y agoI hadn’t ever until recently. Openly hostile and toxic specifically towards me. Not my imagination, co-workers would periodically come up to me and ask me what her problem was with me. There is a company culture that protects bad behavior from the few bad actors. One bad boss was stronger than 40+ great coworkers.
- aitchnyu 7y agoI wish we talked more about being boiled slowly. I quit on the spot when the boss called a meeting of all 30 employees to replace my code with his, while being connected to a projector. But for months, I've believed my coding skills could help me outdo his favourite two and win some freedom. I'm so thankful for the last incident as the wakeup call. The other board members I never met (yes he was CTO) promised he will be kicked out. They removed my two month notice period (minimum for India).