13 ms·

Clues to identify a destructive leader

259 points by BossingAround 6y ago

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
While destructive leaders and psychopaths / sociopaths in the workplace are critical issues, this article is hot garbage in the same way that you can’t quote DSM narcissism disorder traits at people you don’t like and you can’t use Myers Briggs descriptions like horoscopes. The defining characteristics are all so subjective (what does “extreme” external image mean? who says?) and so vague (what is gossiping vs actually describing real organizational problems? what if a middle manager really is being bullied or unsupported and they have to defend that certain things really aren’t their fault?) as to be useless and dangerous, because you can read into this and see anyone as a “destructive leader” if you are motivated to. There’s no basis in systematic rules or data.
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  I think the article is useless as well. BUT, personality DOES play a large role in determining the effectiveness of someone as a leader. More to the point, personality and the discernment of its characteristics and consequences is an intrinsically subjective thing. You will not find clearly actionable data nor systematic rules for figuring this stuff out. That subjectivity doesn't stop people from trying to quantify this stuff, like for example, those insipid HR-driven DISC personality surveys and workshops. Some folks dive into minutia about Myers-Briggs classification. There's grains of truth in all these approaches, but it never works the way it was intended. HR departments and individuals aren't psychometric professionals, and even if they were, what they could actually use this for in a workplace isn't at all clear even in the best case scenario. IMHO, the way you identify a destructive leadership pattern is by having experienced it before (as well as its opposite), by being mindful of your interactions with others and with organizational politics, and being self-critical of your own reactions to it. None of that is easy, It can't be learned in advance. It takes experience, trial and error.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    I agree it’s much more of an experience judgment. The real harm of poor quality “checklist psychology” articles like this one is that uninformed HR or aggrieved employees will treat it with too much respect and legitimacy, meanwhile the actual psychopath or destructive leader is going to get out in front of this and start disingenuously saying other people are destructive leaders and cut off their credibility to push back or undermine the psycho’s authority. For example, if you see a high ranking leader trying to deflect valid criticism of their choices by saying “assume positive intent” you can be sure this is happening. “Assume positive intent” is a siren call of a destructive leader because the plan is to reframe their challenger’s valid criticisms in an “us vs them” abstract debate about who is or isn’t acting in good faith, completely tabling the merits of the argument out of scope. The genius of it is that “assume positive intent” allows you to sidestep the usual reputation hit you would take for making something “us vs them” - basically “assume positive intent” is HR-permitted code for framing us-vs-them blame to sabotage otherwise legitimate criticisms of leadership - “criticism” itself becomes politically disallowed. Articles like this one act like legitimizers for that kind of stuff, since it’s all just vague, fluffy pop-psychology statements that could virtually apply to any coworker whether their situation is legitimate or they are being a destructive leader or they are just having a bad week.
    - tilt365 6y ago
      Appreciate your perspectives and happy to share the many years of research we have conducted. We have been sharing the positive version of this scientific model based on 12 character strengths for years and have some awesome tech clients who have used it for years. This is the first time we have shared the pathological version during this election. Great leaders choose to take responsibility for their negative impact and commit to growth. We help people choose that every day and have served many great tech leaders startups and companies. Of course there is a LOT of detail not included in this short blog. If you are interested we will post more here about the science and positive version. Pam
      - andreilys 6y ago
fogetti 6y ago
Similarly applicable alternative title: "How to identify brainy smurf who writes articles starting with "How to identify..."" And also: "How to identify everyone based on their childhood dilemma" Hard to take this article seriously. I thought that we have already passed this kind of cheap pseudo-freudian psychoanalysis a long time ago.
- itronitron 6y ago
  Also the writing is all over the place even within individual paragraphs.
- otaviokz 6y ago
  Amen! Taking a common perception and wrapping it in a lot of cheap psychoanalysis (without even providing references) belongs somewhere else.
  - tilt365 6y ago
    Would you like to review the psychometrics? Happy to share?
caiobegotti 6y ago
If you ever consider taking a leadership or management role please do yourself plus the people around looking up to you a favor and go to fucking psycotherapy. It's far more important than your technical skills (since you should be pretty senior by then anyway).
- kodisha 6y ago
  Care to elaborate?
  - 55555 6y ago
    Off the top of my head: No one likes dealing with a boss who lets their emotions overflow into the workplace and takes their personal issues out on their staff. That's just one of many ways therapy can help you be a better manager.
  - sz4kerto 6y ago
    In my experience, most of good management is about figuring out why am I not doing the right thing (as a manager). Knowing what needs to be done is much easier than actually doing it. Example: giving feedback is notoriously hard, even if it's really clear what the issues are. Promotion is also hard (you have to choose who to promote and who to not promote), and most of the time you do know the right choice but you might not be able to call it for personal reasons. So yes, if you happen to manage people, spend a LOT of effort on self-reflection. Go to a coach, therapist, go to courses where they let you practice and where you get feedback. Whatever works for you, just keep investing. Also, don't worry if the coach, course, therapist is imperfect.
    - user5994461 6y ago
      >>> Promotion is also hard (you have to choose who to promote and who to not promote) Promotion is hard because as a manager you don't have the power to promote. There's HR on top of the organization deciding every year that there's no budget for raises and no slots for promotions. When you're finally allowed to promote someone for real, after many years of tenure, the 10% raise is pale compared to what they could get by joining a new company.
mt42or 6y ago
Something is weird with this article, it's like the main goal is to care about employee only to make the entreprise successful.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  it's like the main goal is to care about employee only to make the entreprise successful. This is just how business works. It's how market (and many non-market) economies work. It's how much of human society is structured. Also, sometimes people need external motivation. "You are a jerk and you need to stop being a jerk" is not enough sometimes. This happens in many contexts, not just the workplace.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Caring about the employees and making the enterprise successful can be one in the same. That’s the point. Businesses require success and profit to continue to exist. There’s no point in pretending that what the business does isn’t ultimately motivated by profit. I know there’s a trend to pretend that companies are doing things for selfless reasons or purely to do good things for their employees, but that’s usually obscuring a hidden profit motive (increase recruiting, motivate employees to work harder, create goodwill among customers). It’s better when the companies are simply honest about their intentions.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  The #1 job of any manager (and employee), as far as the company is concerned, is to represent/forward the goals of the corporation. "forward the goals of the corporation" can mean a lot of things. As any parent knows, it's dangerous to let kids have everything the want. Same with pets. If you let your dog eat all your chocolate chip cookies, I hope you have an animal emergency room nearby. Same with a corporation. In one or two cases, I deliberately took a risk, and disobeyed orders/policies, because I knew that they would be eating chocolate chip cookies. That's a big risk, because there's usually quite a bit more behind policies and orders than an individual can see, and what I did could have been destructive. I am happy to report that these were not destructive, but it isn't a practice that I can recommend. But "forward the goals of the corporation" can also be in direct conflict with the goals of the employee, which, if they are healthy, may start with things like "my kids, my spouse, etc." Balance needs to be had, and it's a mistake to look to a corporation to provide that balance. Usually, the best source of balance is the direct-report manager. They need to be "in tune" with their employees, and be able to negotiate the competing priorities. In any case, a manager that puts their own, personal goals ahead of those of the corporation, and of their employees is (IMNSHO) negligent in their duties. I was a manager for 25 years. I think I did a decent job of it, and I kept senior-level employees for decades (not an exaggeration -when they finally wound up my team, after 27 years, the employee with the least tenure had ten years). My experience, is that whenever I have discussed my philosophies and methodology, I'm attacked for either being a "wimp" (other managers), or being "two-faced" (other employees). None of these attacks have come from people that have actually worked with/for me. When I became a manager, I assumed a different role. I had to make the commitment to put aside my personal aspirations, in favor of those of the corporation, then my employees. My own goals came behind those. But that was just my experience. YMMV.
xbar 6y ago
Lost me at genetics.
- SCHiM 6y ago
  Indeed. This is what the people at less wrong mean when they talk about "semantic stop signs". Words to make you stop thinking, and accept the argument as given: "Some people are dominant destructive bosses because of genetics, m'kay?" The whole argument falls apart when you realize the author, and nobody really, understands the relationship between your behavior and your genetics enough to conclude anything at all.
- Quarrelsome 6y ago
  I thought the explanations described childhood outcomes that encouraged the tendencies?
  - CravingLogic 6y ago
    Those certainly create a nice narrative.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  You think that domineering, alpha, type A people are not more or less born that way?
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    Nature vs. Nurture is very much not a settled argument. Although if anything, recent understanding in epigenetics movers the needle a bit more in the "nurture" direction.
  - seventhtiger 6y ago
    The interaction surface between genetics and physiology itself is very complex and not well understood. The interaction surface between physiology and behavior is just as complex and not well understood. It's not that we will never find any gene that affects behavior. We have, and we will. But to draw any big picture conclusion outside the scope of those specific findings is wild and decades if not centuries early.
code4tee 6y ago
If you’ve ever been in a company with a toxic leader you can relate. It will literally destroy everything in the company. The toxic leader usually thinks everyone else is the problem, causing them to double down. It’s a vicious cycle that’s destroyed many companies.
- fredley 6y ago
  This hits home. I've worked with leaders on two seperate extremes of the axes presented. In one case literally everyone of the bullet points was true. I wish I could have read this before then.
- Angostura 6y ago
  I've been at a company 6 years, I was thinking of leaving because I'd achived pretty much all I could in the role. In September a new CEO joined. Having listened to their plans, I was excited, new ideas, a firm direction. I decided to stay a month later, I resigned. They were a bully who perceived any geniuine question as a challenge. Good people, coming out of meetings trying not to cry. I was coming out of meetings feeling like I was being beaten up. My last day is next Thursday. People keep telling me how envious they are of me. I'm feeling guilt for leaving them in the lurch.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    > I'm feeling guilt for leaving them in the lurch. You are not making their lives any worse. Most likely you don't even have that kind of power.
    - to11mtm 6y ago
      If it's a strong enough feeling, that's probably another sign of abuse from the employer.
  - otaviokz 6y ago
    The feeling of guilt is, unfortunately, normal. Just try to keep in mind you didn't really do nothing wrong, and it will help overcoming it faster.
runawaybottle 6y ago
I want to add my own advice. You remember that culture fit part of the interview that every company does? It’s never about finding out if your young dumb and ready to fuck. It’s about are you willing to put up with a certain management style. That’s the job offer, you are being offered money to be able to professionally handle their people system. If you are okay with handling it, you can work there. Things that will help probe in that phase of the interview: - Ask about deadlines. - Ask about requirements, how much do they have, how often they change, who makes the final call, how are they scoped initially, how involved are the stakeholders. - Beyond unit testing, how is QA handled, how is user acceptance testing handled, how does all of this affect timelines. - Ask for a roadmap, can they tell you what they plan on building in the next year. Some managers don’t share this information with their team in general, so expect a solid ‘not sure, but we have stuff promise’ type response (which gives you an answer on transparency). - Why do they need one more person on the team? Here you really want to find out their current bottlenecks. Then probe deeper and find out if the bottlenecks are a lack of labor, or systemic issues (see above bullet points). Scary answers include ‘no roadmap, and everything is on time’ - so why do you need me? - The dance with the manager at a startup could eliminate you as they are still looking for people that will put up with absolutely anything. But, they might also be ready for more process oriented people. Again, you have to signal who you are. If these things don’t matter to you, go with the ‘I eat sleep and code answer’. If you sufficiently annoyed them at the end of those questions, both you and the company will agree in a non-spoken dance that you won’t be happy in their management style. If you really really just need a check, don’t ever ask questions like that. Just say, ‘I build stuff on my spare time constantly, and I just love development, so I think this would be a great opportunity to grow’. You are signaling you are desperate and ready to fuck. Small things to consider, if you ask those questions to a regular dev on their team, you will get feedback that you might not fit (so don’t ask the team these questions). Save it for the manager, and negotiate with the unspoken dance directly. Best of luck, culture fit is definitely how the manager and you maintain healthiness, what you can put up, and what they can put up with. Even the most toxic manager has some humanity, and it is also exhausting for him/her to deal with unhappy people. Work together in the culture fit part to parse if everyone’s expectation is within reach. The end goal of all of this is you don’t walk away from the job because you didn’t know what you got yourself into. You’re an adult, go into everything with both eyes open, no crying at the end.
kebman 6y ago
Reminds me! I recently came accross this older YouTube channel, Healthy Software Developer. I found it to be quite a good source of info on everything from leadership to company culture.[1] Quite entertaining too! [1]: A Tale Of Software Development Culture Change - Gone Wrong! 18 May 2018, Healthy Software Developer https://youtu.be/yKAOMiNv-go https://youtu.be/yKAOMiNv-go
- wilburm 6y ago
  Healthy Software developer has been a great resource. It sounds clichéed but knowing you’re not alone in some of this stuff is a comfort.
tomasreimers 6y ago
How much of destructive/toxic leadership can be summed up as "puts self ahead of organization"? This post identifies 4 feelings that can lead to that. However, when I read the descriptions I picked up only two: - Arrogance: I know better than my team - Insecurity: I need to fight for myself b/c otherwise I'll lose my job / they'll realize I'm a fake Those cause the leader to put themselves ahead of their team / disregard the thoughts of their team. I suspect this condition is probably only made worse by the way our industry emphasizes the headstrong/autocratic facets of leaders (i.e. see how the media portrays Jobs, early Gates, Zuck, Dorsey, TK, Spiegel, etc.), convincing people to pursue positions of leadership for the wrong reasons: either that they finally will have final say or won't be able to be criticized. That becomes a refuge for the arrogant (wow, I'll finally have final say) and the insecure (wow, I'll finally not be able to be criticized). However, from what I can tell, leadership is more about: - Integrating other's thoughts: your job is ultimately to integrate thoughts, not necessarily to just choose your own (failing to do so results in the autocratic failure mode) - Requires vulnerability / sense-of-security: because how you integrate information/think--not just what you think--is a business asset, the business has more of a right to provide feedback there (failing to do so results in the deceptive failure mode) And something that should only be pursued / gifted once those have been worked through?
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  In a large organizations, your manager has legit deliverables he/she has to meet. Even if they try to be king shit it’s not going to matter. You only really need to analyze a startup team that is growing for the sake of growing. That’s really where the autocratic team leads will be a detriment to your mental health because they know why their team is growing, and don’t care for it. That’s where if such a person isn’t cool, you’ll get the decaying morale as a direct side effect of their entitlement, superiority and requisite insecurity. I’m going to say something ageist, even though I hate ageism. I don’t think most people are emotionally mature enough until their 30s. I think developers could be lagging in emotionally maturity by 5 years, in which case I don’t think your average developer is emotionally mature until 35. Team leads and managers need to be extremely emotionally mature, none of that ego and insecurity is useful. You need to be able to shoot someone down, and come right back and build that person back up. It takes a lot of maturity to do this and not devolve into picking favorites or hiring new people, or turning authoritarian and despotic.
mrweasel 6y ago
It can be interesting, but also draining if you’re no careful, to view these companies from the outside. I work with a client, who have the most toxic environment I’ve ever seen. The company is just a handful of people, including the CEO, and we’ve been in meetings where they are basically yelling at each other, sometimes us, trying to allocate blame. Fixing stuff is less important than identifying who is to blame. Trying to get a decision about anything is impossible, we have questions that goes unanswered for months. It frequently trivial stuff like: when do you want this script to run? Picking a date, or where is this documented (it’s not but they’ll insist it is, and we’re just to stupid to find it). It all stems from the leadership within. Their managers all have one or more of the traits in the article, and it seems to trickle down to the employees who act similarly towards people on the outside. Personally I’ve take the approach that I’m consulant, paid by the hour (because the client refuse to sign an actual contract), so I really don’t care, I’ll make any modification they want, write whatever document they need, redo anything they’re unhappy with, even if the result is worse. The main things with having these companies as clients is: * Double check everything you write, before sending it. * Have them sign of on everything, before starting the work. * Always get everything in writing. * Don’t lie, they will catch you and use it to blame you for unrelated stuff. * Don’t take it personal. * Bill by the hour.
- avg_dev 6y ago
  All I can think is that your hourly rate must be pretty high to put up with that. It's good advice for when I might need it, I suppose.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    Money helps, but you can honestly deal with alot of bullshit when your own employeer has excellent management.
    - Xylakant 6y ago
      I found that it’s much easier as a consultant, especially if you have a good boss since you always know that you can be gone tomorrow if things get to bad. And on top, people in the org have no actual way to reprimand you, they need to go via your actual boss.
benzayb 6y ago
"people leave managers not companies" Countless times I've heard or read this somewhere. Quite untrue with my experiences. Who exactly is the "manager"? the "company"? In my experience, most of my reports left because of low pay. I as their "manager" agreed that they receive an raise which is justifiable due to their output and our team's growth. But the "company" is against it. In particular the CFO. Is the CFO the "manager" then? In any case, a statement like that is almost always misleading. The article is Ok though. I just wished that statement was not there.
- gwbas1c 6y ago
  > people leave managers not companies Statements like that aren't 100% true. That being said, if everybody's leaving for money, that's a sign that you might want to look elsewhere too. You could even call up the people who you tried to get raises for when you're ready to hire.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mkl95 6y ago
I worked for one such company early in my career. I was the first hire of a batch that made the IT department 2.5x bigger. Some of the initial red flags were all the empty desks with readily available computers and multiple monitor setups, and the fact the IT manager was a guy who struggled to communicate in English or the local language. Long story short, one year after I joined all the IT department (including me) had left, with the manager being the only exception. We found out the hard way the company had a long story of hiring batches of developers and struggling to make payroll in the following months, which the CEO "fixed" by having the IT manager create a very toxic environment where people blamed each other for all sorts of things, thus distracting themselves from the elephant in the room (the company was broke and the CEO didn't care, and our manager was little more than a puppet). My main takeaways were: - Financially unsound companies are likely to have a toxic work environment. - You should look for signs of high, recent employee turnover the first time you visit your employer's offices.
- sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  My last job, I was only hired because they had recently had 3+ people quit the same day. During the interview they were telling me how they have a large staff and only expect 60-80% billing because anymore leads to burnout and how they have 'work-home balance' meetings to ensure they are good. Ya that should have been a red-flag. That stuff lasted at most a month until it ended and it went back to 'the beatings will continue until morale improves' It was super common to work 60 hour weeks, but every hour of overtime you wanted to get paid for... you had to give detailed explanation to justify why you worked so that they could bill overtime/emergency rates to the client. At my first year performance review I got scathing terrible review because our time/attendance system said I was late >40 times to work. I immediately asked which days I was late for... so my boss looks it up. Every single one of those lates was me logging in on a weekend after 9am because something was down and generally speaking the on-call person called me for help. So not necessarily that I worked 40 weekends, but saturday at 10am login and then next day at sunday at 11am would be 2 lates. Did my performance review change for the better after realizing that not only was I being awesome and working afterhours and weekends to help my coworkers and the literal only complaint against me was having been late? Nope. Not even a little.
- 6y ago
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
I notice the predominant colour of the diagram is orange. Coincidence, surely.
kderbyma 6y ago
while I get the point of these articles, I think they are little more than self-satisfying regurgitation of past experiences which went poorly. I want to see an article from the perspective of someone who realises they have these problems and what they plan to do to fix them.... identifying is not that helpful when it becomes the end result - all in all seems like clickbait.
grawprog 6y ago
I've always felt the concept of leadership is looked at the wrong way. Whether in the workplace or even in politics. Leaders are not at the top, they are the foundation of everything. A good leader is the base of the team. The foundation the team is built on. They hold the team together from the bottom. Bearing the weight of responsibility and direction. A good leader understands, their team's success is their success and their team's failure is their failure. Anything can only be as strong as the foundation that holds it together. A leader who tries to stand at the top leaves no foundation for the team to work off and instead expects the team to bear their weight. A leadership role is something that should be taken on with trepidation and the understanding that you're taking on responsibility for the people working with you. It's up to you to guide things and yes it's you that takes the blame if things don't work.
- cannabis_sam 6y ago
  > A good leader is the base of the team. The foundation the team is built on. They hold the team together from the bottom. Bearing the weight of responsibility and direction. After doing consulting for the last couple of years, I’m slowly realizing how lucky I was to have stumbled into a small company with a CEO with this approach, right after uni. He ended up writing a rudimentary, inefficient cms in java, filled with strange lispisms, but goddammit it worked as an amazing stopgap until I was available to make something more useable. That’s true leadership to me.
  - grawprog 6y ago
    I've worked for both kinds of leaders. The companies with the kind of leader I describe above were by far the better places to work. The businesses always ran more smoothly, employee turnover was low, there was never usually interpersonal issues, and when problems like that did crop up, they were always solved quickly and by the end amicably. A leader really can make or break a workplace. A good one can make any job feel good to go to, while a bad one can make the best job in the world feel like a living hell.
    - cannabis_sam 6y ago
tilt365 6y ago
Pam Boney here. Happy to provide the positive version of this framework. Based on 30 years of scientific research in character science.
- charliemil4 6y ago
  Is there a way to psychologically assess the positive version? Either a DISC or WAIS subtest score or something similar? (I assume a constructive leader?)
- burrows 6y ago
  If it takes 30 years to do something, then you’ve not actually done it.
  - playpause 6y ago
    To do what? Done what?
    - burrows 6y ago
      For all X?
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        Suppose X is "become forty years old".
        burrows 6y ago
        Everyone is dead by 29, it just takes a while for the rounding error to get sufficiently large.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    So there's no area of knowledge that can't be solved in < 30 years?
anonwithaq 6y ago
What should someone do if they've started realizing they see some of these qualities in a cofounder? Is it worth addressing it in a corrective or supportive way or are these behaviors that are unlikely to change? Edit: I should clarify I mean more of a competence/confidence issue leading to destructive behaviour, not malicious intent.
- gwbas1c 6y ago
  > I mean more of a competence/confidence issue leading to destructive behaviour, not malicious intent. I should have walked away from a co-founder in a similar situation. Short answer: Your co-founder is probably a good person. Plenty of people are good people. The qualities of running a successful startup are hard to come by, and the sooner you realize your co-founder can't do it, the sooner you should walk away. Long answer: I worked with a guy who I really hit it off with; who was a good person. But after a year I realized he was mostly letting his imagination run away, and didn't have the leadership qualities needed to design or run a startup. I should have walked away much earlier when he fundamentally misunderstood certain rules about asking the CTO to build an idea, and I should have walked away when he couldn't articulate a one-page business plan after we locked ourselves away for a week. When I called it quits, we remained friends and he even helped me meet his wife. But, I think things would have been smoother if I walked away when I suspected problems, instead of assuming things would work out.
Guthur 6y ago
TLDR, narcissists are not good to be around and are quite bad leaders. The hardest aspect of leadership is learning the appropriate techniques and behaviours. It's so often not the focus of your attention when working as an individual contributor then when you take up a leadership role you have to learn fast before you do any serious damage. My best general advice is honesty with your team, realise when you've screwed up and apologise. Also if you can't honestly develop empathy for your team you should probably get out of leadership roles.
bfrog 6y ago
Does this apply to governmental leaders as well? seems like a lot of these get ticked off for certain country leaders...
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Oh totally. You have three layers of leadership... elected officials, appointed officials who serve at the pleasure of the appointment authority, and civil servants. Each category has unusual incentive structures and act out in various ways.
ineedasername 6y ago
Yep, I had a manager I wasn't thrilled with early in my career, but I liked the work I was doing. Then one day I heard him yelling at someone in his office that I knew to be a good person & good worker. His precise words were "I'm the boss, if I want to shove my thumb up my ass & spin around I can do it and you can't say a thing" And I thought to myself "Yep, I'm done here". Unfortunately I jumped ship too quickly and found myself in a job I hated, with a manger who (while not as vocally abusive) was just as bad.
- rhapsodic 6y ago
  >And I thought to myself "Yep, I'm done here". Unfortunately I jumped ship too quickly and found myself in a job I hated, with a manger who (while not as vocally abusive) was just as bad. One time, long back in my career, my then-boss jumped down my throat in a meeting for no valid reason. I clearly remember thinking to myself, "Is this it? Is this the day I tell this asshole to fuck off, and walk out the front door?" I decided not to, but I was in full-on job search mode the moment that meeting ended. It didn't take more than a couple of weeks before I gave notice. The next job was for less money, but it was basically my dream job at the time. It was the best move I ever made. There's no moral or lesson to this story. I just thought I'd share it.
- gwbas1c 6y ago
  > Unfortunately I jumped ship too quickly Made that mistake once... I learned that no job is perfect, and if you have a good thing going, stick with it. Now, hindsight is always 20-20. If I had that experience, I'd probably ask my boss about it, in private, if possible. (Good leadership should always be able to handle challenging questions from subordinates.) (But, there are times where leadership should be challenged publicly.) Perhaps the statement needed some context? I've had to make statements like, "no, I will not do you work for you," and, "now I've never done this before, and hopefully don't need to do it again, but I'm pulling rank here." So I would have tried to get context from you boss... And maybe realize that good people make mistakes too. Edit: The point to leave is when there is a pattern of bad behavior.

259 points by BossingAround 6y ago

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

While destructive leaders and psychopaths / sociopaths in the workplace are critical issues, this article is hot garbage in the same way that you can’t quote DSM narcissism disorder traits at people you don’t like and you can’t use Myers Briggs descriptions like horoscopes. The defining characteristics are all so subjective (what does “extreme” external image mean? who says?) and so vague (what is gossiping vs actually describing real organizational problems? what if a middle manager really is being bullied or unsupported and they have to defend that certain things really aren’t their fault?) as to be useless and dangerous, because you can read into this and see anyone as a “destructive leader” if you are motivated to. There’s no basis in systematic rules or data.

crispyambulance 6y ago
I think the article is useless as well. BUT, personality DOES play a large role in determining the effectiveness of someone as a leader. More to the point, personality and the discernment of its characteristics and consequences is an intrinsically subjective thing. You will not find clearly actionable data nor systematic rules for figuring this stuff out. That subjectivity doesn't stop people from trying to quantify this stuff, like for example, those insipid HR-driven DISC personality surveys and workshops. Some folks dive into minutia about Myers-Briggs classification. There's grains of truth in all these approaches, but it never works the way it was intended. HR departments and individuals aren't psychometric professionals, and even if they were, what they could actually use this for in a workplace isn't at all clear even in the best case scenario. IMHO, the way you identify a destructive leadership pattern is by having experienced it before (as well as its opposite), by being mindful of your interactions with others and with organizational politics, and being self-critical of your own reactions to it. None of that is easy, It can't be learned in advance. It takes experience, trial and error.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I agree it’s much more of an experience judgment. The real harm of poor quality “checklist psychology” articles like this one is that uninformed HR or aggrieved employees will treat it with too much respect and legitimacy, meanwhile the actual psychopath or destructive leader is going to get out in front of this and start disingenuously saying other people are destructive leaders and cut off their credibility to push back or undermine the psycho’s authority. For example, if you see a high ranking leader trying to deflect valid criticism of their choices by saying “assume positive intent” you can be sure this is happening. “Assume positive intent” is a siren call of a destructive leader because the plan is to reframe their challenger’s valid criticisms in an “us vs them” abstract debate about who is or isn’t acting in good faith, completely tabling the merits of the argument out of scope. The genius of it is that “assume positive intent” allows you to sidestep the usual reputation hit you would take for making something “us vs them” - basically “assume positive intent” is HR-permitted code for framing us-vs-them blame to sabotage otherwise legitimate criticisms of leadership - “criticism” itself becomes politically disallowed. Articles like this one act like legitimizers for that kind of stuff, since it’s all just vague, fluffy pop-psychology statements that could virtually apply to any coworker whether their situation is legitimate or they are being a destructive leader or they are just having a bad week.
  - tilt365 6y ago
    Appreciate your perspectives and happy to share the many years of research we have conducted. We have been sharing the positive version of this scientific model based on 12 character strengths for years and have some awesome tech clients who have used it for years. This is the first time we have shared the pathological version during this election. Great leaders choose to take responsibility for their negative impact and commit to growth. We help people choose that every day and have served many great tech leaders startups and companies. Of course there is a LOT of detail not included in this short blog. If you are interested we will post more here about the science and positive version. Pam
    - andreilys 6y ago

fogetti 6y ago

Similarly applicable alternative title: "How to identify brainy smurf who writes articles starting with "How to identify..."" And also: "How to identify everyone based on their childhood dilemma" Hard to take this article seriously. I thought that we have already passed this kind of cheap pseudo-freudian psychoanalysis a long time ago.

itronitron 6y ago
Also the writing is all over the place even within individual paragraphs.
otaviokz 6y ago
Amen! Taking a common perception and wrapping it in a lot of cheap psychoanalysis (without even providing references) belongs somewhere else.
- tilt365 6y ago
  Would you like to review the psychometrics? Happy to share?

caiobegotti 6y ago

If you ever consider taking a leadership or management role please do yourself plus the people around looking up to you a favor and go to fucking psycotherapy. It's far more important than your technical skills (since you should be pretty senior by then anyway).

kodisha 6y ago
Care to elaborate?
- 55555 6y ago
  Off the top of my head: No one likes dealing with a boss who lets their emotions overflow into the workplace and takes their personal issues out on their staff. That's just one of many ways therapy can help you be a better manager.
- sz4kerto 6y ago
  In my experience, most of good management is about figuring out why am I not doing the right thing (as a manager). Knowing what needs to be done is much easier than actually doing it. Example: giving feedback is notoriously hard, even if it's really clear what the issues are. Promotion is also hard (you have to choose who to promote and who to not promote), and most of the time you do know the right choice but you might not be able to call it for personal reasons. So yes, if you happen to manage people, spend a LOT of effort on self-reflection. Go to a coach, therapist, go to courses where they let you practice and where you get feedback. Whatever works for you, just keep investing. Also, don't worry if the coach, course, therapist is imperfect.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    >>> Promotion is also hard (you have to choose who to promote and who to not promote) Promotion is hard because as a manager you don't have the power to promote. There's HR on top of the organization deciding every year that there's no budget for raises and no slots for promotions. When you're finally allowed to promote someone for real, after many years of tenure, the 10% raise is pale compared to what they could get by joining a new company.

mt42or 6y ago

Something is weird with this article, it's like the main goal is to care about employee only to make the entreprise successful.

nerdponx 6y ago
it's like the main goal is to care about employee only to make the entreprise successful. This is just how business works. It's how market (and many non-market) economies work. It's how much of human society is structured. Also, sometimes people need external motivation. "You are a jerk and you need to stop being a jerk" is not enough sometimes. This happens in many contexts, not just the workplace.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Caring about the employees and making the enterprise successful can be one in the same. That’s the point. Businesses require success and profit to continue to exist. There’s no point in pretending that what the business does isn’t ultimately motivated by profit. I know there’s a trend to pretend that companies are doing things for selfless reasons or purely to do good things for their employees, but that’s usually obscuring a hidden profit motive (increase recruiting, motivate employees to work harder, create goodwill among customers). It’s better when the companies are simply honest about their intentions.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
The #1 job of any manager (and employee), as far as the company is concerned, is to represent/forward the goals of the corporation. "forward the goals of the corporation" can mean a lot of things. As any parent knows, it's dangerous to let kids have everything the want. Same with pets. If you let your dog eat all your chocolate chip cookies, I hope you have an animal emergency room nearby. Same with a corporation. In one or two cases, I deliberately took a risk, and disobeyed orders/policies, because I knew that they would be eating chocolate chip cookies. That's a big risk, because there's usually quite a bit more behind policies and orders than an individual can see, and what I did could have been destructive. I am happy to report that these were not destructive, but it isn't a practice that I can recommend. But "forward the goals of the corporation" can also be in direct conflict with the goals of the employee, which, if they are healthy, may start with things like "my kids, my spouse, etc." Balance needs to be had, and it's a mistake to look to a corporation to provide that balance. Usually, the best source of balance is the direct-report manager. They need to be "in tune" with their employees, and be able to negotiate the competing priorities. In any case, a manager that puts their own, personal goals ahead of those of the corporation, and of their employees is (IMNSHO) negligent in their duties. I was a manager for 25 years. I think I did a decent job of it, and I kept senior-level employees for decades (not an exaggeration -when they finally wound up my team, after 27 years, the employee with the least tenure had ten years). My experience, is that whenever I have discussed my philosophies and methodology, I'm attacked for either being a "wimp" (other managers), or being "two-faced" (other employees). None of these attacks have come from people that have actually worked with/for me. When I became a manager, I assumed a different role. I had to make the commitment to put aside my personal aspirations, in favor of those of the corporation, then my employees. My own goals came behind those. But that was just my experience. YMMV.

xbar 6y ago

Lost me at genetics.

SCHiM 6y ago
Indeed. This is what the people at less wrong mean when they talk about "semantic stop signs". Words to make you stop thinking, and accept the argument as given: "Some people are dominant destructive bosses because of genetics, m'kay?" The whole argument falls apart when you realize the author, and nobody really, understands the relationship between your behavior and your genetics enough to conclude anything at all.
Quarrelsome 6y ago
I thought the explanations described childhood outcomes that encouraged the tendencies?
- CravingLogic 6y ago
  Those certainly create a nice narrative.
throwaway201103 6y ago
You think that domineering, alpha, type A people are not more or less born that way?
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Nature vs. Nurture is very much not a settled argument. Although if anything, recent understanding in epigenetics movers the needle a bit more in the "nurture" direction.
- seventhtiger 6y ago
  The interaction surface between genetics and physiology itself is very complex and not well understood. The interaction surface between physiology and behavior is just as complex and not well understood. It's not that we will never find any gene that affects behavior. We have, and we will. But to draw any big picture conclusion outside the scope of those specific findings is wild and decades if not centuries early.

code4tee 6y ago

If you’ve ever been in a company with a toxic leader you can relate. It will literally destroy everything in the company. The toxic leader usually thinks everyone else is the problem, causing them to double down. It’s a vicious cycle that’s destroyed many companies.

fredley 6y ago
This hits home. I've worked with leaders on two seperate extremes of the axes presented. In one case literally everyone of the bullet points was true. I wish I could have read this before then.
Angostura 6y ago
I've been at a company 6 years, I was thinking of leaving because I'd achived pretty much all I could in the role. In September a new CEO joined. Having listened to their plans, I was excited, new ideas, a firm direction. I decided to stay a month later, I resigned. They were a bully who perceived any geniuine question as a challenge. Good people, coming out of meetings trying not to cry. I was coming out of meetings feeling like I was being beaten up. My last day is next Thursday. People keep telling me how envious they are of me. I'm feeling guilt for leaving them in the lurch.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  > I'm feeling guilt for leaving them in the lurch. You are not making their lives any worse. Most likely you don't even have that kind of power.
  - to11mtm 6y ago
    If it's a strong enough feeling, that's probably another sign of abuse from the employer.
- otaviokz 6y ago
  The feeling of guilt is, unfortunately, normal. Just try to keep in mind you didn't really do nothing wrong, and it will help overcoming it faster.

runawaybottle 6y ago

I want to add my own advice. You remember that culture fit part of the interview that every company does? It’s never about finding out if your young dumb and ready to fuck. It’s about are you willing to put up with a certain management style. That’s the job offer, you are being offered money to be able to professionally handle their people system. If you are okay with handling it, you can work there. Things that will help probe in that phase of the interview: - Ask about deadlines. - Ask about requirements, how much do they have, how often they change, who makes the final call, how are they scoped initially, how involved are the stakeholders. - Beyond unit testing, how is QA handled, how is user acceptance testing handled, how does all of this affect timelines. - Ask for a roadmap, can they tell you what they plan on building in the next year. Some managers don’t share this information with their team in general, so expect a solid ‘not sure, but we have stuff promise’ type response (which gives you an answer on transparency). - Why do they need one more person on the team? Here you really want to find out their current bottlenecks. Then probe deeper and find out if the bottlenecks are a lack of labor, or systemic issues (see above bullet points). Scary answers include ‘no roadmap, and everything is on time’ - so why do you need me? - The dance with the manager at a startup could eliminate you as they are still looking for people that will put up with absolutely anything. But, they might also be ready for more process oriented people. Again, you have to signal who you are. If these things don’t matter to you, go with the ‘I eat sleep and code answer’. If you sufficiently annoyed them at the end of those questions, both you and the company will agree in a non-spoken dance that you won’t be happy in their management style. If you really really just need a check, don’t ever ask questions like that. Just say, ‘I build stuff on my spare time constantly, and I just love development, so I think this would be a great opportunity to grow’. You are signaling you are desperate and ready to fuck. Small things to consider, if you ask those questions to a regular dev on their team, you will get feedback that you might not fit (so don’t ask the team these questions). Save it for the manager, and negotiate with the unspoken dance directly. Best of luck, culture fit is definitely how the manager and you maintain healthiness, what you can put up, and what they can put up with. Even the most toxic manager has some humanity, and it is also exhausting for him/her to deal with unhappy people. Work together in the culture fit part to parse if everyone’s expectation is within reach. The end goal of all of this is you don’t walk away from the job because you didn’t know what you got yourself into. You’re an adult, go into everything with both eyes open, no crying at the end.

kebman 6y ago

Reminds me! I recently came accross this older YouTube channel, Healthy Software Developer. I found it to be quite a good source of info on everything from leadership to company culture.[1] Quite entertaining too! [1]: A Tale Of Software Development Culture Change - Gone Wrong! 18 May 2018, Healthy Software Developer https://youtu.be/yKAOMiNv-go https://youtu.be/yKAOMiNv-go

wilburm 6y ago
Healthy Software developer has been a great resource. It sounds clichéed but knowing you’re not alone in some of this stuff is a comfort.

tomasreimers 6y ago

How much of destructive/toxic leadership can be summed up as "puts self ahead of organization"? This post identifies 4 feelings that can lead to that. However, when I read the descriptions I picked up only two: - Arrogance: I know better than my team - Insecurity: I need to fight for myself b/c otherwise I'll lose my job / they'll realize I'm a fake Those cause the leader to put themselves ahead of their team / disregard the thoughts of their team. I suspect this condition is probably only made worse by the way our industry emphasizes the headstrong/autocratic facets of leaders (i.e. see how the media portrays Jobs, early Gates, Zuck, Dorsey, TK, Spiegel, etc.), convincing people to pursue positions of leadership for the wrong reasons: either that they finally will have final say or won't be able to be criticized. That becomes a refuge for the arrogant (wow, I'll finally have final say) and the insecure (wow, I'll finally not be able to be criticized). However, from what I can tell, leadership is more about: - Integrating other's thoughts: your job is ultimately to integrate thoughts, not necessarily to just choose your own (failing to do so results in the autocratic failure mode) - Requires vulnerability / sense-of-security: because how you integrate information/think--not just what you think--is a business asset, the business has more of a right to provide feedback there (failing to do so results in the deceptive failure mode) And something that should only be pursued / gifted once those have been worked through?

runawaybottle 6y ago
In a large organizations, your manager has legit deliverables he/she has to meet. Even if they try to be king shit it’s not going to matter. You only really need to analyze a startup team that is growing for the sake of growing. That’s really where the autocratic team leads will be a detriment to your mental health because they know why their team is growing, and don’t care for it. That’s where if such a person isn’t cool, you’ll get the decaying morale as a direct side effect of their entitlement, superiority and requisite insecurity. I’m going to say something ageist, even though I hate ageism. I don’t think most people are emotionally mature enough until their 30s. I think developers could be lagging in emotionally maturity by 5 years, in which case I don’t think your average developer is emotionally mature until 35. Team leads and managers need to be extremely emotionally mature, none of that ego and insecurity is useful. You need to be able to shoot someone down, and come right back and build that person back up. It takes a lot of maturity to do this and not devolve into picking favorites or hiring new people, or turning authoritarian and despotic.

mrweasel 6y ago

It can be interesting, but also draining if you’re no careful, to view these companies from the outside. I work with a client, who have the most toxic environment I’ve ever seen. The company is just a handful of people, including the CEO, and we’ve been in meetings where they are basically yelling at each other, sometimes us, trying to allocate blame. Fixing stuff is less important than identifying who is to blame. Trying to get a decision about anything is impossible, we have questions that goes unanswered for months. It frequently trivial stuff like: when do you want this script to run? Picking a date, or where is this documented (it’s not but they’ll insist it is, and we’re just to stupid to find it). It all stems from the leadership within. Their managers all have one or more of the traits in the article, and it seems to trickle down to the employees who act similarly towards people on the outside. Personally I’ve take the approach that I’m consulant, paid by the hour (because the client refuse to sign an actual contract), so I really don’t care, I’ll make any modification they want, write whatever document they need, redo anything they’re unhappy with, even if the result is worse. The main things with having these companies as clients is: * Double check everything you write, before sending it. * Have them sign of on everything, before starting the work. * Always get everything in writing. * Don’t lie, they will catch you and use it to blame you for unrelated stuff. * Don’t take it personal. * Bill by the hour.

avg_dev 6y ago
All I can think is that your hourly rate must be pretty high to put up with that. It's good advice for when I might need it, I suppose.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  Money helps, but you can honestly deal with alot of bullshit when your own employeer has excellent management.
  - Xylakant 6y ago
    I found that it’s much easier as a consultant, especially if you have a good boss since you always know that you can be gone tomorrow if things get to bad. And on top, people in the org have no actual way to reprimand you, they need to go via your actual boss.

benzayb 6y ago

"people leave managers not companies" Countless times I've heard or read this somewhere. Quite untrue with my experiences. Who exactly is the "manager"? the "company"? In my experience, most of my reports left because of low pay. I as their "manager" agreed that they receive an raise which is justifiable due to their output and our team's growth. But the "company" is against it. In particular the CFO. Is the CFO the "manager" then? In any case, a statement like that is almost always misleading. The article is Ok though. I just wished that statement was not there.

gwbas1c 6y ago
> people leave managers not companies Statements like that aren't 100% true. That being said, if everybody's leaving for money, that's a sign that you might want to look elsewhere too. You could even call up the people who you tried to get raises for when you're ready to hire.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mkl95 6y ago

I worked for one such company early in my career. I was the first hire of a batch that made the IT department 2.5x bigger. Some of the initial red flags were all the empty desks with readily available computers and multiple monitor setups, and the fact the IT manager was a guy who struggled to communicate in English or the local language. Long story short, one year after I joined all the IT department (including me) had left, with the manager being the only exception. We found out the hard way the company had a long story of hiring batches of developers and struggling to make payroll in the following months, which the CEO "fixed" by having the IT manager create a very toxic environment where people blamed each other for all sorts of things, thus distracting themselves from the elephant in the room (the company was broke and the CEO didn't care, and our manager was little more than a puppet). My main takeaways were: - Financially unsound companies are likely to have a toxic work environment. - You should look for signs of high, recent employee turnover the first time you visit your employer's offices.

sleepysysadmin 6y ago
My last job, I was only hired because they had recently had 3+ people quit the same day. During the interview they were telling me how they have a large staff and only expect 60-80% billing because anymore leads to burnout and how they have 'work-home balance' meetings to ensure they are good. Ya that should have been a red-flag. That stuff lasted at most a month until it ended and it went back to 'the beatings will continue until morale improves' It was super common to work 60 hour weeks, but every hour of overtime you wanted to get paid for... you had to give detailed explanation to justify why you worked so that they could bill overtime/emergency rates to the client. At my first year performance review I got scathing terrible review because our time/attendance system said I was late >40 times to work. I immediately asked which days I was late for... so my boss looks it up. Every single one of those lates was me logging in on a weekend after 9am because something was down and generally speaking the on-call person called me for help. So not necessarily that I worked 40 weekends, but saturday at 10am login and then next day at sunday at 11am would be 2 lates. Did my performance review change for the better after realizing that not only was I being awesome and working afterhours and weekends to help my coworkers and the literal only complaint against me was having been late? Nope. Not even a little.
6y ago

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

I notice the predominant colour of the diagram is orange. Coincidence, surely.

kderbyma 6y ago

while I get the point of these articles, I think they are little more than self-satisfying regurgitation of past experiences which went poorly. I want to see an article from the perspective of someone who realises they have these problems and what they plan to do to fix them.... identifying is not that helpful when it becomes the end result - all in all seems like clickbait.

grawprog 6y ago

I've always felt the concept of leadership is looked at the wrong way. Whether in the workplace or even in politics. Leaders are not at the top, they are the foundation of everything. A good leader is the base of the team. The foundation the team is built on. They hold the team together from the bottom. Bearing the weight of responsibility and direction. A good leader understands, their team's success is their success and their team's failure is their failure. Anything can only be as strong as the foundation that holds it together. A leader who tries to stand at the top leaves no foundation for the team to work off and instead expects the team to bear their weight. A leadership role is something that should be taken on with trepidation and the understanding that you're taking on responsibility for the people working with you. It's up to you to guide things and yes it's you that takes the blame if things don't work.

cannabis_sam 6y ago
> A good leader is the base of the team. The foundation the team is built on. They hold the team together from the bottom. Bearing the weight of responsibility and direction. After doing consulting for the last couple of years, I’m slowly realizing how lucky I was to have stumbled into a small company with a CEO with this approach, right after uni. He ended up writing a rudimentary, inefficient cms in java, filled with strange lispisms, but goddammit it worked as an amazing stopgap until I was available to make something more useable. That’s true leadership to me.
- grawprog 6y ago
  I've worked for both kinds of leaders. The companies with the kind of leader I describe above were by far the better places to work. The businesses always ran more smoothly, employee turnover was low, there was never usually interpersonal issues, and when problems like that did crop up, they were always solved quickly and by the end amicably. A leader really can make or break a workplace. A good one can make any job feel good to go to, while a bad one can make the best job in the world feel like a living hell.
  - cannabis_sam 6y ago

tilt365 6y ago

Pam Boney here. Happy to provide the positive version of this framework. Based on 30 years of scientific research in character science.

charliemil4 6y ago
Is there a way to psychologically assess the positive version? Either a DISC or WAIS subtest score or something similar? (I assume a constructive leader?)
burrows 6y ago
If it takes 30 years to do something, then you’ve not actually done it.
- playpause 6y ago
  To do what? Done what?
  - burrows 6y ago
    For all X?
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Suppose X is "become forty years old".
      - burrows 6y ago
        Everyone is dead by 29, it just takes a while for the rounding error to get sufficiently large.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  So there's no area of knowledge that can't be solved in < 30 years?

anonwithaq 6y ago

What should someone do if they've started realizing they see some of these qualities in a cofounder? Is it worth addressing it in a corrective or supportive way or are these behaviors that are unlikely to change? Edit: I should clarify I mean more of a competence/confidence issue leading to destructive behaviour, not malicious intent.

gwbas1c 6y ago
> I mean more of a competence/confidence issue leading to destructive behaviour, not malicious intent. I should have walked away from a co-founder in a similar situation. Short answer: Your co-founder is probably a good person. Plenty of people are good people. The qualities of running a successful startup are hard to come by, and the sooner you realize your co-founder can't do it, the sooner you should walk away. Long answer: I worked with a guy who I really hit it off with; who was a good person. But after a year I realized he was mostly letting his imagination run away, and didn't have the leadership qualities needed to design or run a startup. I should have walked away much earlier when he fundamentally misunderstood certain rules about asking the CTO to build an idea, and I should have walked away when he couldn't articulate a one-page business plan after we locked ourselves away for a week. When I called it quits, we remained friends and he even helped me meet his wife. But, I think things would have been smoother if I walked away when I suspected problems, instead of assuming things would work out.

Guthur 6y ago

TLDR, narcissists are not good to be around and are quite bad leaders. The hardest aspect of leadership is learning the appropriate techniques and behaviours. It's so often not the focus of your attention when working as an individual contributor then when you take up a leadership role you have to learn fast before you do any serious damage. My best general advice is honesty with your team, realise when you've screwed up and apologise. Also if you can't honestly develop empathy for your team you should probably get out of leadership roles.

bfrog 6y ago

Does this apply to governmental leaders as well? seems like a lot of these get ticked off for certain country leaders...

Spooky23 6y ago
Oh totally. You have three layers of leadership... elected officials, appointed officials who serve at the pleasure of the appointment authority, and civil servants. Each category has unusual incentive structures and act out in various ways.

ineedasername 6y ago

Yep, I had a manager I wasn't thrilled with early in my career, but I liked the work I was doing. Then one day I heard him yelling at someone in his office that I knew to be a good person & good worker. His precise words were "I'm the boss, if I want to shove my thumb up my ass & spin around I can do it and you can't say a thing" And I thought to myself "Yep, I'm done here". Unfortunately I jumped ship too quickly and found myself in a job I hated, with a manger who (while not as vocally abusive) was just as bad.

rhapsodic 6y ago
>And I thought to myself "Yep, I'm done here". Unfortunately I jumped ship too quickly and found myself in a job I hated, with a manger who (while not as vocally abusive) was just as bad. One time, long back in my career, my then-boss jumped down my throat in a meeting for no valid reason. I clearly remember thinking to myself, "Is this it? Is this the day I tell this asshole to fuck off, and walk out the front door?" I decided not to, but I was in full-on job search mode the moment that meeting ended. It didn't take more than a couple of weeks before I gave notice. The next job was for less money, but it was basically my dream job at the time. It was the best move I ever made. There's no moral or lesson to this story. I just thought I'd share it.
gwbas1c 6y ago
> Unfortunately I jumped ship too quickly Made that mistake once... I learned that no job is perfect, and if you have a good thing going, stick with it. Now, hindsight is always 20-20. If I had that experience, I'd probably ask my boss about it, in private, if possible. (Good leadership should always be able to handle challenging questions from subordinates.) (But, there are times where leadership should be challenged publicly.) Perhaps the statement needed some context? I've had to make statements like, "no, I will not do you work for you," and, "now I've never done this before, and hopefully don't need to do it again, but I'm pulling rank here." So I would have tried to get context from you boss... And maybe realize that good people make mistakes too. Edit: The point to leave is when there is a pattern of bad behavior.