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I empathize with her situation as I've been in similar situation at a Big 4 organization - An onshore manager (not my direct manager) from my team called me up

I empathize with her situation as I've been in similar situation at a Big 4 organization - An onshore manager (not my direct manager) from my team called me up at 2.30am (his afternoon time) during the first week of our engagement. I did not receive the call but fretted over whether he had an emergency at the Client site. Turns out, that the next day, he mentioned he had simply called up at the unearthly hour to ask about details that I had already mailed him the previous evening. His lame excuse - 'Sorry dude, I don't read mails' I'm not sure if I should feel proud or ashamed (or maybe both) that I was able to pull off 60-80 hour weeks and weekend work far too long for my corporate overlords without resorting to exotic stuff that the interviewee in this article used for staying up late/battling stress. As long as people are enamored by such workplaces (including 24 year old past 'me'), not much will change - at least not soon. Edit: Forgot to mention that the manager showed no remorse for a situation that was never an emergency. Guess I should simply be grateful that he didn't reprimand me for failing to be his 24 hour little helper/Verbal Email reader. :) Regards, ~Burned out Corporate Slave

pknomad 5y ago
Sorry that you had to experience something like this. While it never happened to me, but apparently one of my colleague's manager got a direct phone call from his manager because "he was not responding to slack messages fast enough." I suspect places that house managers like yours and mine has no interest in dis-incentivizing these behavior and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
- burntoutsophos 5y ago
  Apart from lack of interest in dis-incentivizing this behavior, two possible reasons come to mind - why managers like these exist: 1. (Nature) Some of them were just tuned that way since childhood. 2. (Nurture) When these managers were junior employees, some/all of their past managers micro-managed them similarly, which built up resentment inside them and instead of rejecting these traits & becoming a better human, these junior employees decided to 'Pay it forward' in the worst way possible and ergo, continue the vicious cycle.

pknomad 5y ago

Sorry that you had to experience something like this. While it never happened to me, but apparently one of my colleague's manager got a direct phone call from his manager because "he was not responding to slack messages fast enough." I suspect places that house managers like yours and mine has no interest in dis-incentivizing these behavior and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

burntoutsophos 5y ago
Apart from lack of interest in dis-incentivizing this behavior, two possible reasons come to mind - why managers like these exist: 1. (Nature) Some of them were just tuned that way since childhood. 2. (Nurture) When these managers were junior employees, some/all of their past managers micro-managed them similarly, which built up resentment inside them and instead of rejecting these traits & becoming a better human, these junior employees decided to 'Pay it forward' in the worst way possible and ergo, continue the vicious cycle.