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> Eventually some of those reports will hate you as well even if you do everything perfectly. Its inevitable from being in charge. You may not find out till run

by pvorb 4y ago

> Eventually some of those reports will hate you as well even if you do everything perfectly. Its inevitable from being in charge. You may not find out till running into them years later and they just shrug you off when you try to say hi. Maybe they simply found out that you kept lying to them?

citizenpaul 4y ago
That was not the reason. I know its hard to understand if you are never in such a role. People can be very irrational and will look to blame someone in charge when bad things happen. Even if they are the cause of those bad things. I had one guy that got obsessed with crypto and was doing crypto trading instead of his work, not showing up/logging in, not making deadlines. He went off on me for like 30 min when I fired him and never spoke to me again despite warnings and discussions about the problem before getting fired for one example. In his irrational opinion I was holding him back from getting rich by expecting him to do his job.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  I've been on the reverse side, where it was obvious the CTO and CEO were hiding things. It's annoying for a while and then eventually there's some proverbial straw that breaks the camels back. Word spread pretty quickly through various cliques in the company. Some teams had no idea what was happening, other teams lost literally all their developers and and couple managers over the course of 30 days. During my exit interview I mentioned the dishonesty and they just doubled down that I was imagining it.
- my_usernam3 4y ago
  > People can be very irrational and will look to blame someone in charge when bad things happen. Isn't that what you did? > Even though the company eventually did go under due to bad investments the owner made.
  - citizenpaul 4y ago
    That was a factual statement, so no. I think I get the personal attack you are trying to make at me though.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > I had one guy that got obsessed with crypto and was doing crypto trading instead of his work... I think we are all very obviously not at all talking about the kind of situation you describe. I left a company a little over a decade ago where the CEO and CTO (both co-founders) were lying to us about the company's situation for the better part of a year (which was longer than half the company had been employed there). I fortunately haven't had the chance to run into them since then, but I would absolutely give them the cold shoulder if I did. And that's because of what they did. I put in 80-hour weeks (including many weekends)[0] for over a year at that place, and they repaid me with a middling salary and worthless equity (after all common stock got wiped out less than a year later when the company got sold to one of the investors for peanuts and scraps). Anyway, the one "nice" thing I can say about that CTO is that after they had a layoff (half the company), and I didn't get laid off, I went to the CTO and volunteered, and he let me go with the 4-week layoff severance package, which gave me a much-needed month off while I found another job. (Speaking of startup equity, I'm just glad I wasn't quite out of college during the original dot-com crash, when colleagues I would meet a few years later ended up underwater on the loans they were encouraged to take out in order to exercise their company stock options. I can totally imagine wide-eyed 22-year-old me falling for a garbage scheme like that.) > People can be very irrational and will look to blame someone in charge when bad things happen. And sometimes blaming the person in charge is correct and rational. [0] All stuff I will never again do for any company after that experience...
  - citizenpaul 4y ago
    >I think we are all very obviously not at all talking about the kind of situation you describe. Not really. My words were some people will hate you even if you do everything right. This was an example of a situation that was handled right but the person ended up hating me and slandering me for years afterwards. Just because I would not allow the company to fund their get rich quick scheme instead of their job. I've even found people that I did not manage that got fired blamed me sometimes. Like all of mgmt was some evil cabal that conspired together to fire them cause thats what we really want instead of making the company money so we can all get out paychecks. What people are doing is going off on a tangent of how they don't agree with how I handle the grey area stuff. There is a great deal of Silicon Valley worldview going on as well. The majority of the working world has lots of politics and pettiness going on along with power struggles and backstabbing. You cant be S.V. idealistic and keep your MGMT job in the middling business world.

by pvorb 4y ago

citizenpaul 4y ago

That was not the reason. I know its hard to understand if you are never in such a role. People can be very irrational and will look to blame someone in charge when bad things happen. Even if they are the cause of those bad things. I had one guy that got obsessed with crypto and was doing crypto trading instead of his work, not showing up/logging in, not making deadlines. He went off on me for like 30 min when I fired him and never spoke to me again despite warnings and discussions about the problem before getting fired for one example. In his irrational opinion I was holding him back from getting rich by expecting him to do his job.

squeaky-clean 4y ago
I've been on the reverse side, where it was obvious the CTO and CEO were hiding things. It's annoying for a while and then eventually there's some proverbial straw that breaks the camels back. Word spread pretty quickly through various cliques in the company. Some teams had no idea what was happening, other teams lost literally all their developers and and couple managers over the course of 30 days. During my exit interview I mentioned the dishonesty and they just doubled down that I was imagining it.
my_usernam3 4y ago
> People can be very irrational and will look to blame someone in charge when bad things happen. Isn't that what you did? > Even though the company eventually did go under due to bad investments the owner made.
- citizenpaul 4y ago
  That was a factual statement, so no. I think I get the personal attack you are trying to make at me though.
kelnos 4y ago
> I had one guy that got obsessed with crypto and was doing crypto trading instead of his work... I think we are all very obviously not at all talking about the kind of situation you describe. I left a company a little over a decade ago where the CEO and CTO (both co-founders) were lying to us about the company's situation for the better part of a year (which was longer than half the company had been employed there). I fortunately haven't had the chance to run into them since then, but I would absolutely give them the cold shoulder if I did. And that's because of what they did. I put in 80-hour weeks (including many weekends)[0] for over a year at that place, and they repaid me with a middling salary and worthless equity (after all common stock got wiped out less than a year later when the company got sold to one of the investors for peanuts and scraps). Anyway, the one "nice" thing I can say about that CTO is that after they had a layoff (half the company), and I didn't get laid off, I went to the CTO and volunteered, and he let me go with the 4-week layoff severance package, which gave me a much-needed month off while I found another job. (Speaking of startup equity, I'm just glad I wasn't quite out of college during the original dot-com crash, when colleagues I would meet a few years later ended up underwater on the loans they were encouraged to take out in order to exercise their company stock options. I can totally imagine wide-eyed 22-year-old me falling for a garbage scheme like that.) > People can be very irrational and will look to blame someone in charge when bad things happen. And sometimes blaming the person in charge is correct and rational. [0] All stuff I will never again do for any company after that experience...
- citizenpaul 4y ago
  >I think we are all very obviously not at all talking about the kind of situation you describe. Not really. My words were some people will hate you even if you do everything right. This was an example of a situation that was handled right but the person ended up hating me and slandering me for years afterwards. Just because I would not allow the company to fund their get rich quick scheme instead of their job. I've even found people that I did not manage that got fired blamed me sometimes. Like all of mgmt was some evil cabal that conspired together to fire them cause thats what we really want instead of making the company money so we can all get out paychecks. What people are doing is going off on a tangent of how they don't agree with how I handle the grey area stuff. There is a great deal of Silicon Valley worldview going on as well. The majority of the working world has lots of politics and pettiness going on along with power struggles and backstabbing. You cant be S.V. idealistic and keep your MGMT job in the middling business world.