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Sadly I see people struggling with overwork, afraid to push back way too often. What I learnt from my personal experience is this: when you push back, people re
by angarg12 3y ago
Sadly I see people struggling with overwork, afraid to push back way too often. What I learnt from my personal experience is this: when you push back, people respect you more, not less.
I started my career in a small shop reporting to a toxic and abusive manager. Due to a combination of factors (my own upbringing, being a naive new grad, a bad economy) I didn't know how to handle the situation so I just took it silently. Those were some of the lowest points in my life. When I finally left, I decided I wouldn't allow myself to fall in the same situation again.
Then I realized something amazing. Contrary to my fears, when I pushed back against unreasonable requests, for the most part people respected me more rather than less. Of course there is always people who retaliate, and the secret is you want to be far away from those people.
This is my hypothesis of what is happening: most abusive managers are low confidence cowards which use their formal authority to bully others. Because they are cowards, if you stand up to them, most often they will be afraid of losing face, and will choose to bully someone weaker instead.
Of course it isn't easy to start doing this out of the blue. Once you trained your manager to assume that you'll work 12 hour days and always say yes, it's very hard to make them change their mind, and you'll face retaliation. If you are in such a situation, I don't have great advice, other than you should look for another place to work, and start asserting yourself, even if in small ways at first.
Unfortunately I know many people will ignore my advice. They'll say I'm being idealistic, or that it worked only for me, or that they can't afford to lose their job. But I hope that at least some people will follow this advice and we'll give less food to the toxic managers of the world.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoAmen. Establish your boundaries and enforce them hard. Be intentional about building a foundation to derisk if enforcing your boundaries causes a negative event.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoI think a more fair interpretation is the managers don't fully realize just how busy you are and are following the path of least resistance. When you're more clear in your communication, it helps them understand. I'm not saying there aren't assholes out there, but I would chalk your experience up to mostly misunderstandings rather than malice.
- gwervc 3y agoI don't think so. At least at the organizational level, I noticed that most companies try to screw workers, despite being in a country with one of the most protective labor laws. My former company did me dirty (I stayed only the trial period), my current company is fine but still not applying some of the laws. When speaking of that with people the very large portion of them (like 90%) were like "keep it low", "that's how jobs are", etc. My own father mocked me when I spoke about fighting for my rights in my current company. One people encouraged me but added that they wouldn't have the courage to do it in my situation. It's astonishing how most people are carpets, ready to by walked on. Slaves who don't even entertain the thought of rising their voices. Which brings me to the middle managers and why I think GP is right: most people just bend their head and accept to do whatever is thrown at them, of course surprised pikachu face happens when someone they no. Since managers manage slaves and slaves can't say no, mechanically it raises the question of the status of someone who is confident enough to stand for himself.
- PeterisP 3y agoA key reason for this is that we don't live a feudal society divided in serfs and lords by birthright, so most workers who do have the courage to stand up to management can (and in most industries do) simply become managers. So the population of people in abusive jobs isn't representative of the whole society, it's a self-selected subpopulation of people who are willing to tolerate that.
- pknomad 3y agoThis bit rings true for me: "What I learnt from my personal experience is this: when you push back, people respect you more, not less." It also reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD6uMxnYE9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD6uMxnYE9s
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago>...if you stand up to them, most often they will be afraid of losing face, and will choose to bully someone weaker instead. After losing a birth mother our family is going through some shit... this quote of yours captures well how the eventual-lawyer-brother pitted other brothers against one-another, and joining in to not be the targeted brother. I'm worried about neither job loss nor "whining," I just want to understand better.
- deprecative 3y agoGreat advice if you can get a job in two weeks. This sounds like a great way to get fired yesterday. Employment is adversarial and should not be treated in good faith.