[HN Gopher] What it feels like to be bullied out of a job you love
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What it feels like to be bullied out of a job you love
Author : mooreds
Score : 201 points
Date : 2022-10-12 14:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.justworktogether.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.justworktogether.com)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm not sure that the issue is necessarily that someone was
| selected for "bullying," as opposed to the "squeeze employee, and
| toss out dried husk" thing, that many managers do. It has
| happened to me, frequently, in my career, as I am open,
| enthusiastic, and friendly. Cynical bastards take that as "weak,
| and easily manipulated."
|
| I learned to guard against it, fairly early on, and have refused
| to become a bastard (easy to do).
|
| I had a friend that had a T-shirt that said "Old age and
| treachery beat youth and enthusiasm, every time."
|
| Since this was done by an exec, I will bet that was the case,
| here. The fact that he was a young person, and a black person,
| probably helped with naivete, and probably helped make him "more
| disposable," but I have seen exactly this, many times over, and
| the recipient of the squeezing is not always a marginalized
| demographic (like me. I am a white male. Not exactly
| marginalized).
|
| Many people in C-level roles (or aspirants, thereof) are people
| that seem (in my opinion), to be downright sociopathic. The
| people around them; especially those at a lower echelon, are
| considered "disposable assets."
|
| The guy saw him being an energetic go-getter, and used that to
| extract his knowledge. The death knell was when he asked to be
| given the guy's "Rollodex," so to speak ("Introduce me at SXSW").
| When I read that, I knew exactly what was coming next.
|
| I do believe that there is real bullying, from insecure jerks (I
| have seen it, and experienced it), but this sounds more like
| garden-variety usury by a sociopathic upper manager.
|
| Rick Dickerson sounds like many, _many_ high-level assholes that
| I have met, during my career. Most were actually assets to their
| companies. They made the company money, and got the results the
| shareholders wanted, so their personal proclivities were ignored.
|
| I am glad that the author was able to get past it. I have watched
| many folks absolutely shattered by this.
|
| In my own case, I dealt with something more like bullying, but
| not exactly the same, when I slammed into the ageism wall, after
| leaving my company. Many of the folks I dealt with were jaw-
| droppingly rude. I can easily see people just throwing in the
| towel, and walking away. In my case, I'm an ornery cuss. It just
| made me madder, and more energized. Sounds like the author may
| also be an ornery cuss.
|
| Good on him.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > I'm not sure that the issue is necessarily that someone was
| selected for "bullying," as opposed to the "squeeze employee,
| and toss out dried husk" thing, that many managers do.
|
| > [...]
|
| > I do believe that there is real bullying, from insecure jerks
| (I have seen it, and experienced it), but this sounds more like
| garden-variety usury by a sociopathic upper manager.
|
| Same shit, different toilet. Bullying is an alarmingly-common
| way to Peter Principle yourself into positions of greater
| power, and bullies _loathe_ anyone who even minutely and
| accidentally threatens that power. They squeeze subordinates
| because they are bullies, and it 's about time we called 'em
| like they are.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Fair point. I would say that bullying is something insecure
| people do to feel better about themselves, though.
|
| Sociopaths are often not insecure, at all. They just act
| cruel, because it achieves an end. They can also act
| amazingly empathetic (then switch it around in a second).
|
| People like Adolf Hitler and Idi Amin were known for being
| incredibly engaging, sympathetic, and entertaining, but would
| whisper "Kill him," to the guard, on the way out.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| > Many people in C-level roles (or aspirants, thereof) are
| people that seem (in my opinion), to be downright sociopathic.
| The people around them; especially those at a lower echelon,
| are considered "disposable assets."
|
| Yeah, this is the underlying problem. The hierarchies and
| incentives in our society are such that they reward sociopathy,
| and sociopaths rise to the top.
| anyonecancode wrote:
| Wow, that's a messed up story.
|
| Thankfully I haven't run into very many actual bullies during my
| career; though I do sometimes wonder if, in fact, I had but I
| simply was seldom the target (I'm male and white). I only really
| had one, at a company that's somewhat known for having a higher
| than average number of bullies. I already had a lot of experience
| and so was confident and a fairly senior engineer while I was
| there, so I tried to use that privilege as best I could on behalf
| of the rest of the team, many of whom were more junior or on
| visas or otherwise more vulnerable.
|
| I lasted a year before moving on for better pay and less stress
| (again, a path open to me that's not always open to others). That
| manager moved on as well, but just to another team at a different
| location. That didn't do much for my impression of the company.
|
| I don't know what good, if any, I accomplished in my visible and
| consistent pushing back against this manager. I hope some. If
| nothing else, I hope it showed my less experienced co-workers who
| might not know better that the way our manager acted was not ok,
| and that there are many other companies and ways of working out
| there.
| swyx wrote:
| had a C-suite exactly like this come in who had a problem with
| everything i did on day one and squeezed me out with mediocre
| buddies of his. at a different job, VP shat on an idea I
| proposed, then implemented it after i left.
|
| extremely common and made me resolve to check out of the rat race
| because the clear message is that companies are not meritocracies
| and power speaks a lot more than logic.
| RadicalKimScott wrote:
| Thank you Wesley for sharing this story--I know that it will help
| others feel less alone!
|
| If you've experienced bias, prejudice, bullying, discrimination,
| harassment, or physical violations--or some bullshit but you're
| not sure how to categorize it--reach out. Happy to help you tell
| your story. It can be cathartic, and it can help others too.
| https://www.justworktogether.com/lets-talk
| par wrote:
| Something similar happened to me at a startup recently. It was
| truly nightmarish and I was glad to get out of there.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| yeah, was at a startup years ago and fell on the wrong side of
| the "in crowd". Sucked but eventually found a better job and
| got out of there.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| I want to bully whoever made the design choices for that website.
| It's so frustrating having animation effects as you scroll down.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| Don't fade in every block of text on your sites. Please. Or if
| you're going to at least check if the user has reduce motion on.
|
| Seriously, I'll try to read what you've written and give up the
| fifth time my browser stutters or leaves me on a blank screen
| after a scroll.
| RadicalKimScott wrote:
| sorry about that. if you send me screenshots it will help me
| fix it. looked ok when i published. but just work is really
| just one person this point, so qa...hello@justworktogether.com
| miiiiiike wrote:
| Check out "prefers-reduced-motion":
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
| ngngngng wrote:
| Looks great in firefox reader mode
| Test0129 wrote:
| Everything about this just reads...weird. The spacing, the
| conclusion, the cause... all of it.
|
| The author got mouthy on twitter (by their own admission) about
| company information. I don't think this person got "bullied" out
| of their job being innocent. Most companies, even the most
| "inclusive" will target employees who are talking negatively in
| public about them.
|
| It sounds like the author should've left the company instead of
| attempting to use weird passive-aggressive tactics to enact
| change. The conclusion seems to imply that they were racially
| profiled but the writing suggests that they were, at least in
| part, someone who instigated the company's response. I'm not
| convinced the author is making the point they want to make about
| actual bullying in a corporation.
| wesley83 wrote:
| You're injecting emotion and words that were never in the post.
| I didn't get "mouthy". I also wasn't "negative". It also wasn't
| the "company" that targeted me. I wasn't "enacting change".
| There was never a "company response".
|
| Please re-read the piece.
| [deleted]
| dghf wrote:
| Rick Dickerson? Is that you?
| clusterhacks wrote:
| I have worked at a couple of organizations where bullying and
| internal competition with negative consequences were rampant. It
| is a very disheartening experience.
|
| The worst was at my first employer. I was naive and several times
| was publicly eviscerated by folks clearly interested in dumping
| the blame for project failures and schedule slips onto some other
| person. I weathered those experiences because I was doing very
| well on other projects and had support from management and peers
| on those efforts. Otherwise, I'm sure I would have been one of
| the endless layoffs that seemed to occur every quarter for "low
| performers" in that stack-ranked hellscape.
|
| My current employer (longest tenure of my professional career)
| has many of the same problems, particularly at the staff level
| between organizations. I am ruthless about strictly defining
| precisely my prereqs for any work assignment and quietly decline
| or avoid working with several groups at all. It is really
| unfortunate because the potential for much more impactful and
| meaningful work is lost.
| costcofries wrote:
| "It is really unfortunate because the potential for much more
| impactful and meaningful work is lost."
|
| I hear you and I'm sorry you're experiencing this as well.
| Unfortunately sometimes operating within the constraints of
| your priorities is all that leadership looks at in determining
| career advancement. You're doing more? That's nice, but if it's
| not tied to your OKRs, it's not promotion material. This, is
| the crux of a lot of FANGMA BS.
| ilc wrote:
| (laughing) Been there, done that, got another company's
| t-shirt due to it.
| eric4smith wrote:
| A different take on this.
|
| Somehow, the world changed so that we all feel entitled to our
| jobs and yes, businesses.
|
| In any human endeavor in 2022, we have to assume that nothing is
| going to last forever.
|
| The employee is not entitled to their job.
|
| Because we are all human we cannot assume we are going to be
| treated fairly as much as we would love to be.
|
| The entrepreneur is not entitled to their business - one mistake
| and it could go away.
|
| We are going to be bullied at some point and the way how we deal
| with it will change the trajectory of our thoughts and lives.
|
| Yes this sounds terribly dystopian. It sounds bad.
|
| But it is how the world operates and has always operated.
|
| What's the difference now? The internet has merely amplified
| these practices so we can see them better.
|
| Some things have improved and changed for the better.
|
| Other things have gotten worse.
|
| Go ahead and read "Foundation". Isaac Asimov clearly set things
| out that the way how large groups of humans operate makes it hard
| to change certain things.
|
| Employment and business creation in a capitalist society is
| definitely one of those things that is that 10 million ton oil
| tanker going at 500 knots on the open waters.
|
| We are not going to be able to shift it. But because we know it's
| size and trajectory we can safely know when to take out our
| paddle boat for fishing and actually have a good life.
| johnthealy3 wrote:
| If this isn't the biggest failed opportunity to name and shame, I
| dunno what is. People like this should be eviscerated in the same
| social media sphere they work in.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| All hierarchical systems have this fundamental problem: it's not
| uncommon for people of relatively low competence to get into
| higher-ranked positions, and then their fear of being replaced by
| a more competent but lower-ranked person starts dominating their
| decisions and behavior. In the technical and academic worlds,
| these tend to be people who are skilled at _politics_ but who
| have poor grasp of the technical or scientific skills that their
| position requires.
|
| I think flattening excessively pyramidal hierarchies are the only
| real solution for this problem, but that's not much comfort for
| those who find themselves derailed due to this dynamic.
|
| Practically, such people tend to be very concerned about their
| underlings also being their 'supporters' so if you can stomach
| it, presenting yourself as a fawning admirer and loyal
| henchperson is one route forward, although likely damaging to
| your own mental health and productivity. Jumping ship to another
| berth as soon as possible is the other option (of course, don't
| tell anyone this is your plan, as that will spark retaliatory
| efforts).
| fallingknife wrote:
| It is really easy to tell apart people who despise office
| politics and people who don't. I have a theory that the best
| way to run an organization is to remove anyone who doesn't
| actively hate that stuff regardless of competence level.
| citilife wrote:
| > I think flattening excessively pyramidal hierarchies are the
| only real solution for this problem, but that's not much
| comfort for those who find themselves derailed due to this
| dynamic.
|
| I don't see a problem. The SVP was correct to do what they did.
| IMO they should have fired this guy, not just threatened them.
|
| This was a junior engineer posting about internal company work
| on social media. The junior engineer _knew_ they were supposed
| to reach out to the public relations team (per the article);
| but the engineer kept posting anyway. The public relations
| point team was asking the guy to stop and he was refusing until
| directly threatened with termination.
|
| How would you handle this? Imagine if someone in marketing
| started committing code and force pushing code to production?
| That's effectively what this junior engineer was doing with
| marketing.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| This is ridiculous. If you have a problem with what someone
| is doing you say "I have a problem with what you're doing,
| for the following reasons." You don't drop oblique threats or
| do the other nonsense mentioned in the article.
|
| Obviously we don't know the other side of the story but you
| are making a massive leap from what is presented and ignoring
| the completely reasonable alternatives to what the SVP is
| reported to have done.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Think of the game theory and organizational evolution in such
| a flat hierarchy, especially when the flat section is a
| middle management level.
|
| This flat hierarchy works at the low level. It already does
| almost everywhere on the border of "production workers" and
| "low management".
|
| But in the middle management, the incentive is promotion and
| control. You start out with a flattened hierarchy, and say 20
| managers vying for promotion, well, you probably won't get
| promoted. Then why try hard? Uhoh, now most of your managers
| will either:
|
| 1) leave
|
| 2) fight over / jockey over being the "senior level" of the
| 20 underlings
|
| 3) stop trying
|
| 4) embezzle
|
| 5) gradually conspire to "unflatten" and add more levels,
| gain control (solid line or dotted line) to the territory of
| your peers
| etothepii wrote:
| Where did you get that from the article? Do you have off
| thread knowledge of the situation?
| citilife wrote:
| Author was an engineer:
|
| > I was super excited I was actually getting an opportunity
| to pursue my engineering dreams. The word "engineer" was
| even in my job title!
|
| He joined twitter and started sending his content to the PR
| team for approval:
|
| > In fact, I was so prolific on social media that I got the
| attention of several industry analysts who asked how my
| company used social media for brand promotion and
| marketing. Of course, since I was in engineering, I sent
| these inquiries over to our PR department. ... I often
| tweeted about what we were doing, what the company was
| releasing, and what conferences I would attend. I
| understood the confidentiality policies at the company and
| never shared any confidential information. The company even
| gave me formal PR training so I would know what I could and
| couldn't say. ... After fielding several of my PR
| referrals, I eventually got the attention of a senior vice
| president at the company, let's call him Rick Dickerson. He
| then asked me if I could teach him how to use Twitter.
|
| The author was clearly stepping out of their role and
| impacting public relations. The SVP asked them to explain
| what they were doing and be introduced to those the
| engineer was working with (in social media). Then they
| flagged future content and told them to stop.
|
| The SVP was ensuring they had the information they needed
| to protect the company and then limit any future off-
| message content being produced. The SVP wanted this
| engineer out of the social media space and needed him
| stopped.
|
| > At that moment, it became clear that the SVP didn't just
| want to get me away from anything social media related in
| the company; he wanted me out of the company entirely. He
| was trying to get me fired.
|
| I'm not saying I would have done it this way, but this is
| what happened via the article.
| lupire wrote:
| I don't get it. All I see is an SVP, who has the power to
| just say "Stop it" apparently jealous of this engineer's
| popularity and pushing him out to remove the personal
| threat, not company threat.
| etothepii wrote:
| That's fascinating, if completely missed that narrative.
| Obviously I assumed the OP was biased but I had not seen
| your narrative as an option from the facts, though I do
| now.
| flutas wrote:
| > started sending his content to the PR team for
| approval:
|
| are you reading something I'm not?
|
| It says other companies were asking HIM how his company
| used socials for PR.
|
| > I sent these inquiries over to our PR department
|
| He directed these companies over to their PR department
| for an actual answer, he didn't send his posts over to
| the PR department.
|
| > After fielding several of my PR referrals, I eventually
| got the attention of a senior vice president (...) He
| then asked me if I could teach him how to use Twitter.
|
| This SVP noticed he was basically sending them free
| marketing and decided it would be great to learn how to
| use it himself.
|
| Nothing in your quote says he was sending his posts over
| to PR for approval at all.
| peteradio wrote:
| He was effectively self-grooming for the position, isn't
| that what you're supposed to do? He was getting internal
| training for the role and claims to follow the policies
| he was taught. You are making claims without evidence.
| citilife wrote:
| > He was getting internal training for the role and
| claims to follow the policies he was taught.
|
| His posts were being flagged by the PR team.
|
| I suspect it's because he was discussing products without
| going through the PR team (because they would have told
| him to stop).
|
| All my arguments are from the article itself.
|
| > He was effectively self-grooming for the position,
| isn't that what you're supposed to do?
|
| If someone from marketing came down and started force
| pushing code to production, would that be self-grooming?
| No, you'd expect a PR and some review process, which
| wasn't occurring here.
| peteradio wrote:
| What was flagged?
| citilife wrote:
| > Eventually, he acquired the tweets in question, and we
| were both stunned about why these benign tweets, which
| were clearly not about the company's financials, were
| being flagged. Then, he finally confided in me that the
| person who reported this to him was the SVP I had been
| working with previously, Rick.
| peteradio wrote:
| If you are taking them at their word, this came directly
| from SVP and not some PR policy AND it was not related to
| financials. So are you calling OP a liar or not?
| citilife wrote:
| > What was flagged?
| yellowapple wrote:
| Your seemed to imply above that the SVP got involved
| because of already-flagged tweets, whereas the part of
| the story you've quoted happened _after_ the SVP had not
| only met the author and appointed him to the company 's
| social media council, but _after_ the SVP started
| ghosting him.
|
| The causality you're implying (if not explying) seems
| inverted.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| > His posts were being flagged by the PR team.
|
| The article specifically says that they were not.
| wesley83 wrote:
| The PR team never flagged anything. The SVP backchanneled
| unfounded complaints to my director in order to get me in
| trouble. The PR team loved me.
| citilife wrote:
| > ... I showed Rick the platform's essential functions.
| Eventually, he created the company's Social Media
| Council, and I was appointed as one of the founding
| members.
|
| It seems the SVP was in company representative in charge
| of PR / social media? If so, he was the party responsible
| for the team and thus "the team"?
|
| > The SVP backchanneled unfounded complaints to my
| director in order to get me in trouble.
|
| Seems like the SVP was going through the command chain to
| direct his complaints / concerns to you. That's the
| typical way corporate structures work.
| amrocha wrote:
| If any of that had happened the order of events would
| have been different.
|
| He would have received warnings that he was violating
| company policy. The SVP would have addressed him directly
| and asked him to stop tweeting about the company instead
| of asking him to be taught. His manager wouldn't have
| been confused about the complaint.
|
| None of your arguments are from the article. You're going
| way out of your way to assume the engineer is in the
| wrong and omitting information in the article.
| peteradio wrote:
| What internal work was he posting?
| tsuujin wrote:
| The article goes out of its way to tell us that this guy
| received extensive training in what he was and was not
| allowed to say on social media from the PR team, and was
| doing well enough that he was a founding member of that
| company's social media team.
|
| I'm not sure where you're drawing your conclusion from.
| citilife wrote:
| I replied in this thread to a different comment, but
| suffice to say, we're only seeing this engineers view on
| the topic.
|
| From a company perspective, how do you handle someone who's
| gained a social media following and is posting about the
| company and acting as a company spokesman without being
| approved to do so.
|
| You would collect all the information you can, then tell
| the guy to knock it off or be fired. That appears to be
| what happened.
| ghaff wrote:
| Whatever the specifics of this particular situation, it
| may be worth observing that this seems to be in the
| context of rather early social media days. "When Twitter
| was launched, I was an early adopter."
|
| And a lot of companies were really feeling their way into
| social media at that point (and by no means were their
| strategies necessarily broadly agreed to internally).
| I've seen first hand how many companies did not have
| well-articulated and specific policies and individuals
| were sort of on their own to do the "right thing" the
| interpretation of which was likely to differ depending
| upon what exec you asked.
|
| It's hard to say what exactly happened in this case but
| in the mid- to late-2000s, it would have been very easy
| for an enthusiastic social media user posting about
| company matters to run afoul of someone used to company
| communications happening through tightly controlled
| channels.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > without being approved to do so
|
| You'd think if he wasn't approved to do so then they
| would've actually told him to knock it off and not, you
| know, give him PR training and put him on a social media
| council.
| PKop wrote:
| Imagine the scenario where they did do this. And the
| employee was intransigent and didn't follow orders. Do
| you think it's possible this sort of person would also
| present a skewed account of what happened?
|
| You have no idea if the perspective presented it
| accurate.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| From what the engineer explicitly details and according
| to your own logical rules that you laid out.. nothing was
| violated.
|
| You're simply saying you believe the engineer is lying
| and dishonest. This is possible but there's nothing
| compelling about your assumption unless you provide
| evidence that supports it. Otherwise it's just sort of a
| random assumption.
|
| I mean, Yeah sure, for example, I could assume that he
| also has anger issue problems that he's unaware about,
| but that's a random assumption... Why would anyone care?
| In short I'm saying what compelling evidence do you have
| to make your assumption more relevant?
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Well no you wouldn't say "company financials" to escalate
| it, you would just be generic and say "proprietary
| information". There was enough suspicious stuff going on
| (being uninvited from internal group chats) that you
| can't chalk it up to one-off accidental
| miscommunications.
|
| Besides, unless I misunderstood, it doesn't seem like the
| "knock it off" was _directly_ communicated to the
| employee by the svp at any point, which a good faith
| manager would probably do, unless they have a severe
| nonconfrontatiomality issue (some managers do)
| wesley83 wrote:
| For the record. I had zero infractions on social. None.
| All allegations were made up and unfounded.
| citilife wrote:
| If the company was publicly traded and if the author was
| discussing unreleased products and speaking as a company
| employee, then yes it could impact the FTC reports (i.e.
| financials). However, those details weren't shared.
|
| (Speaking of which, if this was AMD -- I likely traded on
| this guys information lol I made a boat load off
| employees sharing information they shouldn't have
| publicly)
|
| > There was enough suspicious stuff going on (being
| uninvited from internal group chats) that you can't chalk
| it up to one-off accidental miscommunications.
|
| We have no idea what actually happened, what we can say
| is that from the author's own statement(s) they continued
| to post on social media and stopped sending it to the PR
| team. To me, this reads that the author was given
| repeated hints / directly told to stop and wasn't
| listening. My guess is the training was, "hey you're
| probably not supposed to be posting this, review the
| training please".
|
| That said, we don't know. I'm not saying this was handled
| well, but this definitely wasn't being "bullied" out of a
| job. Their job was engineering, they were pushed out of
| social media, at best; after not being hired for it.
| amrocha wrote:
| I don't know if you're ESL or if you just didn't read the
| article but none of what you wrote is in the article.
| You're assuming so much here.
| tspike wrote:
| This is the kind of risk-averse, backstabbing claptrap
| that prevents companies and individuals from rising above
| local maxima.
| Arainach wrote:
| Strong disagreement. If there's any problem (which there
| usually isn't) you bring them into the loop. I've seen
| this repeatedly even at huge companies like Microsoft.
| AyyWS wrote:
| > fear of being replaced
|
| I saw the most extreme example of low competence bullying. A
| manager with less than 1 year of experience fired a contractor
| project manager who was a previous energy company CEO, turn-
| around CEO, and company board member/advisor. The guy was
| fixing some of the tangled bureaucratic work flows (which made
| everyone's lives better) when he got the axe.
| lupire wrote:
| Why would a CEO waste their time as a low level project
| manager?
| OJFord wrote:
| You introduced 'low level', and GP said 'contractor', maybe
| the fees were enormous ('I turned around XYZ Corp as CEO,
| and I can come in temporarily and do it for you too').
|
| (Also note that what organisations term a 'project' can
| vary a hell of a lot.)
| AyyWS wrote:
| 1. His kid was finishing high school and didn't want to
| move out of a small metro with limited jobs.
|
| 2. Company health insurance + family member with chronic
| disease.
|
| 3. He was personal friends with the VP which made his
| firing potentially career ending for the new manager.
|
| There are people you meet in your career that are a
| privilege to work with like this guy.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm looking for people with knowledge or researching the
| dynamics of work groups. I find there's so much inefficiency
| that there must be a better way. So much human waste due to bad
| hierarchies.
|
| Sometimes people "badly" promoted don't even seek power, they
| just end up at that spot, and the heat makes them turn sour, or
| stiff, because there something in us that makes us want to keep
| appearances up (and also probably the financial benefits, but
| I'm not even sure, and some did say so to me, that it's worth
| the money)
| itronitron wrote:
| Many business schools will have a research group focusing on
| organizational behavior, which will likely have information
| of interest for you.
|
| For example >> https://eller.arizona.edu/departments-
| research/centers-labs/...
| agumonkey wrote:
| I dug a bit last year but I wasn't hooked, maybe I should
| revisit.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Flattening _excessive_ hierarchical structures is the solution,
| but the devil is in that "excessive" qualification. It's best
| to eliminate narrow choke-points where a single person can make
| themselves a problem for the whole organization, and that may
| mean lopping to top of the pyramid off (a pyramid, unless
| truncated, narrows to a single point.)
|
| But if you try to flatten all hierarchy entirely, you create a
| new sort of problem; an informal hierarchy where the only rule
| is to be popular: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
| fallingknife wrote:
| A flatter system actually tends to avoid the key man problem.
| A team of 20 is almost certain to have someone who can take
| the lead's job if he leaves. A team of 4, not so much.
| lupire wrote:
| Why is a broadly popular person worse than someone popular
| with execs?
|
| Maybe what we need is... internally elected leadership!
| yellowapple wrote:
| But that's socialism, and is therefore bad because reasons.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| In well designed democratic systems, there is a rigidly
| enforced hierarchy, ideally structured and organized to
| limit the power of any one person. In a structureless
| system those safeguards don't exist. Things might work for
| a while, until people make a mistake of electing a dictator
| who decides to hold onto power. Now you don't have a
| democracy anymore.
| 5cott0 wrote:
| the tyranny of structurelessness is arguably worse because
| there will always be hierarchies and in a so-called flat org
| they just become invisible and unaccountable
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I suspect the degree of hidden incompetence in any organisation
| can be measured by the number of "imposter syndrome awareness
| training initiatives" handed down.
|
| In fact, I've almost never worked with people who are proper
| charlatans, winging it and dreading exposure. They are dealt
| with by their peers. Most in the rank and file help each other
| out, confide and support, since we all suffer the same
| anxieties about trying to be good in a world that seldom
| recognises achievement.
|
| But the higher one ascends, the more often we encounter people
| elevated by the Peter Principle to precarious standing, who
| then preempt being called-out by weaving an air of victimhood
| or even martyrdom around their position.
|
| "Don't you dare question me" is implied in almost everything
| they do. These people at the "top" are very, very scared, can't
| quite understand how they got there, and imagine it will all
| unravel at any moment. They are also quite often frozen by
| fear, meaning that an eerie silence surrounds the levers of
| power which nobody dare touch.
|
| I think "imposter syndrome" is a real thing. But it's much more
| complex and significant than we're currently understanding it.
| There are real imposters, who deserve to be ousted, and if
| we're not careful they will use "imposter syndrome" to entrench
| further.
|
| This is not a good culture, either for leaders or those they
| lead.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Peter principle people ascend and keep in place for two
| reasons:
|
| 1) they are loyal and take orders from above
|
| 2) they are not a threat to those that are above, or those
| that are going up the ladder (assuming they can be promoted
| somewhere else)
|
| Also, people tend to go into management when they have
| kids/get married. These people are conservative/seek
| stability. They are liked by management because their family
| ensures compliance and loyalty.
|
| But kids and life situations and advancing age can sap people
| of the energy to be good at the job they once did. Plus,
| people do hard work to get where they want to be, and then
| lay off when they get there, another way that people may
| appear incompetent: they stopped trying hard when they
| reached a level of satisfaction.
| carapace wrote:
| Point of fact, the Peter Principle affects any organization
| that promotes _based on merit_ , it's orthogonal to the
| considerations you mention.
|
| * People aren't good at everything.
|
| * Jobs at different levels in the org hierarchy require
| different skills.
|
| * If people are promoted based on skill/merit they
| eventually arrive at a role for which they are unsuited.
|
| > The Peter principle is a concept in management developed
| by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a
| hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective
| incompetence": employees are promoted based on their
| success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which
| they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not
| necessarily translate to another.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
| [deleted]
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
|
| >Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any
| bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
|
| >First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the
| organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an
| educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch
| technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural
| scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective
| farming administration.
|
| >Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization
| itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the
| education system, many professors of education, many teachers
| union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
|
| >The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will
| gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the
| rules, and control promotions within the organization.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Doesn't look like a healthy division. Presumably you'll need
| a healthy organization to achieve the goals. Technicians will
| do the job, but someone will need to keep the organization in
| shape, it won't happen by itself.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| This rule states that it will happen "by itself", in that
| if you look at any large organization, the dynamic
| described happens to be true. Of course, it happened
| because somebody thought that the organization had to be
| kept "in shape", in accordance with some "shape" he
| envisioned. But organizations that don't do this fizzle out
| and don't exist as such, so you never get to observe them.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I have my own term that dominates large hierarchies: the
| Middle Management Machiavelli.
|
| These people don't care about the organization, and they
| don't care about producing things, or even doing their job.
| Their full time job is gaining power and climbing the ladder.
| Everyone is fighting for budget and headcount and
| appearances. And taking credit for things.
|
| I would say that there are three phases:
|
| 1) the creators/doers: the company aligns to being productive
| and successful with these people focused on whatever does
| that.
|
| 2) as it increases in size, upper management transitions from
| industry skills to managerial people. Thus Pournelle's second
| class comes to dominate. Here the company still may grow and
| managerial tricks like acquisitions and financial cookbooking
| will continue growth, but nothing revolutionary. The company
| begins to plateau.
|
| 3) with people settling into a more fixed reporting
| structure, now the machiavellis will begin to fight over
| internal territory, and since the top managers are just
| sociopaths themselves, they let it happen. The company
| becomes a cesspool of battlegrounds, and will begin to slowly
| rot.
|
| The only thing that saves companies these days is that the US
| economy is now structured around monopolies and cartels, so
| companies can obtain direct control and then establish
| barriers.
|
| But the net effect of all markets being cartel/monopoly
| dominated is that the lack of competition means companies
| fall into stage 3 more easily, but can't be displaced. So the
| entirety of the US is now all these cartel/monopolies
| weighing down the country as a whole, and it becomes overall
| more and more corrupt.
|
| What's the end state of this? Look at Russia.
| mylons wrote:
| putting the face on to placate the egos of management is
| extraordinarily difficult if you're interested in uncomplicated
| versions of right and wrong.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > I think flattening excessively pyramidal hierarchies are the
| only real solution for this problem, but that's not much
| comfort for those who find themselves derailed due to this
| dynamic.
|
| although probably unpopular, one way around this is to have
| mandatory rotation of people between worker/leader roles, that
| way people get more equal opportunity to get
| leadership/management experience and politics would potentially
| be dampened because you'd be out of that role anyways in 6
| months...
|
| maybe that wouldn't work for every industry, but its something
| i've thought about a lot
| bolt7469 wrote:
| That kind of rotational system is used in the Church of Jesus
| Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every role, from teacher to
| pastor, in a local congregation is done by lay members.
| Because each person rotates between various roles over the
| years, there are no political incentives to try to climb the
| ranks.
|
| It might play out differently in a workplace setting, but a
| rotational system works well in that religious context.
| [deleted]
| rtanks wrote:
| This could be a great idea!
| itronitron wrote:
| The department in which I got my MS did this with their
| department heads. Probably two thirds of the tenured
| professors had been dept. head, it seemed to result in a lot
| of respect (and sympathy) within the department.
| goopthink wrote:
| This is nice if it works, but management and leadership are
| specific skills that not all people have off the bat.
|
| What is it that management does that would lend itself to
| transferability and rotations? If leadership's contribution
| is primarily to provide updates to others or to schedule
| meetings, sure that's easily replaceable. If leadership is
| about being empathetic and resolving conflicts, everyone
| brings a different style of handling this to the table and
| not everyone wants that sort of work. That's the start of
| politics. If leadership is about making tough decisions and
| being held accountable for those decisions and getting teams
| to buy in and coordinate work around that, then switching
| people every six months could destroy any accountability and
| stability entirely.
|
| Politics is what happens when two sides disagree, and what
| happens next. You aren't going to avoid it except without
| groupthink. Most people are reactive to "bad" politics, just
| like bad sales and bad management. When it is handled well,
| people don't notice it or realize it.
|
| I don't think this is relegated to certain industries or
| certain team sizes. It's a question of roles and
| responsibilities, and if changing a company's M.O. from one
| thing to something quite radically something else. If you've
| ever tried to change a company culture (really, a collection
| of a bunch of individuals' cultures), then you know this is a
| huge huge task and it's often easier/lower cost/more
| effective to understand your current culture and how to be
| most effective within that than to come in and try to change
| everything.
|
| Also, Chesterton's Fence and the like. We've have great
| social experiments in rotating leadership and in practice,
| people bring whatever lens they view the world to the
| leadership table, which is great until it isn't.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > although probably unpopular, one way around this is to have
| mandatory rotation of people between worker/leader roles
|
| I think simple elections would go a long way towards worker
| happiness at least. Making the managers beholden to the
| people they manage would certainly shift dynamics.
|
| But then, I'd also fear that a democratically ran company
| would struggle making hard decisions.
| jt2190 wrote:
| This has been implemented in some companies as "staff may
| freely move to another project led by another manager."
|
| This really puts an emphasis on the "leadership" part of
| management.
| lupire wrote:
| This is Sortition, a well known but rarely tried solution to
| the excessive competiveness of choosing leaders and winners
| in merit contests. Without it, selection processes devolve
| into a surd peacocking, competing over tiny differences and
| irrelevant challenges.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| Leaders are competitive and brandish individualism.
|
| Workers are helpful and brandish collective trends.
|
| Axioms of the western culture.
|
| Meanwhile human resources wants leaders and workers to be: "More
| human".
|
| Pretty psychotic.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| It feels like everyone could come up with a few 'war stories' of
| issues and people that they had to deal with during their career.
| While the story presented certainly makes the reader feel that
| the author was treated unfairly; we are only getting one side of
| the story and many relevant details might have been left out.
|
| I could also relate a few stories about how I was not treated
| well and selectively include only the parts that make me look
| good and my nemesis look bad; but that would just be self-
| serving. That is not to say that there are not many examples of
| bad behavior out there that should be exposed and lessons
| learned; but I am just trying to figure out what the lesson is in
| this case.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Even with one side of the story, an engineer being iced out by
| an SVP to me comes off as completely unprofessional and quite
| frankly childish on the part of an SVP. If I was the CEO of
| that org and I had one of my SVP's do this, I'm pretty sure my
| exact words to them would be: "You're a Senior Vice President,
| fucking act like it".
| dominotw wrote:
| By this logic you would never believe what anyone is saying
| because its always 'one side of the story and many relevant
| details might have been left out.'
|
| So what must one do, go on living a cynical life where you
| never take anyone's word for what its worth?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| But by your logic you would believe everything everybody else
| said - which is the EXACT behavior that put the guy in the
| article in the position he was in, by his own account.
| Assuming everything he says is true, he wouldn't been
| "bullied out" if people had been skeptical of what his boss
| said.
| dominotw wrote:
| > But by your logic you would believe everything everybody
| else said
|
| I don't think I proposed any logic, especially not the one
| you inferred.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| ditto
| fluoridation wrote:
| You say it as if it's a bad thing, but being skeptical of
| everything probably the most prudent option in almost any
| circumstance.
| halfjoking wrote:
| I know what it feels like already.
|
| I refused the Covid shot, and I'm sure this lady would be first
| demanding HR to fire me.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| All bad job stories can be boiled down to someone at a company
| who was in charge over employees did not want someone at the
| company anymore.
|
| No amount of emotions or rationalization or any other factor
| really changes this.
|
| Employees are professionals who provide services while in employ.
| When your services are no longer wanted, they are no longer paid
| for and rendered.
|
| You can say someone was a bad person or an asshole or whatever,
| you might be or they might be and probably will be right or both
| the employer or employee will both be right, or you will be
| dealing with a bad employer or employee. It happens. It's life.
|
| But I think the healthiest way to deal with these things is to
| remember you are providing a service for a fee. That fee might be
| a salary, it might be a retainer, it might be a flat rate, or a
| one time fee.
|
| But you vend and perform services to those who pay for them.
|
| Everything else, every other ceremony and nicety and construct,
| usually built by employers for employees, though sometimes albeit
| rarely both ways, is designed to impair this judgement and create
| a scenario where one party forgets this and their relationship is
| transformed into something else, usually subservient without a
| notion of autonomy.
|
| It is why employers use "subordinate"--who are you truly
| subordinate to? You are not a slave. They are dependent on your
| labor and you on their patronage. It is mutual.
|
| Or "terminate"--why is such ceremonious negative language used?
| To make you feel bad that employment has "ended." Which is what
| it is an "end," "termination" is needless.
|
| Or "performance improvement plan," what improvement needs to be
| dictated to a professional? A professional knows their limits and
| places where they can or cannot provide satisfactory service.
| When a professional fails to deliver, a client or customer simply
| does not buy. A professional knows they lack because a service or
| good was not purchased. The ulterior motive here is to punish.
| That's why.
|
| My advice--don't do this. While rarely there might be something
| interesting to learn from bad employment stories, writing them as
| someone who is not of notoriety just tarnishes one's image. The
| benefit is only, and only rarely, for the reader.
| explorer83 wrote:
| I think this outlook is completely rational. I think the last
| bit is painfully true if you've ever been in a similar position
| and want to shout the injustice from the rooftops and future
| job interviews.
|
| However, I think it's near impossible to actively maintain this
| clear headed detachment in many working arrangements. Unless
| your job has a lot of independent autonomous work time, you're
| stuck most of your waking day in this environment. The mental
| capacity to keep this grounded outlook while handling the daily
| job stress is too much IMO. Plus I believe we are somewhat
| wired from evolution to work in cooperation with others and
| have some need to feel valued or at least accepted in our work
| with others.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| The power balance between the individual worker and a
| corporation is completely and utterly unequal, when renders
| your whole rant moot.
|
| In fact, from my point of view your argument could be summed up
| as, "Corporations have no human emotions of any sort,
| particularly loyalty, and so workers need the most stringent
| and extreme protections against these psychopathic
| organizations."
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Your discourse makes perfect sense, but thinking more about
| it... this works when you behave almost like a robot, de-couple
| emotions from work. Provide service --> get paid. If that works
| for you and other employees, that's perfectly fine. From
| experience I know this does not work for me personally. A job
| has a feedback loop, from which fee or salary is part. For me
| that is only a small part. The biggest part of the feedback
| loop is satisfaction I get via social interaction, next to
| technical satisfaction -- making things that work. When one
| gets -- publicly or not -- humiliated or downplayed, bullied,
| this has a very big impact on one's feelings and hence job
| satisfaction. The biggest lesson I learned over the years:
| there are plenty of employers, each have a unique work culture
| and types of managers. If things go awry, switch jobs until you
| enter a culture that fits you well, and you will be happier.
| Don't dwell about it too much.
| thewarrior wrote:
| What you're saying here seems to be that corporations are
| inherently sociopathic constructs and one should approach
| employment with the cold calculating rationality of a machine.
| There is no reason to expect any empathy or solidarity. Sounds
| very bleak to be honest.
| NegativeK wrote:
| I agree. I've had employers that were sociopathic, weren't
| sociopathic but were such a mess that it was like being in a
| relationship with a heroin addict, and weren't sociopathic
| and cared (with actions, not just words) about my well-being
| beyond just my productivity.
|
| Businesses are made of people. Businesses do bad and good
| things due to the decisions of the people involved.
|
| If my bosses treat me with compassion and fairness, even in
| the face of hard choices, I'm going to reciprocate. If they
| don't -- and they treat me like a vending machine, for
| instance -- I'll also reciprocate (and might strongly
| consider switching employers, if I can.)
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Bleak; but it's the truth. That's how the employer sees it.
| They may try to cultivate the "we're all like a family"
| atmosphere, but that's not how they see it. And not all
| families are lovely.
| citilife wrote:
| > My advice--don't do this. While rarely there might be
| something interesting to learn from bad employment stories,
| writing them as someone who is not of notoriety just tarnishes
| one's image. The benefit is only, and only rarely, for the
| reader.
|
| Yes, this is very good advice. You have at-will employment and
| there's little reason to stick around if you're unwanted and /
| or your interested / skilled in a different area. It just
| breeds resentment in both directions.
|
| Speaking poorly about your prior employers will make future
| employers wary. Even if it was anonymous.
|
| Why did this author write this piece in the first place? The
| author appears to be somewhat of a political activist and
| interested in the space https://www.wesleyfaulkner.com/
|
| Nothing wrong with that, but it at least makes sense why this
| particular author is discussing their story.
| bsenftner wrote:
| > Speaking poorly about your prior employers will make future
| employers wary. Even if it was anonymous.
|
| Perhaps in a previous world, but the power imbalance between
| employer and employees in the corporate world, and twice so
| in the tech corporate world is extreme today. The very
| presence of "quiet quitting" as a thing not immediately being
| turned around as "don't you mean required overwork?" shows
| how brainwashed people are today. The attitude of not talking
| honestly about one's employment treatment continues to
| perpetuate terrible working environments. Places like
| Glassdoor.com and if you remember fatbabies.com - they do
| society a great service.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| My experience is that new potential employers don't dig that
| deep in what you did on social media or blogs, most input
| they gather comes directly from the employee. They want to
| know what skills you have and what personality you have,
| mostly by asking questions orally.
| mcguire wrote:
| Would you say that it is unreasonable to expect anyone who is
| 'in charge over employees' to be professional?
| falcolas wrote:
| This is beautifully rational advice. But that makes it only
| half-complete as a guide for people going through these events.
| There also needs to be advice on how to handle the emotional
| and irrational side of being a person.
|
| I don't have the full set of advice to help, but I would say
| this is a good first step:
|
| "Be kind to yourself."
|
| Nobody can hurt you more than you can. _Especially_ when other
| folks try and push their faults off on you.
| sparrish wrote:
| I agree with you and feel that younger employees lose sight of
| this more easily as their entire world revolves around their
| employment and those they work with.
|
| Lack of a 'life' outside of work makes one myopic to the cold
| nature of employment and changes the dynamic so losing a job is
| an enormous emotional hit.
|
| Start a family, go to church, cultivate friendships outside of
| your work. Your life will be better off for it and it will help
| keep this employee/employer relationship in its proper focus.
| neon_electro wrote:
| >younger employees lose sight of this more easily as their
| entire world revolves around their employment and those they
| work with
|
| Do you think employers deserve any responsibility for
| creating that perception among employees? Is this entirely
| the youth's fault?
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Sure, when the employer provides 3 free squares a day,
| onsite massages, custom merch, team volleyball and a hiring
| process that emphasizes culture fit.
| to11mtm wrote:
| You don't even have to go that far TBH.
|
| I've seen a pattern with some companies where people are
| afraid to leave, for lack of a better way of putting it,
| "It's hell but if I leave it will be even more hell for
| my friends I leave behind." It's often a form of 'trauma-
| bonding'.
| ipaddr wrote:
| When words of family start floating around or when social
| activities are provided/expected.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I called my boss out for bullying. They held a "process", which
| from my POV was inconclusive. He had been shouting at me for
| joking with colleagues in the office - they were not called
| out. My colleagues all thought he had been unreasonable; when
| he yelled at me, a deathly silence fell over the whole room,
| and nobody spoke until knocking-off time.
|
| I think the problem was that he wasn't a techie; he was a slick
| salesman (this was a small firm). I think I was undermining him
| by existing.
|
| I actually liked the guy; my complaint was that he was being
| unfair.
|
| A couple of weeks later, I told him I was planning to retire,
| which I did 6 months later.
| revolutukr wrote:
| Cash rules everything around me is the only emotionally healthy
| attitude to take about your career. Every time I would be told
| "we're a family" by a potential employer, I added $25k to my
| minimum salary. If corporations are "family" then that family
| belongs on Jerry Springer, and receiving group Dialectic
| Behavioral Therapy.
|
| Punch in, do a good job, punch out, have a life outside of your
| job. Don't socialize with co-workers, don't spend all of your
| free time on work projects or talking to other colleagues online.
| Do anything you can to compartmentalize and separate work from
| home.
|
| Work is how you pay the bills, it is not who you are.
| lawn wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, but I wouldn't go so far to say
| that cash stands above everything.
|
| Having a fulfilling job, a low-stress work environment, a
| challenging job, a job full of learning and pleasant co-workers
| are all very valuable.
|
| I would not take any shitty job just because the pay is good,
| it has to be good in other ways too.
| jbm wrote:
| > Don't socialize with co-workers
|
| I'm 100% certain that socializing with my coworkers was the key
| to my (eventual) large social circle when I moved abroad.
|
| If anything, not socializing with coworkers would have probably
| left me destitute. A lot of my job upgrades involved former
| coworkers in some form.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Don't attempt to form friendships/relationships with people
| you spent the most time with (including friends and family)
| is odd advice.
| jbm wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| There is a loneliness epidemic, and discarding people you
| encounter regularly is an ineffective way of dealing with
| it.
|
| "Don't Trust Anyone" is a pro wrestling slogan, not a way
| to live.
| jxf wrote:
| > Every time I would be told "we're a family" by a potential
| employer, I added $25k to my minimum salary.
|
| This is also why it's super important to screen for these kinds
| of signals during the interview process, and why interviewees
| asking questions is super critical.
| orzig wrote:
| I held this attitude for the first few years of my career,
| having read hacker news in school. I have found that, for me, a
| more balanced approach works better. I have been through
| layoffs, but I have also gone to the weddings of coworkers and
| even managers.
|
| Trying to keep that adversarial boundary was actually draining
| for me, so for any other young person out there reading this:
| moderation in all things
| dalyons wrote:
| agreed. the overly cynical take is way too negative and
| draining for something that you spend like 1/3rd of your
| waking hours doing. Making light friendships and doing the
| occasional social thing can lead to _shock horror_ actually
| enjoying some of that work time. hardcore cynicism and
| clinical detachment leads to misery in its own right.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| There is a fundamental difference between developing
| camaraderie with coworkers and having any kind of loyalty to
| the company itself.
| dmurdoch wrote:
| Exactly this. I've generally loved the small teams I've
| been on, and keep in touch with co workers from every
| company I've worked for and left. But that doesn't mean I
| held any allegiance to the company that we both worked for.
| I like people not corporations. Yes it sucks to 'leave'
| your friends behind at a job, but if they're really your
| friends you'll still keep in touch.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| My takeaway from this is that they got caught up in Twitter
| drama. The article screams "I was/am way too online". Even threw
| in a racism claim for good measure.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| It reminds me of the Susan Fowler drama (the woman who got the
| CEO of Uber fired with a blog post) - she posted a long story
| about the frustrations that every developer has, but concluded
| that they only happened to her because she was a woman.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Susan Fowler's blog post definitely wasn't just everyday
| things that every developer experiences from my perspective,
| and this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express
| that view.
|
| IIRC, Fowler's boss began talking to her about his sex life
| and subtly propositioning her for sex in her first week.
| Nothing like that has ever happened to me.
|
| If you're working someplace where that's an everyday
| occurrence, I think you work in a very unusual environment.
| jxf wrote:
| That was a heartbreaking story of malfeasance. This is why
| transparency is important -- I'd certainly want to know if one of
| the directors or senior executives that reported to me were
| engaging in bad behavior, and I'd want people (especially their
| reports) to feel safe in reporting that, anonymously or
| otherwise. Aside from the ethical reasons to protect folks this
| way, losing someone talented and passionate can be an economic
| disaster for a company.
| righttoolforjob wrote:
| I've unfortunately found that senior executives have incredible
| protection nets. They can basically do whatever they want and
| get away with it.
| honkycat wrote:
| I donno! This turned into a ramble and it's already all typed up
| so ill just post it:
|
| Some people view the world through a pinhole. Like an animal,
| only reacting to stimulus and stroking their ID and seeking to
| consume and control. These people are called 'sociopaths' and are
| pretty rare. It is unlikely this person's boss was a sociopath,
| they actually tend to have a lot of trouble in modern society
| because they act like assholes and fail to imitate important
| social cures, making them seem 'off.'
|
| In the past I have had multiple people who I befriended, only
| later to be stalked and harassed by them because it turns out I
| was the last person who was tolerating their insane bullshit.
|
| In effect, they were abusers. And often victims of abuse
| themselves, to be fair. They were merely repeating the patterns
| they had learned in the past. I am a victim of abuse, I think
| that is likely why my tolerance for such people is so high.
|
| However, I do not abdicate my responsibility in enabling abusers.
| My mother would always say to my little sister: "If you give a
| mouse a cookie..." This is very true. Giving someone attention
| who is mean and does not deserve it makes you an asset to them:
| Abusers realize they can redirect their pain into you, and use
| you as a smoke screen to cover up their own bad behaviour. This
| is well documented. Check out DARVO[0] if you are curious.
|
| Recently, I made another friend. But this time was different: I
| have been through this before. I sensed what kind of person this
| dude was, and even though it was painful to abandon someone, I
| told them I'm not interested in being their friend anymore. A few
| months later he went into a mental institution and I now see him
| going on insane screeds on LinkedIn, still insistent he is the
| victim and he has done nothing wrong. He is either oblivious or
| in denial about his own responsibilities in maintaining his life.
|
| I had another bad experience with a boss who was trying to drive
| me out of a company because he wanted to hire his friend and we
| were out of head count. He did everything he could to bully me.
| We were once at one of my co-workers house for dinner and drinks
| and the trash can lid slammed shut and it made a bang.[1] He
| yelled at me like he was yelling at a dog. And fired me later in
| the month.
|
| But, I'm not really haunted by these things. To this day, I pity
| these people. Why would you do what this person's boss does, Harm
| a friend out of some misplaced jealousy? Why would you bully me,
| a 24 year old kid fresh out of college just trying his best? Why
| would someone rape me as a child?
|
| i was once riding home with my cousin's grandfather ( I was on
| his way into Chicago ), and he told me he was in Hitler Youth. I
| asked... what was that like? He paused for a long time, and then
| responded: "Some men will kill for fun."
|
| These types of people are the same ones you see living on the
| streets. More of them are headed that way than you realize.
|
| They are missing a piece of themselves. And that missing piece
| causes them pain and makes it hard to function in society. So
| they try to inflict the pain on other people ( make them feel
| socially rejected and inadequate ), or fill that void with drugs,
| or fuck up badly enough the only way they can move forward is to
| stab another person in the back.
|
| Are these abusive people happy at this point? I highly doubt it.
|
| Am I? Absolutely. I have a ton of friends, fulfilling hobbies, a
| great career, I'm good at my job, a wonderful partner, a fuzzy
| little cat, and I walk through this world with a light heart,
| full of light, because despite everything I've been through, I
| still strive to treat others with kindness and respect and have
| largely been successful at this.
|
| I guess the point I'm trying to make is: Learn to identify these
| types of people, and do not share your light with them. Abandon
| fake friends. Abandon abusers. They are not worth it and it isn't
| your responsibility to fix them.
|
| 0: https://www.choosingtherapy.com/darvo/
|
| 1: It was a foot controlled one and I mean... get a piece of
| rubber for $2 off amazon for gods sake...
| costcofries wrote:
| Ineffective managers are a real problem, I have first hand
| experience. There is nothing worse than being in a toxic
| environment where your manager doesn't support or showcase your
| work. The only solution to these situations is usually too look
| for other internal opportunities or resign.
|
| The larger the organization, the more systematic this problem
| usually tends to be, this is just my experience of course.
| par wrote:
| It's been the opposite for me. Larger organizations (i'm
| talking huge, like FAANG), have been much more supportive. The
| management is usually more seasoned. I've seen really small
| startups with super inexperienced founders be the biggest
| culprit of this kind of stuff.
| wombat-man wrote:
| This has been my experience too for the most part.
| everyone wrote:
| I'm curious what author was working on. What's a home
| entertainment PC? Surely any PC could be configured and used for
| whatever entertainment one chooses?
| wesley83 wrote:
| I didn't disclose specifics because it would reveal the company
| I was talking about, but it was in conjunction with the release
| of Windows Media Center. Many OEMs launched specific software
| packages associated with managing media on a PC with a TV tuner
| card.
| rrauenza wrote:
| I feel old now that no one remembers the media pc fad. We
| shopped and shopped for one that would fit into our
| entertainment center and eventually just had to build our
| own...
| xwdv wrote:
| This is why I recommend you never fall in love with a job.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| Everything you love you will lose. Avoiding loving things
| because of that seems like a painful life strategy.
| mylons wrote:
| Aristotle wrote quite a bit on this subject. Check out
| Nicomachean Ethics for a nice dry read.
|
| I think Aristotle would say that since a job is ultimately
| not in your control and you can be fired for reasons out of
| your control, you must compartmentalize your attachment, or
| detach altogether, if you wish to avoid pain.
|
| It's also an insight from Buddhism that expectation and
| attachment are core causes for suffering.
| twh270 wrote:
| And you can lose a friendship, romantic partner, child, or
| anything else for reasons out of your control.
|
| Yes, expectation and attachment are core causes for
| pain/grief/suffering. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't
| have expectations or attachments. It's just that you have
| to decide if the (potential or actual) grief and suffering
| is worth it, and under what terms you're willing to
| continue to have that expectation or attachment. This is
| where acceptance and boundaries have a huge part to play.
|
| That's sometimes a difficult question. What kind of
| relationship to have with an emotionally abusive parent?
| Whether to leave a job that's financially very rewarding
| but is also extremely stressful and 60-80 hour weeks are
| common?
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| Honestly I was tempted to quote the five remembrances from
| buddhism: "everything you love will come to change." We put
| them up on gravestones for Halloween one year.
|
| Buddhism decidedly doesn't say "ergo, don't love things."
| It's more "love things (people) as they are, without
| attachment and in full knowledge that they are ephemeral."
| mylons wrote:
| agreed. that's why i said if you want to avoid pain. i
| think for a job it's fine most of the time.
| xwdv wrote:
| When I was younger I loved all kinds of things, until I grew
| older and realized many of those things weren't all that
| special, and eventually the number of things I truly loved
| could be counted with one hand. Nowadays, I think I only need
| one finger.
| praptak wrote:
| You're free to love your job, just don't confuse it with your
| career.
|
| Also you're loving something that cannot love you back.
| jmull wrote:
| Avoiding loving anything is surely different than avoiding
| loving a job.
|
| I think you can get a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction out
| of a job without losing sight of the fact that it's a
| business arrangement... one which may stop being mutually
| beneficial for any number of reasons.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| If not loving your job means you love nothing, then I suggest
| you try getting a dog.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| I did, his name was Quincy, he died of cancer
| dymk wrote:
| I'm sure Quincy loved you very much, and enjoyed his
| finite time in this world with you
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Loving things is painful. Avoiding loving things is also
| painful. I'm not sure which is worse. Life is full of pain no
| matter what you do, so I guess a big part is acceptance, and
| being able to sit with and accept the pain.
| yellowapple wrote:
| It worked well enough for the Jedi Order (well, until it
| didn't).
| praptak wrote:
| Solid advice but it doesn't really help in this case. "Bullied
| out of a job you don't love" is as bad.
| [deleted]
| rixrax wrote:
| Absolutely. Or to put it another way, loving your job is great,
| but being jealously, madly in love should be avoided.
|
| I've sometimes wondered if there should be term limits on most
| jobs? E.g. no more than 8 years in any one company, and maybe
| no more than 3 years in any one position. Something like that.
| groestl wrote:
| ... that you do not own.
| brightball wrote:
| My natural state is to become highly emotionally invested in
| the success of companies I work for. I struggled with this,
| especially when I was prevented from fixing issues that were
| really hurting the companies. Everything from going through
| proper channels to getting the "not your job".
|
| Now I do consulting instead. I still get emotionally invested
| in the success of my clients but my job is specifically to help
| them run more effectively. Ended up that the solution for me
| has just been to find the job that allows me to help in the way
| most natural for me.
| revolutukr wrote:
| This makes me very sad, because in my 30 years I've seen so
| many of you burn out. I was like that for the first 15 years
| of my career until I watched a manager turn into a
| billionaire by abusing everybody who worked for him. My last
| 15 years I detached, and found myself much happier. My
| bipolar disorder became manageable, my addictions went away,
| my health improved, and my finances improved.
|
| Your job will never love you back. Your employer's interests
| are diametrically opposed to you having a happy life.
| CodeSgt wrote:
| It makes me sad that so many people seem incapable of
| understanding that you can both enjoy your job and be
| emotionally invested in the outcomes you produce while
| still living a healthy lifestyle.
|
| It makes me sad that so many people here and elsewhere are
| content to just spend a third of their day 5 times a week
| for something they don't care about and don't get excited
| over. Is that really "healthier"?
|
| I have a job where the code I write has a direct positive
| impact on the people the use our software. I enjoy seeing
| those positive outcomes. I enjoy seeing what my team and I
| created at the end of a hard sprint. There are certainly
| things I don't enjoy, as is the case with any job, but for
| the most part I feel good about how I spent those 8-9 hours
| at the end of the day.
| Test0129 wrote:
| I think the GP is getting misinterpreted. The devil can
| be found in how you interpret "emotionally invested".
|
| I try to stay emotionally detached from everything I do
| for a company. Even recently this helped me through a
| layoff and transition. I worked for a full year, mostly
| by my self, to put together a tool the company
| desperately needed to grow but couldn't afford a full
| team to build. Some 20,000+ lines of code lovingly put
| together to do the job exactly as described with full end
| to end tests and everything.
|
| Then the new guys came in and said the project is
| scrapped. Stuff is getting shipped overseas, and they're
| going to instead try to kludge some off the shelf stuff
| into the role. All my work, a year and thousands of lines
| of code, gone in an instant. If I was emotionally
| attached to my work, in the literal sense, I would've
| been crushed. I wasn't because at the end of the day they
| paid me to make something that could be destroyed. In
| this sense, money is the most important thing. I wouldn't
| work for free even if I was promised what I was doing
| would save humanity.
|
| I don't get excited by company visions or goals. I don't
| get excited when the CEO talks a big game, or the
| engineering VPs tell us how good we are. I don't care
| about hiring processes, meetings with the PMs, or the
| exact nature of whatever it is I am building. All I care
| about is the fundamental act of coding is enjoyable to me
| - and that's what keep me in the industry. I've been in
| the industry over a decade now. I realize sprint goals
| along with everything else a company focuses on is mostly
| trivia. The people in charge universally lack the ability
| to understand the nature and motivations of an actually
| talented engineer.
|
| But it is eye opening that in over a decade I have never
| had a company say "we need to make this code easier to
| add to" or "we should make this as flexible as we could
| need for the future". There's never budget for good
| engineering. Just getting the product done. So it makes
| no sense to have any attachment to exactly what you do.
| But rather the art, so to speak, of doing it. Emotional
| attachment is how you end up in therapy after getting
| laid off. Save yourself the trouble.
| brightball wrote:
| As a consultant, I am my employer. :)
| revolutukr wrote:
| Me too. My boss is an asshole.
| amelius wrote:
| So the "made with love" tagline should become "made with
| indifference"?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| It would generally be more accurate.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Or possibly "made with contempt and bitterness".
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dietmtnview wrote:
| Separate from the serious issue at the heart of this post. What
| is going on with this website? Why is text entering the page as I
| scroll?
| beschizza wrote:
| Rick Bergman, presumably.
| atentaten wrote:
| After reading to the end, I was surprised to see race being
| mentioned as a possible reason to why this person was bullied--it
| wasn't something I was considering up to that point. The story is
| one-sided, and I supposed it can only be that way. But it could
| be that author was naive about something that they did or was
| doing unintentionally to upset the SVP or someone else close to
| the SVP. Either way, I think the SVP's behavior was abhorrent as
| well as the manager's.
| citilife wrote:
| First, this is basic human behavior. It appears this SVP had a
| job to manage social interactions and the author was stepping out
| of their role. Typical company policies are to manage social
| media via a point team, i.e. employees don't discuss work
| publicly. The author even mentioned this:
|
| > In fact, I was so prolific on social media that I got the
| attention of several industry analysts who asked how my company
| used social media for brand promotion and marketing. Of course,
| since I was in engineering, I sent these inquiries over to our PR
| department.
|
| The SVP was likely feeling the author was impacting company
| public relations, independent from the point team.
|
| It would be equivalent to someone in marketing force pushing code
| to production.
|
| Regarding the authors feelings -- again, he's stepping out of his
| role and not coordinating with the marketing team. Of course
| leadership would ask him to knock it off or be fired.
|
| > His stern look communicated that he was talking about my career
| and was clearly not messing around. I felt bullied, threatened,
| and scared. Because I feared being unfairly scrutinized and I'd
| just had my job threatened, it was tough for me to feel
| comfortable saying anything about my work life on Twitter after
| that.
|
| Shouldn't have been talking about work life on twitter anyway...
| The way the author discusses "bullying" is literally every
| interaction in a business. Organizations must be clear and
| consistent. Leaders need to be as well. Yes, they can fire you;
| yes, they can tell you what to do. That's life, that's the way
| human designed structures work.
|
| > There are a few reasons why I think this happened to me. Being
| a young Black man in the tech field put me in a vulnerable
| position where different equals disposable. Maybe being privy to
| Rick's inherent lack of knowledge of the very thing he professed
| to be an expert on gave me some perceived leverage over him;
| thus, I was a threat to be eliminated. My lack of seniority and
| title also put me at a disadvantage. Ultimately, I believe that
| in true bully fashion, he got his kicks by using his power to
| affect other people's lives for sport.
|
| Maybe that's true, but in all likelihood the author was stepping
| out of line. Discussing race in this context seems to detract
| from that actual events. The author even quit his "dream" job to
| to work in social media...
|
| > This eventually led me to quit and pursue my passion for social
| media marketing outside my "dream" company.
|
| Clearly, the author wasn't interested in their engineering job
| and decided to do something else -- fine, but not what the
| company hired them for.
| geewee wrote:
| This take is wild to me. If we're assuming the authors side of
| the story is correct, some of those interactions are
| _extremely_ weird, rude, and definitely not just regular work
| interactions.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Both can be true: that the SVP was pursuing a course they
| thought would protect the company, but that they did so in a
| cold, dismissive, bullying manner.
| wesley83 wrote:
| I want to address the point that I was "stepping out of line."
| In my role, I was in constant contact with marketing and PR. We
| worked very closely together and met every week. I'm still
| friends with many of them to this day. My manager was also
| fully supportive of my participation on social media and even
| wrote it into my goals with time carved out, especially for
| this task. There was no question about the quality of my work.
| I was even promoted during this time frame. I only spoke about
| information that was already public, and as I stated before, I
| was PR trained by the company as an encouragement to talk more
| openly. I was also in promotional material for the company
| because they felt I was such a good representative of their
| values. They not only loved what I was doing but repeatedly
| encouraged me to continue with their full endorsement. Also, as
| previously stated, I was a founding member of their social
| media council. We created policies that determined how and what
| employees could participate in social media and the associated
| training. This SVP was not initially in social media management
| because there was zero established formal presence, to begin
| with. Back then, companies were not widely on social media like
| they are today. I know we might have different ways of
| approaching work, and I've also changed my views over time, but
| your read that I was not engaged or passionate about my "main"
| job is a flawed take. It was actually the exact opposite. I was
| very good at my job and loved it. I was not neglecting my role
| but going above and beyond.
| xmonkee wrote:
| I am sorry you went through all that. The SVP sounds like a
| dick, irrespective of what you tweeted/didn't tweet.
|
| I am curious, do you still do social media just as much on
| the side, or is it your main job now? And do you look back at
| your days then and think you were tweeting too hard?
| wesley83 wrote:
| I wasn't tweeting too hard. I still am very active on
| social media, but I don't let it conflict with my job. Some
| would say that my visibility on social media aids in my
| effectiveness in my profession.
| citilife wrote:
| First, I appreciate your response. I actual have had similar
| experiences in terms of doing what I was told and being
| slapped down by a SVP in a different department due to being
| an "upstart". So, I fully appreciate where you are coming
| from and have experience.
|
| That said,
|
| 1. Business is cut throat. It's helpful for people in
| business to be cut throat, it helps them to survive and move
| up the org structure. They also get budgets and climb the
| ladder through increasing headcount below them.
|
| 2. This SVP didn't have you reporting to them, it sounds like
| you were putting their role at risk. It appears you didn't
| coordinate PR campaigns and didn't get approval for every
| statement (how else were your posts flagged, if you didn't
| post without prior approval). It could be a lack of policy
| which created these issues, but IMO I can see why the SVP
| responded the way they did. You can call it bullying if you'd
| like, but that's life and the way it works.
|
| 3. Even with point 1 and 2, something seems off. No one
| thought it was weird your posts were being flagged? No one
| backed you up? This new SVP just moved in and removed you
| with no comment? Why? People don't act hostile for no reason.
| Did the SVP just view you as a threat? Seems like something
| is missing.
|
| Finally, I definitely would have personally handled it by
| just speaking with you or working through it. I've worked a
| lot with public relations teams and never would have thought
| they'd lash out at their public face (seems like a bad
| policy...).
| wesley83 wrote:
| Why do you feel that my posts were flagged? They were never
| flagged. Marketing and PR had no issues with what I was
| doing.
| citilife wrote:
| > Eventually, he acquired the tweets in question, and we
| were both stunned about why these benign tweets, which
| were clearly not about the company's financials, were
| being flagged. Then, he finally confided in me that the
| person who reported this to him was the SVP I had been
| working with previously, Rick.
|
| I used the term "flagged" which was described in the
| article. I assumed it means that "this SVP was sharing
| them with your boss and saying -- this is bad" or
| something.
|
| Who was this SVP? Why did he setup the social media
| council? What was his job function?
| Manu40 wrote:
| I've lost multiple jobs because of terrible co-workers and idiot
| bosses who don't have the faintest clue of the difference between
| a moral person and an immoral one. They would much rather keep
| the people the know already, than keep the person that brings the
| problem to their attention.
|
| This needs to change. My solution may seem a bit extreme to some
| people, but I think businesses should be shut down for doing that
| sort of thing. And the respective
| owners/bosses/management/employees to the situation put through a
| stint of incarceration.
|
| My reasoning is that they already don't obey the labor laws, so
| slapping them with fines and minor reprimands is pointless. Gotta
| go whole hog on these people so they get the point. Their actions
| (or lack of thereof) are not going to be tolerated.
|
| Luckily, my current employers seem more reasonable, so that's
| nice. But it's part time work, and when I say part time, I really
| mean it. It's almost practically a gig job.
|
| But there are no dumb co-workers, because the bosses are the co-
| workers.
| nonobody wrote:
| I'm in a very very similar position, I got hired to lead a team
| in a flat style, months later the CEO said to me he will hire
| someone else to do this role to make me focus on my current
| project, let's call this GuyA-bigTitleA. I was ok with it (and it
| was ok at the beginning) before GuyA-bigTitleA turns into a
| control maniac who changed the flat into hierarchical, all the
| way to the point he wanted to sit next to me to tell me what to
| write in my own ticket, not just I'm a senior and technically
| miles ahead of him, but I hold several leadership designation and
| held several titles in the past.
|
| I tried to communicate that with him but with no avail, months
| forward with all what that accompany including
| undermining/downplaying/credit taking/etc. in a close
| coordination with GuyB-bigTitleB, it escalated once to the point
| he shouted at me, insulted me in the middle of the office, it's
| when approached who hired me (the CEO) and told him this guy can
| no longer be my manager or I'm out. The CEO, being relatively
| reasonable guy trying all his best to keep the talents in his
| small business, apologized in his behalf (GuyA-bigTitleA never
| apologized till now after months of it happening), and promised
| to make fundamental changes, that was 7 months ago and nothing
| changed yet, GuyA and GuyB hold the highest rank in our division
| with access to all resources, communications, team, etc. and work
| in coordination to either set me up or trying all their best to
| justify firing me as they cannot do it directly, they even tried
| to hinder the project progress just to make a point that my
| skills are not on par (it was successfully delivered among other
| projects and I'm proud of that with all of what was happening)
| and I'm still at the bottom of this hierarchy, now they work
| persistently to "make me replaceable" at all cost.
|
| While I'm usually resilience to stress, It was at some point
| exhausting in terms of mental health in addition to the stress
| that come with the work itself (engineering and robotics), and
| because I love (probably as other mentioned not falling in love
| is the key) robotics, I'm still kind of waiting for the CEO
| changes, part of me is saying he is stalling and will never
| change anything, and other part says otherwise he's just waiting
| for the "right moment". But I can totally relate to the story as
| I'm living it right now.
| whycombinetor wrote:
| So you gave your CEO an ultimatum (guy can no longer by your
| manager or you're out), and then when he does nothing to
| resolve your situation, you backed down from the ultimatum?
| There are other robotics companies in the world.
| nonobody wrote:
| That's what I'm debating right now, will the CEO change
| things or not, in two occasions in the past months he
| reaffirms that he will, and that what's holding me, it's
| temporary soon it will be clear whether he will do it or not.
|
| And I agree there are other robotic companies, but the team
| (beside these two) is great, and I contributed a lot in its
| growth in the past 2.5 years -I'm now the oldest employee-,
| so trying my best to give it a chance, maybe at least until
| the holiday, I don't want to regret it in the future that I
| rushed without giving a second chance.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| Have an alternative job offer in hand so that you can leave
| on your own terms. I've been in similar situation in the
| past, and in hindsight if the top layer is
| toxic/incompetent, it eventually trickles down.
| arolihas wrote:
| You most likely have a lot of valuable experience that many
| great robotics teams sorely need. At the very least you
| could start talking to your network, recruiters, and other
| companies to see what your worth is. You don't have to
| commit to anything but you are doing yourself a great
| disservice by not exploring other options and sticking to a
| place that doesn't seem to properly appreciate you.
| peteradio wrote:
| 7 months and no action... dude they are just milking you for
| your work ethic. GuyA can put you down and you will stand and
| deliver, what incentive does he have to not keep pulling the
| same move, why would CEO care if it gets results?
| nonobody wrote:
| >GuyA can put you down and you will stand and deliver, what
| incentive does he have to not keep pulling the same move, why
| would CEO care if it gets results?
|
| Care to elaborate, please? GuyA can't tell me what to do
| anymore since that incident, I report directly to the CEO
| right now.
| pseudosudoer wrote:
| Wow, this is eerily similar to my previous employer (even down
| to the industry!). I loved loved loved the product, my role in
| it's success, and the problems I was tasked with solving.
| Unfortunately, humans can take all of the fun out of robots.
|
| I too pride my self in stress resilience, but at a certain
| point I realized the joy in my work was offset by the annoyance
| of interpersonal issues. Leaving the company was bittersweet. I
| was still going to work in robotics, but it certainly wasn't as
| "cool". Now that it's been a few months at my new gig, I
| realize my QoL is much better as I actually enjoy the people I
| primarily work with.
|
| Providing ultimatums to upper management may cure your woes,
| but you have to be willing back up the consequences you
| promised. So if action isn't taken by the CEO you'll need to
| fulfill your promise of leaving, or at least get an offer to
| show you're serious. If things don't change when you show your
| strongest hand, that's definitely a sign it's time to leave.
| sgt wrote:
| > There are a few reasons why I think this happened to me. Being
| a young Black man in the tech field put me in a vulnerable
| position where different equals disposable. Maybe being privy to
| Rick's inherent lack of knowledge of the very thing he professed
| to be an expert on gave me some perceived leverage over him;
| thus, I was a threat to be eliminated.
|
| He could have started with this. Such victim mentality.
| thornewolf wrote:
| How so? What I read here is "A possible explanation for this
| otherwise almost inexplicable behavior is the fact that I am a
| member of a group that has historically had widespread
| experiences exactly like this one"
|
| Every "successful" black person I know has experiences similar
| to this one. They are over performing along some axis at some
| point in their career, yet some senior inexplicably seems to
| dislike them. And I am not exaggerating when I say "every".
| ilc wrote:
| My most recent boss, who was DAMN good, got his shit done etc...
| taught me one very important life lesson.
|
| Stop at the end of the day. Pick a time, or a number of hours
| you'll work... and stop.
|
| Close the laptop for work use, and that's that.
|
| Pick it up tomorrow. Have a boundary.
|
| Yes, I really like my current company. But that small boundary of
| stopping my day's work every day. Not carrying my work like a
| cross... Makes it so when things swing to and fro at work, my
| head is much more level. Even if you are on a roll and in the
| flow... consider closing the laptop when you lose your current
| flow.
|
| Then go do something else! Play a video game, knit a sweater,
| take a walk, fly a kite, hug someone you love...
|
| That's your time. Use it and enjoy it!
|
| If you feel guilty, remember... Rest is critical to performance.
| The sooner you realize this, the happier you will be at work, and
| outside of work.
|
| Source: Engineer of 25+ years, who has seen many things... And
| many stupid things :)
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Unfortunately being on-call 24x7 is the base expectation at big
| companies, from my experience. And since most people seem to go
| along with it, standing up to it leads to you being bullied
| out.
|
| Edit: and being on-call just means free overtime.
| chrismcb wrote:
| I've worked at several big companies. Being on call 24x7 was
| never an expectation.
| zeruch wrote:
| "Unfortunately being on-call 24x7 is the base expectation at
| big companies,"
|
| Occasionally is that true, unless you set that precedent
| early.
|
| If you set boundaries up at the start, in most cases, they
| stick. It's just critical to assess early and modulate
| occasionally (exceptions happen) but its better than living
| to their schedule on your dime.
| xxpor wrote:
| Being on call doesn't mean you're responding to arbitrary
| stuff at all hours of the day, just emergencies.
| slyall wrote:
| As others have said you should not be oncall 24x7.
|
| - Oncall should be restored among several people so you are
| only oncall some of the time.
|
| - The level of callouts should be low even when you are on
| duty
|
| - if you spent all night on a call you should get some time
| off in compensation. Even if it is just coming to work late
| the next day.
|
| The above should be the minimum. Plenty of people will argue
| for more.
| scruple wrote:
| Interesting. I've had the opposite experience. On-call was
| never expected (for software engineers... for Ops people in
| the NOC, SREs, etc., it was an explicit job requirement) at
| the larger places I've been inside of, but it has been an
| expectation (typically unspoken, typically in-addition-to an
| on-call rotation) for the smaller places and startups I've
| worked at.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| > being on-call 24x7 is the base expectation at big
| companies, from my experience
|
| Your experience is atypical.
|
| > standing up to it leads to you being bullied out
|
| Make them try.
| [deleted]
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