Surviving a Tyrant at Work
madmork.com
madmork.com
1) Have meeting where you establish the walls should be painted this specific shade of blue. 2) Document this in an email summarizing the meeting and the todos 3) Start painting the walls blue, maybe even finish 4) Toxic Boss comes back and wonders why the walls aren't green. Apparently, they had been looking at the color swatches while sitting under a red tanning light, and expected for you to know what they meant. 5) Go back and paint the walls green. 6) The toxic boss now looks at them and wonders why they aren't red. And you need to paint the ceiling black, because they had a meeting with a potential client at a trade show, and black ceilings are the new hot thing. Clearly, you can fit all of this painting, and repainting, into the original timeline (despite your protestations), because the toxic boss told the client you'll be shipping it by date.
No amount of documentation works here. When you point out to the toxic boss your original agreement, they look puzzled at you, wondering why you aren't team player, and why you aren't listening to customer needs enough. There's another team at work who paints signs, and they are fine with daily changes.
You talk to the toxic boss about making a process for iterating on this and documenting expectations better, but then they say you're too rigid and process will slow things down- they are an idea person, and just like thinking about colors, not the details.
All successful projects of sufficient size probably need a tyrant at the top someplace who can and will make final decisions and enforce them, otherwise everything falls apart in conflicting requirements and bike-shedding.
Ahh, you might reply, but these are "toxic" tyrants, a phrase this article never bothers to define, allowing everyone to just project their own vision of a bad boss onto it.
I think the "toxic" tyrant has an agenda unrelated to the company performance, stemming from their lack of self confidence mixed with a lack of empathy. They overcompensate by seeking praise from those they perceive as weak, and sabotage those they see as treats.
When I find someone a bit aggressive or overbearing professionally, I try to observe how they behave outside of their job. If they're moderate and respectful, they are usually just very focused people, and probably good allies with the proper boundaries and communication.
If the behavior happens outside work as well, I'll just assume they're a lost cause and kill them with neutrality. Never let them bother me but never give them credit either, be extra zealous when they send me on a wild goose chase, until they get bored and latch onto someone else. Oh and raise my eyebrows before agreeing with them.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to
adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.I don't think writing colorful rants at core committers who unapologetically do the one thing he tells them not to - break userspace - really qualifies him as a tyrant.
I'd honestly love a boss who only blows up over things he's warned me about many times and are under my control.
She's a highly intelligent and credentialled professional and unless she wanted to throw away years of work, did not have a realistic option not to work with tyrants. Millions less gifted and lucky than her have less choice still. Life's also too short to go homeless or hungry for long.
It's also -- for the very majority of people -- way too damn short to simply cut one's self off from salary and (don't forget, please), health insurance. Especially when your industry suffers from the illusion that "all the good people have high-paying jobs they love, that you could never possibly woo them away from", and hence "if you don't have a job already, what the fuck is wrong with you? You must really, really suck." Especially when one has family and/or other dependents to support.
You know, stuff like that.
1. A cruel and oppressive ruler.
1.1 A person exercising power or control in a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary way.
1.2 (especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized absolute power without legal right.
A lot of points in this post are about appeasing toxic behavior and working with difficult bosses. Why? Appeasing toxicity only increases toxicity.
In my experience an abusive boss-employee relationship is made of two halves;
a) An abusive boss
b) A subject who accepts the abuse
So what are your options if you don't accept the abuse. Most people say "Quit". In my experience it's far more effective to deal with the abuse directly so that the abuser knows that you're not willing to accept their behaviour.
Of course there's a fear of being fired, but IMO that tends to be over-estimated. Getting you fired in many companies is not an easy process. Your typical tyrant doesn't want to make work for themselves and like most bullies if you show resistance, they'll leave you alone.
How you show resistance really varies - YMMV. For example if they make fun of you in public, making fun of them back _immediately_ is pretty effective - even if you're not funny showing you're willing to be loud in a group is the point. Calm one-on-one feedback is probably the best approach e.g. "I understand you might be under a lot of pressure at the moment but I don't like how you spoke to me this morning. I found it rude / aggressive / etc. and it makes me think about what my next steps are if this should continue". Local legal situations might mean you want to do that together with HR although the moment you involve HR, you've already escalated...
And of course you need to have the courage to act, but once you make the first step, it all gets easier. Life's too short.
I attempted to deal with the abuse directly, after appeasing for a while. I just couldn't feel good being treated the way I was - CEO was passive-aggressive to the extreme and treats every other than herself like they're idiots.
Anyway, two days after politely and diplomatically attempting to stand up for myself, I was fired.
How do you feel about it in retrospect? Do you regret the outcome? If so why?
There are lots of reasons why people would want to stay at a job.
Also, you are going to run into assholes in all walks of life. Learning to deal with them gives you options and puts you in control. If you lack that ability then your only option is to walk away.
Yes some of us are lucky and work remote, have a large portfolio of nice enough clients, and not have to deal with corporate overlords. Let's be real though, this is a very small portion of the workforce.
Not to mention that if you go through the trouble of changing, which is bothersome for many practical reasons, you won't be able to tell if it is better or worse before you've been working for a while, which is a pretty discouraging for risk averse people.
But when one is highly skilled, one does not simply "just quit and get another job".
Er.. so you want me to do his job too? I can give him options if he mature enough to take them and not blame me for then later