Managing your boss: adjusting to narcissists, 'ghosts,' gaslighters | Hacker News Reader

Managing your boss: adjusting to narcissists, 'ghosts,' gaslighters

reuters.com

112 pointsapress105 comments

  Q: What if you find yourself in a truly toxic work environment?

  A: My advice is to get out if you can. Toxic situations make you emotionally and physically sick. It can take years to recover. Have a good support network in place, limit your exposure with that toxic boss and stay under the radar. Adopt a survivor mentality until you can get out.

Yes, this sounds obvious, but at my last job I could have really used somebody telling me as much.

> Yes, this sounds obvious

Agreed, I think a hallmark of toxic situations is that from the outside it's obvious how bad they are and from the inside it's hard to see.

I have had two severely toxic bosses in my lifetime, and it is difficult to do anything because I kept second-guessing myself that it was my fault. It took away my self-confidence for years, and led to unsuccessful interviews, which compounds into more self-doubt.

Curious, what were the behaviors?

Extreme control, including weekend work. Verbal insults, derogatory, lots of profanity. Verbal reminders of power: one would hover over me saying "Why are you even here?" while watching me work, then tell me to leave. I would then get called back the next day to work on something else. It was erratic. Classic case of power and control: you leave when I tell you, you come back when I tell you.

The latter is mostly true. I can look back at events that revealed just how toxic things were, but there always seemed to be something (maybe the interesting part of the job, maybe somebody in worse shape) that kept me from processing them. But once away...

As one former colleague said, "Nobody who left X ever wanted to go back."

My friend, one of the few people who gives me any advice at all seemed baffled that I would “make things harder for myself” by quitting jobs that make me feel like I’m becoming mentally ill. I can adopt that suvival mindset for a period, but when I am thinking about work problems while I’m away then it’s time to get out—context is entry level retail jobs. It would be better to have something new lined up, but unemployment also granted my claim so there’s that. Check out the term “constructive dismissal”... it’s not understood by most people, but unemployment insurance knows what it is. I didn’t use the term in my summary, just gave a brief description of the problems.

For curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal

I made the mistake of continually thinking my problem was those who led, then realizing it was me, then losing most of my self-confidence.

I recommend not doing what I did. If it’s a bad fit, get out. It’s damaging.

And I recommend self-forgiveness and humility. I gave one of my former, extremely highly toxic bosses the DSM test for psychopathy and he scored like 26 or something. He was very open and upfront about it and how he saw the world. Frankly, the average person is not mentally capable of dealing with that level of ‘personality’ without some serious side study, knowledge, and support. He wasn’t that smart of a guy either. His neuro makeup just made him a natural at manipulating everyone.

But management doesn’t have to be a five star psychopath to be incapable of correction from below. This is one of those times where simply desiring to act in bad faith and the societal backing of management makes a direct report or worker unable to counter the bad faith actions in any meaningful way on average. I’ve done it, I know how to do it, and it takes an incredible amount of wisdom and luck to pull off.

If somone is a physical or emotional abuser you must get away from them as quickly as possible. Many abusers set themselves up in positions of power.

I worked for one of them. Completely agree. One day I decided I’d had enough though and just went home, changed my phone SIM for a PAYG one and immediately moved half way down the country.

I was his last remaining employee.

Sounds like you were escaping an abusive spouse. How about the traditional "fuck you, I quit", and not changing your sim or turning your life on its head for some jerk?

I think the jerk might get more satisfaction being able to spam the victim's phone and torture them from beyond the grave, compared to being ghosted completely (which is a tactic that should be reserved for only the truly heinous).

Restraining order exist for a reason. In most countries they are relatively easy to obtain.

It felt like it.

It took me two weeks to formulate a decent “fuck you” but I came to the conclusion that what remains unsaid is sometimes more effective than what is said.

What about the other people around you?

Should you be showing it's ok to stay (by example), or that it's ok to leave? (by example)

You can't show that it's okay to leave, because you won't be there anymore to correct the narrative told about you.

Sure you can - by finding something better, which is all anyone is concerned about from leaving anyway. The other parts (badmouthing you behind your back or whatever), have no effect on you once you’re gone except to highlight even more why folks should leave. People are not ignorant of the type of bosses that do that sort of thing, or what it means in my experience.

Worrying about the narrative some asshole is going to spin about your departure just puts you in their power - which is why they do it. The folks on the line generally don’t care, certainly not to the extent that should let someone control you in a toxic environment.

The narratives and justifications in toxic environments keep people there. They won't show the stayers squat. It may not even be all untrue, just twisted, forgetting all the good parts and dehumanizing, which is the objective.

Those who left are often oblivious its happening too.

That’s what I was talking about in part - They keep the people there who for whatever reason it works on (denial, fear, whatever), there are also those that connect with and think it’s a good environment. There are also those who don’t care and are using it to get experience and will bounce to a better place later. And there are also those that it helps to see someone succeed and get out. And those who seeing someone succeed is a threat to them, as it challenges all the other factors they’re in denial about.

The only ones who ‘leaving’ hurts is the ones who are enabling the bad environment. For everyone else? It’s just another day.

Don’t fall for the BS, you’ll be worse off for it later and regret it. But make sure you have a plan and a backup option. Rage quitting when you’ll be bankrupt in a week is dumb.

If I can't fix the work environment for me, I can't fix it for them.

The best I could do is to very quietly tell them "This is garbage. I'm looking. You maybe ought to be looking, too." (I guess the other thing I could do for them is to tell the actual truth in my exit interview.)

You're first point is well taken looking back now.

That being said, I didn't wait until my exit interview to raise hell, I mean, the alarm.

I also put clear criticism into his upward manager review. I later found quotes from that in my own review how in blaming him. That stuff was supposed to be confidential...

Most important lesson I ever learned and I share it freely, because I could have saved 2 years of misery had I really understood. People be like “well you say that but some of us have mortgages, families, kids, cats to feed”. Well guess what. If you burn out, not only will you lose that income, but you won’t be able to look for a job at best, or wind up with hospital bills at worst. In other words, you risk a far worse situation than if you had quit with no notice and nothing lined up. There is no possible excuse for risking catastrophic illness, especially when you have more job mobility and are in greater demand than most professions. There is no “if you can” as hard as that may be to accept, or as irresponsible as it may sound to you or look to others. It’s not good but it’s the least worst option. If the job is harming you badly enough then sorry but if you cannot negotiate a better situation where you are, you must leave for yourself and anyone who cares about you.

So true! I also lost about 2 years and my physical and mental health really deteriorated and 5 years later I'm still dealing with fallout.

I was a manager under a toxic director, so I had the added pressure of making sure my team was all right. After most of them had found positions elsewhere, I finally left.

For future reference, having done it both ways - finding a good out for yourself(and putting your oxygen mask on first) is usually better for the people under you too, as it shows them what they should be doing AND gives them (often) a place they can reach out to and land.

It might also help push them off the fence, as they see their cover from the sewage storm disappear.

Absolutely agree. I can't recommend enough that people look for new jobs as soon as they have major issues with their current one. Worst case, things improve and you just stop looking for a new one. Best case, you get a new job and things are way better. Even if the new job isn't amazing, at least the novelty and change of pace, plus the pride of having accomplished a new job, can recharge you enough to keep going.

At my first job, I was incredibly unhappy due to various reasons. I started looking for a job, and because I was already under so much strain from the current job, it took almost a year to find a new job. If I had waited until the breaking point, it would've been even more difficult to find a job due to having to recover from the first job, and then slog through almost a year of applying.

This isn't to scare people about the job market. But it's called a market for a reason. It's okay to have something today and look around for something better, even if what you have now isn't the worst thing ever.

Yes I have this discussion with other people. You can interview and just.. not take the offers.

The last couple places I left, I had offers up to a year or two before leaving but weighing cost-benefit, stayed at that time.

It's better to have the option than not. And interviewing is truly not that much work. You don't have to be perfect. The less you need the job, the less the interview process should stress you. We call this "opportunistic interviewing".

You can emphasize to the recruiter/HR/interviewer when pressed that - actually I'm happy where I am at the moment, but I am always up for a conversation and this sounded like it could be an interesting opportunity.

You may find companies even respond more favorably in the interview process to you when you are somewhat aloof in this manner. You will also make connections with companies who may touch base from time to time to see if now is a better time to make the jump.

This is infinitely better than having zero leads and feel like your life is going to hell before you even start looking.

> You can emphasize to the recruiter/HR/interviewer when pressed that - actually I'm happy where I am at the moment, but I am always up for a conversation and this sounded like it could be an interesting opportunity.

I agree with what you've said, but word of caution, this has to be handled with a bit of finesse, I think. I almost got passed over for a job because I said this and gave the recruiter the impression I wasn't that interested.

I had a acquaintance on another team who mentioned it to me, and I did a little "damage control" with the hiring manager. I got a great offer in the end -- and it was a great job -- but without that contact I would probably have whiffed it.

Indeed if the recruiter/hiring manager even gets a whiff that you're potentially wasting their time - it's game over.

> Indeed if the recruiter/hiring manager even gets a whiff that you're potentially wasting their time - it's game over.

It really depends on the company and role and person. In some situations there can be years of conversations before somebody makes the decision to accept.

Exactly, finesse is the name of the game for sure. There is a wide spectrum between uninterested and not-desperate. Appearing that you are desperate to get out of your current job is a far bigger red flag in most interview processes than appearing "not that interested".

It's like the other side of the coin of people who are super paranoid of getting fired if your boss finds out you are interviewing. If you are providing value, being a flight risk (within reason) increases your value not decreases.

You don't want to be so obviously foot out the door that they are looking for your replacement, but being the happy, uncomplaining soldier is not going to get you optimal raises/promotions.

Agree except interview even more often, as soon as minor issues emerge. Interview a few times a year for no reason whatsoever. Interview because you're tired of the way the boss' tie looks, or because maybe you'll get another 10K a year. Doesn't mean you're unhappy, or that you're even interested in these other companies, but it keeps you in touch and you just never know.

Yes. So many people I know wait for many years of bad raises / being unhappy before looking.

By that point you are so far in the hole that the new shop raise is unlikely to make up for lost gains, and you are likely so desperate you are going to take whatever is on offer.

Actually now what I'm thinking is: if I have the savings, the safety net, etc. next time I want to quit and look for something else, I'll just quit, and then spend enjoy as much free time as I want (in month unit), and then only look for a job when I want to go back into a job. The reason is: if you look for a job while you already have a job, then they'll end up forcing you to start earlier than you want, or you'll have that pressure at least. Better to quit and enjoy your free time, and then get back into a job when you're ready.

what sucks is if you do this a dozen times you're labeled a job hopper and no one wants to hire you anyway. I've had it happen to me many times. If you just keep at it though you'll find somewhere better. Don't just take the first thing that comes along but really dig in and ask questions so you know what you're getting yourself into. Interview THEM.

If you never stay long enough to finish what you started, it's hard to really accomplish anything. In my experience, that usually takes at least a year or two (usually two).

Also, if you run at the first sign of trouble, it's hard to really accomplish anything (or learn many things actually, since a lot of learning is failing and trying again). It's also expensive for the people managing you/teaching you and the org in general.

Those are the things people are concerned about when they talk about job hopping.

For anyone reading this - if you have a pattern of moving every 6 months, or a year - and it's consistent - there may be underlying issues (mental health, interpersonal problems, unrealistic expectations, lack of skills/fit to the role) that would be helpful to address. Long term, it is pointing to problems that are likely holding you back professionally, and may also make it more enjoyable being you if you worked on them.

That said - every time I've started a role or a job and said to myself 'this is terrible I should leave, but.... it's only been x time and I want to give it at least y amount of time' (where y was 6 months or a year), I've regretted it. The last time I had this happen, I knew I should leave literally 2 days in when my new manager cut short my supposed 3-6 months ramp up time to throw me directly into a particularly hard external customer negotiation issue.

I ended up burning out and damaging my reputation doing so trying to 'give it a try' - a year and a half later.

It's a balance. Look for patterns.

Such great advice.

“ For anyone reading this - if you have a pattern of moving every 6 months, or a year - and it's consistent - there may be underlying issues (mental health, interpersonal problems, unrealistic expectations, lack of skills/fit to the role) that would be helpful to address. Long term, it is pointing to problems that are likely holding you back professionally, and may also make it more enjoyable being you if you worked on them.”

Or, maybe you are perfectly healthy to leave crappy jobs and not stick it out to pad a resume.

Or, maybe you chose the wrong career and need to rethink a pivot to a different vocation?

Very true. I wasted nearly two years of my life at a toxic agency that prided itself on its culture and how the company was a family.

I'd dread Sunday evening. The morning drive to the office was always filled with a sense of impending doom. The finger pointing during "stand up". The end of the world when a TPS report didn't have a cover sheet, and mandatory meeting to come up with yet another new process to prevent future disasters.

Eventually I just said fuck this and gave my two weeks notice.

I had a mortgage, was the sole earner in my family, and had nothing else lined up. I was scared, but so relieved to never have to go back there.

One week later I was offered a job with a much better company and environment, for significantly higher salary. My only regret is not leaving sooner.

For anyone else whose life is similar, I just want to say that I have had jobs where I truly enjoyed going to work. I only had the “sunday scaries” just to participate in the meme of hating work. But I was really anticipating picking up where I left off at work.

So although you might find comraderie in other wage workers hating their life, still recognize that it is toxic and there are other realities that you are entitled to be in

This is really resonating with me, after two years in a job that had me think "I want to quit" by the weekly, it becomes the new normal and I can't imagine that a job can be stress-free, enjoyable, and provide good work-life balance. I just can't imagine that this exist.

I just quit my current job, and I told myself that I will quit in less than 6 months if I don't like the new gig. Never again.

At one point I stopped being able to sleep on Sunday nights, dreading the work on Monday so much.

Still took me way too long to put 2 and 2 together and leave...

I think what's missing from these discussions is that some people burn out really easy and some people aren't phased by the toxicity at all. Depending on the level of toxicity not everybody needs to cut and run.

I know of a workplace where the boss is "verbally abusive" by white collar coastal standards (a real peace of work by blue collar middle America standards and a teddy bear by drill sergeant standards) and over the years people have cycled in and out and the people who've stayed are the ones who just let it roll right off and they're a really effective team.

There is also unemployment, which for a married/partnered dev should be sufficent to cover most rent and essentials in the interim.

You may need to pare down your expenses a lot prior to quitting but that's why you quit. You trade your toys in exchange for your well being

You cant change narcissist full stop. And you cant change toxic boss from below. I agree with these.

But, I also dislike that a majority of advice on workplace and toxic people is basically "run away or enable it". Sometimes people can actually influence how much damage narcissist do and how far narcissist will grow in company.

There is little advice on how to communicate and protect yourself when toxic person is peer and you have some power over situation. Or how to report the situation in a way that will make impact, how to recognize who to report to, how to communicate in a way that will make situation transparent for third parties.

Unless you really love the job/company and/or are really getting paid, the cost-benefit of "fighting the fight" is not favorable.

Even getting a peer level narcissist neutralized or managed out can easily take 1-2 years of consistent, coordinated daily effort.

What else can you do with your career or personal life with that type of effort?

My issue is systemic - if this is prevalent ideology, then abusers are bound to be the ones in power. Because everybody else is just running away. And they run away only toward other abusers in other companies - maybe somewhat milder but that is all.

And I think that it is not just about "fight". It is also about things like verifying information, not covering up for them unnecesary, not lie for them out of politeness, keeping written record, talking about problems etc.

It strikes me as an employers problem to fix their toxic workplace, not lower level employees.

You never know exactly who the abuser has in their corner within management. You never know the professional networks that exist if you work in a smaller niche. Once you've decided to go after someone toxic in management, you better not miss... and even if you don't, you may not want to make a habit of it.

But why not you? Why not try? Have the courage and morals and try to make a change. At the very least, stand up for your beliefs. Get fired for going to battle against the evil in the world. You might find allies along the way and win.

Certainly try. You can document things, escalate where appropriate, etc. Remember documentation is just your word against someone else's. Toxic managers are usually smart enough to never respond with toxicity in electronic form.

I am generally against the idea that a long, open campaign against a specific more senior individual is likely to succeed.

Often times the supervisor of toxic managers are very aware of their toxicity but accepted it either as a tradeoff or in some cases actually like it.

A lot of these guys will burn it all down on the way out too.

I worked in a team that was having 40% annual turnover for 5 years. In the final year the toxic guy 3 levels up C (A->B->C) forced my boss' boss B to fire my boss A, then fired the firer B a couple weeks later. Finally when this was all over C himself resigned a couple months later.

Given his seniority and the time it takes to find a job at his level, he knew he was going to leave when he forced the final culling. He let A&B stay around for 5+ years and then when he knew he wouldn't have to face the consequences.. he whacked them and resigned.

Apparently the replacement for C is worse.. because the CTO all the way at the top is.. into that.

steveBK123 8 hours ago [–]

> It strikes me as an employers problem to fix their toxic workplace, not lower level employees.

There are only few attempts to put workable advice for them too.

And what advice is there for them, it focuses on making our possible to report stuff, maken it possible for them to leave teams and otherwise use own agency.

Plus honestly, the super passive stance does me damage to you psychologically. Learning to control just a little feels better and causes less damage to you.

> . Once you've decided to go after someone toxic in management

As I told, successful harm reduction I have seen did not involved "going after him" as if you was bull. It involved setting boundaries, reporting stuff, keeping records etc.

Bonus points, you meet abuses everywhere, in any big enough company and social group.

> but at my last job I could have really used somebody telling me as much.

Yeah, there's a subtle problem here:

- coworkers are a self-selecting population, that are likely OK working there.

- coworkers are probably over-represented in the people you talk to... and LISTEN to.

- people you do not work with "don't understand" (in theory)

I will say one thing:

Every time I've left a job... Every. Time. ... I was really conflicted about leaving.

Then, a week or two into the new job... Every. Time. ...I thought, "Wow! I should have done this sooner!"

Being biased towards quitting your job is a great heuristic. Even if the boss is o.k., if you have any non-trivial reservations at all it's generally best to quit as quickly as possible. Probably the same for breakups. Very few people regret doing that, the most common regret is staying too long due to inertia, loyalty or whatever. I've quit 3 jobs and each time I wished that I had quit earlier, and all 3 times have been great for my career in the long-run.

If you were a good performer, you can probably just go back to same the job later if you change your mind as well, and if they don't want you back because they're being immature, then it's probably to your benefit not to return.

http://www.redstrategygroup.com/insights/2016/2/26/why-zappo...

> Very few people regret doing that

Hmmm... well, I won't say that I necessarily regret it, but I was a bit trigger-happy in job-hopping right after college. It was the late 90's and programming jobs were REALLY easy to find, so if there was literally anything I didn't like about the job I had, I'd just go get another one. I ended up with four jobs in four years - and then when I decided to bail the fourth time, interviewers started noticing that I'd never been at one place longer than a year. I adopted a three-year policy after that - I'd keep a job for a minimum of three years before looking for another one. Even so, this actually came up during an interview (for a job I didn't get) just a few years ago even though it was 20 years in the past.

If you don't want 20 year old stuff coming up in interviews, make your resume section title Recent Experience or Relevant Experience, and leave off old stuff. Leave off the date you got your degree as well.

Yeah, you likely should do this even if you unconcerned about this as otherwise your resume won’t be nearly as concise or effective as it should be.

> it's generally best to quit as quickly as possible. Probably the same for breakups. Very few people regret doing that

I'm not sure that's true. It's pretty common to have people regret initiating breakups. I have certainly experienced being very unsure if breaking up had been the right choice.

There is some gender-specific variation regarding breakup regret, which I found to be curious:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy79yy/men-tend-to-struggle-...

This sounds obvious but it might be differentially applicable across cases.

We have really drastically lowered the bar for what gets called "toxic", "dangerous", "harmful" or even "violent". This has happened steadily and with increasing speed over the last ~3 generations, in my subjective observations.

I think the pendulum has swung too far with emotional and (now increasingly) ideological/theoretical safetyism.

It will be interesting to see where the middle ground is, or whether it just results in collapse of competence and output. I hope I'm wrong but over time it feels like the latter is where we're heading.

I understand where you're coming from, but I will offer this counterpoint:

I think that's ok. I think we can find ways to interact, collaborate, and work, that don't tolerate behaviours we wouldn't find acceptable in a social setting. I think raising the bar for acceptable behaviour is a good thing.

And while people will abuse this (both intentionally and due to personal struggles), It's not like people weren't abusing things the old way too.

I would rather have people take advantage of an _intolerance_ for toxicity than have people take advantage of a _tolerance_ for it.

Agreed, yes, conditions for workers have improved over the years. Being a good boss has become harder as the bar has been raised. Good.

... while continuing productivity increases across those years and achieving more things. And increasing the diversity of the workforce.

I'd have to disagree with that. Everyone has their own threshold. No point in making yourself suffer over a job. I think it's a good thing people quit and leave rather than suck it up over an entire career.

I might be wrong but it sounds as if you are blaming the victim here?

I wanted to add another note to those that might be in middle management or otherwise have "corporate responsibility" feelings. I have worked at a number of organizations with bosses that I have genuinely liked and that have gone out of their way to make sure that employees are doing well - but this kindness is utterly optional and there is no obligation for two-way kindness. Any obligations you feel to keep your company healthy should be tied to your own interests - your continued employment and any active options/interest in the company you have. Promises of future rewards are entirely vaporware until realized and if you hit a really tough personal period the company won't think twice about letting you go so be conservative about how much of your life you're willing to spend bettering a company that could fire you tomorrow.

That all said, don't be a dick about it.

I can relate to this. The experience seriously caused me trauma and I vowed to never stay in a place if it turns toxic.

This article is useless and gives no real advice except "get out". To deal with abusers you have to learn to see tricks they use to emotionally destabilize their victims. For example, they can use hints and innuendos for intimidation. I wrote a blog post about such communication https://dandanua.github.io/posts/counterfactual-communicatio...

Also, you can't really "manage" your boss if he/she is gaslighting you. This is a criminal offense (or should be, depending on where you live) and must be punished accordingly.

Thanks for this article, this clarifies a number of things that have been causing me great distress lately.

Let's be honest, telling people they have to accept their abuse and "get on your abusers' level and 'outsmart' them" is kind of wrong. The advice to leave your abusive boss and your insecurities behind and find a better paying job is, really, the only ethically correct advice. Your "option" of "trying to outplay" your boss only plays into the victims' insecurities and validates the abuser's hold.

In some cases you can't just leave, you can have obligations and responsibilities. You can be tied with the firm and an abusive boss can take full advantage of it. In this case you have to play, it doesn't matter do you want it or not. But to "outplay" you don't have to be much smarter. If you are honest then the advice of trying to make communication more explicit will do it by itself, hopefully.

This has essentially become a subjective debate over how to live one's best life. Yes, many of us prefer freedom over financials.

However, very often in reality, at the heart of the argument that one has to just hang on and suffer well with their job is an insecurity that one doesn't deserve better.

To mental health professionals, I assume they would understand that the people looking for advice and reading their articles are from emotionally/physically/economically insecure environments, from which the advice "suffer well" is essentially entirely non-productive because it is their lack of a feeling of security that prevents them from knowing they deserve better. From the lack of security, which causes the lack of the knowledge that they deserve better, these people will typically not ever try to come up with a way out of their abuse until they hit rock bottom.

It's not that that's inherently a worse way to live, but the reason behind this way of living is typically (but not always) due to hidden insecurities, which abusive bosses freaking love to exploit because it's works very well at controlling their insecure employees. Yes someone can be secure and live like this but I think many would agree that this is a rare scenario and not the best advice for the average person looking at these articles.

It's not so black and white. There are many varieties of "not great" boss, and not all of them are toxic. A narcissist is not always a toxic boss. But it will be really frustrating until you get their perspective, and t he at situation can certainly get toxic. Get a working partnership going with someone like this and they are a benefit.

But the minute words like "toxic" or "abusive" come into play, absolutely the options are "validate the abuser's hold". or "get out"

>Also, you can't really "manage" your boss if he/she is gaslighting you. This is a criminal offense (or should be, depending on where you live) and must be punished accordingly.

It scares me that you can write these things without realizing the consequences and without being downvoted or having your comment removed.

"He/she said something that makes me doubt my reality, I want criminal prosecution." The level of policing that would take, is just unimaginable. The only societies that have come anywhere near this level of state control are East Germany, the Soviet Union and China. Your view would be a lot worse than those all together.

How about you just quit and find another boss and then we don't have to completely overhaul our society in a way we know doesn't work.

You probably never experienced it. Or, maybe you would like to gaslight the others? Do you realize that the desire to just remove my words shows who you really are?

How the prosecution of gaslighting makes us closer to authoritarian countries? To countries where abuse of others is the main policy? You're talking nonsense, saying that white is black and vice versa.

The prosecution of gaslighting doesn't require full state control. Gaslighting involves lies, hidden threats, and other offenses. All of this can be proved in court, in theory.

Here, I found some laws for you https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/emotional-abu... They are in family context, but similar things happen in a corporate setting.

I have two relevant, maybe slightly more helpful, links:

Getting Things Done When You’re Only a Grunt

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/12/25/getting-things-don...

The Manager FAQ

https://www.seebs.net/faqs/manager.html

Those links are immensely more helpful than the hollow shell of an article that was posted. The Manager FAQ in particular does a better job of delivering on what this article promised (and failed to deliver on).

If I can add a note on why I think these are so useful and how it pertains back to the subject article: they let you figure out whether you've used the tools in your power to try and work with said manager. If you use these tools and exhaust them, it tends to make it a lot easier to figure out for those borderline cases whether poor management is situational or intrinsic to the manager.

You can work with the former. With the latter, the most ROI positive option is usually to leave (as many have been chiming in throughout the thread)

On Joel's list I've done 1,4,5,6 myself

This one is hardest I think- Strategy 4 Neutralize The Bozos

We had a guy that would work nights and weekends on other people's assigned tickets committing non-running half assed code to trunk. Note this was in lieu of doing any work actually assigned to him, coming into the office, attending meetings, or participating in L3 rotation. This was sometimes in coordination with the boss in which Bob underbid other devs by 1 or more orders of magnitude (They said 1 week? I can do it in an afternoon!)

We would get into office in morning and be told by the boss - well Bob already did that ticket last night, just help him get it working.. and spend a month of effort getting his "afternoon" hack implementation to semi-work. Sometimes he'd even email people code to commit on his behalf.

This went on for a few years.

Eventually we did two things: 1- The rest of the team transitioned to a release branch and let him keep committing his non-working fixes to trunk as the new major version release. We had an agreement that when he got it all working we would merge back and release to PROD. He felt like the all-star he was because he was working on the strategic improvement while us peons piddled away on "feature requests" and "bug fixes".

6 months later he admitted he couldn't get trunk running, which then lead to the next step.

2- Explained to a couple hops up in management that this developer was actually producing negative work. It wasn't that his work was subpar, it was that every hour of work he did produced 2 or more hours of work for other people. Morale was shit, the project was shit, and the whole team was going to leave if you keep this guy around.. here's a bunch of examples of him producing negative work.

We presented him with the ultimate juicy prize - cut cost and increase productivity.

The whole process still took about a year to get rid of a peer.

I've never seen it work on a higher up. Every place I've been with a bad boss I've only seen things go from bad to worse, just interview and leave. And when you quit, all the promises they make are BS too, I've never been talked into staying but in retrospect, every "don't leave because we will do __" would turned out to have been a lie.

I once had a manager try to talk me out of leaving who, when I showed up at the new shop after 2 weeks.. arrived himself 2 weeks later, so during this chat he had probably already quit himself given the extended notice period for his seniority ..

I like the "Strategy 4 Neutralize The Bozos".

People have used tactics against me like that. For example, if they don't like what you're proposing, they will gain time by asking you to perform metrics, or write up a better proposal. The funny thing is that I had both, but the person didn't spend the time looking at what I was proposing.

Have many people had toxic bosses? I've had a string of the opposite - tech guys that took on team lead roles but would rather code, were too meek to give direction, didn't give any negative feedback even when I knew I did something badly, let people do what they wanted with little coordination.

That's just lack of leadership skills and possibly incompetence about subfields of development they don't have experience with. It can become toxic in its own way when the first bully/troll is hired since that person will pull the wool over this poor dev manager's eyes and make everyone else's lives terrible through bikeshedding and pointless meetings to debate unnecessary architecture proposals.

Wow bikeshedding thanks for this, this describes my company incredibly well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

The thing you just called non-toxic definitely sounds toxic to me.

If that's toxic, then everything is toxic, and the word no longer means anything.

I've never had "toxic" bosses. I've had bosses that treated their underlings like tools that they owned, whose purpose was to enact the plans that they had made. Maybe some people are ok with that but I'm not. Sometime I have my own ideas and I want to try them out without being questioned. Fortunately most of my bosses have been easy going "if you have a good idea and it's good for the company then do it" types.

I actually counted recently and it's 6 out of 8 bosses that have been good like that. Fortunately we're in a seller's market. People really do quit bosses.

Yes, managing up is a thing. No, the article did not provide any value.

Is this article an add for Careerstone? Why do Reuters write this? There is just gossip and phrenology like personality types without the sculls.

The supposed editor describes themselves on LinkedIn as "I develop and execute editorial concepts for global digital sponsorships" so yes, this might be an advertisement.

Thomson-Reuters contains a legitimate news organization but it also contains many, many other things.

Ok good find. It should be disclosed in the article.

Maybe my view of Reuters is colored by that local newspapers cite them for the "there has been an election in Nigeria and the tomatoe harvest in Spain is bad this year" serious kind of news.

This read like a really shitty, saccharine, abridged, disjointed article. It barely touched on its title. How did this get to the front page?

Probably because the topic is interesting and novel (at least to me). I agree the article is crap though.

I have seen at least 1 narcissist move up the ranks of a well regarded organization and receive awards in the process.

I also see the person is hardworking and from what i can tell, there is no obvious abuse.

Is this not the experience people have with narcissists?

From the company's perspective, they seem like ideal employees, driven to impress at whatever personal cost, and deriving their self worth by what others think of them.

Do i have this right?

This is a very week article; there is nothing specific in it about managing your boss. This only mentions that the concept exists.

This is clickbait.

> This is a very week article.

I don't usually police spelling, but ... yeah.

It reads like something you read in the airplane magazines in the pocket infront of you. I didn't know Reuters wrote these kind of articles. I wonder if it just is an add for Careerstone what ever that company does. I guess recruiting.

While I think most people should probably leave a toxic environment, it fixes nothing. If boss is bad, it's the best advice though! You must give energy to what works for you, then shelter is possible in any environment.

A book recommendation: Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work by Babiak. Lots of good material on recognizing the situation. But once you do, the advice is simple: get out.

Important topic that should be discussed more so employees can truly succeed, regardless of their reporting chain.

Unfortunately this article didn't really deliver, and lacked substance for me.

> Adopt a survivor mentality

What does that even mean. Somehow I feel the article doesn't speak about the title's content at all.

For a delightful, humorous take on the subject, I would recommend reading: "Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up" by Stanley Bing.

I feel like "gaslighting" and "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" are in a race to see who can gossip their away around the world first.

As I understand it, "gaslighting" is quite nearly a form of kidnapping. The perpetrator is (consciously or otherwise) fucking with anything they can that provides the victim an anchor on reality. Cult leaders use this tactic all the time.

Does it mean something else now?

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