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Comment by u678u | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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.

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.

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