Comment by Ographer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ographer | Hacker News Reader

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When my respected boss retired and was replaced by an outside hire, I had a lot of issues accepting the authority of the new guy at face value which may have contributed to me being fired later.

The other engineers would go by his office to make small talk, chat about great projects they're working on, and sports they both like. I never did any such thing and stayed in my office working.

Then when we all went out for drinks at the end of the week, I chatted as I normally would but I felt like the new boss kept shutting down my stories to get a laugh from the others. I felt like I was already being judged. That's when I reached negative respect for this new guy.

Over time I would see him going to all the other engineers' offices to chat and catch up on projects, but never mine, and that further cemented the feeling that this guy doesn't like me.

I felt that if my boss isn't going to make any effort to get to know me or respect me, then I'm not going to kiss his ass to make him like me. I'm sure he felt the same way, especially since he previously held a position of authority in the US military so he probably saw boot kissing as mandatory.

Once performance reviews came, even though I had met all the quantitative goals that were set, he gave me a bad rating because of qualitative reasons which I felt were injected into my review to make it negative to match his bias.

Once the pandemic hit I was fired, but I have a better job now. It doesn't pay as much, but is more interesting and is work from home, so suck it Scott!

> The other engineers would go by his office to make small talk, chat about great projects they're working on, and sports they both like. I never did any such thing and stayed in my office working. > Over time I would see him going to all the other engineers' offices to chat and catch up on projects, but never mine, and that further cemented the feeling that this guy doesn't like me.

So... you took it as a sign that he doesn't like you when he didn't come and talk to you, but you don't consider it reasonable that he took it as a sign that you didn't like him when you didn't talk to him?

I'm not required to be friends with my boss, only to do my job and be respectful and friendly to all co-workers. He was not managing me, he was just wielding the power that came with the title.

Whenever we talked, it was because I came to him. He never came to me, I was ignored. The more I felt that he disliked me, the less frequently I went to talk to him and resorted to emails. I felt that he had already written me off.

In the performance review, one of the things mentioned was that I wasn't communicating with him enough. I pointed out how one-sided our relationship was, I would come to him and rarely the reverse. He said that he was very busy and doesn't always have time to come by my office but couldn't explain how he did that for all the other engineers.

I knew that I should suck up to him if I wanted to succeed there but the circumstances caused me to detest working there so I cared less and less about the threat of being fired.

> In the performance review, one of the things mentioned was that I wasn't communicating with him enough. I pointed out how one-sided our relationship was, I would come to him and rarely the reverse. He said that he was very busy and doesn't always have time to come by my office but couldn't explain how he did that for all the other engineers.

In case it's comforting to you, I'll let you in on a secret: For guys like Scott, there's always going to be a made-up excuse. You were his chosen scapegoat, and there was literally nothing you could do that would be right. I've had a manager like this, and it's hopeless. They'll choose 1+ people on the team as their "Can Do Nothing Wrong" golden boys, and they'll choose 1+ people as their "Can Do Nothing Right" scapegoats, and that's just the way it is. You unlucked into a bad manager.

Thanks, I think this is the most accurate take and it does feel better.

That's not a contradiction, is it? Selective engagement and non-engagement are different things. It's reasonable for some individuals to be generally less sociable than others. That doesn't mean it's OK to explicitly exclude them.

Nobody expects the teacher to bring in candy, but it's kind of awful if they only bring it in for the students they like.

"Rule of law" is ideal, even for laws you don't agree with.

etc.

> Nobody expects the teacher to bring in candy, but it's kind of awful if they only bring it in for the students they like.

I hated teachers who insisted on treating everyone exactly the same. Ideal would be treating everyone according to their need. Which might mean candy for some, the freedom to set their own workload for others, understanding of chattiness for yet other, etc. Admittedly candy is fairly universal in terms of how it affects people.

> "Rule of law" is ideal, even for laws you don't agree with.

I'd rather have exceptions be able to made where appropriate. I'd see "rule of law" as a least-worst fallback where that can't be achieved.

Managers should put in effort to reach out to their reports, even ones who don't initiate chatting/small talk. People get nervous about the new boss - would the chatting be viewed negatively (wasting time or whatever)?

Further:

> Then when we all went out for drinks at the end of the week, I chatted as I normally would but I felt like the new boss kept shutting down my stories to get a laugh from the others.

I would take that as a sign he didn't like me.

Its the manager's responsibility to communicate with and support his staff, not the other way around.

Work isn’t high school. A manager or lead, if they’re doing their job right, are a force multiplier for productivity. If they’re not, it’s time to jump ship

> Then when we all went out for drinks at the end of the week, I chatted as I normally would but I felt like the new boss kept shutting down my stories to get a laugh from the others.

If that's an accurate characterization (and your stories weren't tone deaf, or going on too long, or something), then the new boss might have already decided to put you into an "other" group, and was using that to try to build rapport with a different group, in a juvenile cliques kind of way.

I've seen execs doing things like this. In one example, at a team-building dinner, where I suspected that the exec had already decided they didn't like one of the shy/nerdy engineers there, as the engineer was walking away from the table, the exec made a crude sexual comment to the table about the person's figure. (I don't know why the exec thought that a table of diverse engineers would go for that kind of locker room 'camaraderie', nor why the exec would expose themself and the company in an open&shut case way like that, except maybe they didn't think that through.)

If you imagine that people will sometimes revert to grade school or high school, some behavior makes a lot more sense. Also, alcohol at company events is risky.

I think you're right. I left out some context which is that this was a conservative oil company and I was a liberal city slicker environmentalist who hates oil but was willing to put up with it for a few years for the paycheck. My boss was the tough ex-military country guy, and my co-workers were somewhere in between - nerdy engineers, but more country types.

When out for beers, he said his wife does horseback barrel racing and I said I used to do that as a kid and it's a cool sport. He just replied, "Hah, I find that hard to picture" and got some chuckles from the other guys before changing the subject, not following up to learn more. He asked what our favorite movies were and everyone received approval except when I said A Clockwork Orange, he said that was weird.

I was already masking HARD to fit in at this company. Another coworker had already outted me as an atheist as a joke at a weekly meeting. I didn't find that funny, my boss's boss in the room had previously invited me to his church as had another coworker.

I used to like this job under my old boss. Now it hurt and I didn't want to be there anymore, but the paycheck was so good I knew I'd never earn that much again in my whole life. Once I started hating my boss, I may have been "silent quitting" without realizing it. I blame him and he blames me, I don't know.

It wasn't OK for that boss to be dissing you. I'm glad you're out of that situation, but it shouldn't have happened.

If no one spoke up for you in the moment, I hope they came to you afterwards with support, and/or spoke with the boss, other managers, or HR on your behalf.

I suspect it wasn't so much a country-towards-city thing, though, but an individual being jerky. You'll find plenty of country people who are neighborly and welcoming, follow the best of Christian charity teachings, etc. Jerky non-inclusiveness in companies also often happens city-towards-country, one-ethnicity/caste-towards-another, one-gender-towards-another, rich-kid-careerist-towards-traditional-nerd, one-school-alumni-towards-others, etc.

NGL If that was my favorite movie I'd never tell anyone.

In hindsight I should have lied but I was constantly 'masking' in this job, pretending to be someone I wasn't, I just wanted to get beers and try to get to know each other.

Just because I'm different doesn't mean they had to treat me like that. The film has awful things in it but that's kind of the point, and there is a deeper meaning!

I read the book in highschool and found it thought provoking. The movie is by Stanley Kubrick, has fantastic cinematography, and is on many lists of best movies of all time, so I thought it was mainstream pop culture.

Sorry if I'm just over sharing now.

That's the thing with autism, they're people that don't adhere to boring social conventions.

> Once performance reviews came, even though I had met all the quantitative goals that were set, he gave me a bad rating because of qualitative reasons which I felt were injected into my review to make it negative to match his bias.

This is actually the real reason many jobs stayed work from home indefinitely. There is a significant productivity boost from making it difficult to socialize with coworkers. So many places were struggling with this problem.

I would be surprised to hear that Scott is still working there either. This style of management is pretty much dead at all but the crappiest and most miserable small businesses that don't know better.

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