How To Be A Horrible Boss

Best bosses: Usually self-describe themselves as "meat shields" for their troops. Ask "How can I help you do your job?" instead of "Why isn't that done yet?" Understands the creative process.

Worst bosses: Ditherers, or opaque and random ciphers. Never present. Jerk you from one task to another. Surprise you with bad reviews. Unwilling to pay for good tools ("What's wrong with Notepad?") Sees you as a fungible cog or chess piece to be moved around. Often non-technical, or "used to be technical" in an ossified region of the industry (e.g., large aerospace firm). Uses Scrum as a platform for micromanaging.

[I made a decision 25 years ago never to be a manager. I recently had the opportunity to try it out again for a summer, and it sucked just as hard as I remembered. I am an engineer, and I work with people in a far different way than good managers do.]

I've been at more than my fair share of establishments. The boss that stands out as the worst, hands down, had two traits that stood out:

1. An alpha personality that could admit no wrong. 2. A failure to leverage his senior people for their abilities, everyone was treated as a contractor and told what/how to do it.

This was a startup and the behavior basically resulted in a couple of us leaving. There were other bits of the startup that were chaotic (and could be attributed to a fast/changing environment), but this individuals behavior sealed the deal for a couple of us.

Personally, I've had to manage a bit here and there. When it is a small company/team, I really prefer to understand everyone's strengths and weaknesses. Cater to the strengths, learn where I can, and try and fill in the weaknesses with other's strengths. Even with many years of experience, there is still something I can learn from most people (rockstar, average, etc.)

I've had a number of horrible bosses over the years (if you are reading this and we still talk, i'm not referring to you!) and for me it falls into two categories: trust and authoritarianism.

Trust is critical. If you hire an engineer you should trust that they can do their job. If you don't think you can ever do that, don't hire them! It is incredibly demoralising, and a sure sign you should plan an exit when your boss tells you that he doesn't trust your code, especially when they write poorly thought out, untested, spaghetti...

Authoritarianism is also a deal breaker, especially when it is applied simply to assert dominance. A new alpha male manager coming in and declaring a new company order without even trying to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of his team is fatal. I've seen teams fall apart because of this.

I would probably suck at both of these things. I probably shouldn't be a manager.

Be patronizing I left a high-paying job after upper management installed a smug, platitudinous director over my group. I disagree that people become what you expect of them. I would not become an imbecile because my boss believed that everyone else was an imbecile. There's no reason to lose one's dignity.

On a tangent, I've noticed an interesting correlation between a high number of bad bosses and a companies policy of frequently moving managers into new positions to give them experience with all parts of the company. I think it has something to do with reducing people to cogs.

My most recent problem : think you are like Steve Jobs. Seriously, this disease seems rampant amongst manager recently. Is it anecdotal evidence or has someone else observed that too ?

For these articles, it would be good to consider the other side:

Talk a lot, do not listen much - people need to know what's going on. A good boss has to keep everyone informed of the stuff that matters.

Be patronizing - you need to ensure all the right checklists are followed (security, stability, etc).

Be as cryptic as possible, never direct - don't micromanage.

Encourage bureaucracy, and demand visibility into everything - documentation and process is really important.

Show them who's boss - you have to make sure everyone is co-operating, and that silos are broken down.

These "problems" can be strengths, or necessary evils. It's more a question of when the behavior is a problem, rather than which behavior is always best.

According to HN posts, Steve Jobs seems to have posed these characteristics. But I'm sure he is not a horrible Boss.

Edit: So, it is the results that speak for you.

He calls out 'weekly status meetings' as one of the things a manager should not do, but depending on how they are handled I think it could be a good thing.

A place I worked at used to do a '5 minute meeting', every day, right after lunch. Of course, it ended up being longer than 15 minutes, but in a varied team where many times other people have no idea what you are working on, it can actually be somewhat 'motivational'.

A little compassion on both sides would go a long way towards making 'horrible' bosses better and employees function better as a team. I find a lot of employees these days, especially younger ones are too entitled and self important to appreciate the more subtle sides of compromise. Especially if you're not constantly telling them how wonderful they are (when they barely understand their own job) and expect the same trophies for participation that they've received all their privileged, sheltered lives. Nor do they understand how a manager, especially a new, perhaps inexperienced manager might not have the bureaucratic pull to obtain the best tools for everyone and must operate within certain budgets. Trust me, your boss, no matter how horrible, wants you to succeed. They might not always take the best approach, but they went from being great at a task to being in charge of seeing to it the task they love gets done better than they could do it by others who don't necessarily know how, or want to put in the time it takes to make it great. This article is typical of the whining and entitled little d-bags around the entire working world who think they could manage better than their current boss, often having no idea what that takes, or simply believing in their heart of naive hearts that if they are simply everyone's buddy their team will succeed beyond all their wildest dreams. Ha. Good luck! I hope they get promoted soon. Then revisit this ridiculous article and see how many of the things 'horrible bosses' do are symptoms of a larger machine at work than just their function and their subordinates role within it. And don't even get me started on micromanaging. Most employees I know can barely organize their own projects, believing it their god given liberal arts education to 'think in piles rather than folders.' but what they fail to understand is that their manager is responsible for picking up all their shitty, entitled little pieces and presenting them cohesively to THEIR superiors. So, yeah, fuckhead...they do need to know what you're doing.

My job as a technical manager is to serve the people I am responsible for. Simple as that. Transparency, direct feedback and appreciation are some of the tools. In the end, my job is to make sure everyone on the team has what they need to meet our goals.

How to be a "good" boss very much depends on the people and the circumstances. There's really only one constant: clarity.

Even if the boss's style is authoritarian micromanagement, which most people on HN won't feel comfortable with, if said boss provides clarity and consistency certain types of people will be happy to work for them.

Knowing what is expected of you is the most important part of being comfortable in the role of employee. The rest is more a matter of personal preference.

He suggests "managing humans" as a good book for managers to read. Just started reading it, and it seems decent. Anybody have other good resources?

I know most people would know a boss was bad but I wonder if most could say why other than the obvious such as yelling.

And how many people have been poisoned in a bad office atmosphere spending their career there thinking that's just the way it is.

Nice points.

I do see problem with trust, not many would do that unless you are already proven before you join a work place. Moreover if you are a talented programmer, some see you as a threat.

"Don't learn about management."

So how am I going to learn about management? What are good classes? What are good websites to ask these questions?

I really like that 'back to HN' link. I wouldn't vote for the article if you didn't make it easy for me, thanks :)

> Have weekly status meetings even if there is nothing new to say,

I wonder what that says about the daily Agile stand-up-s.

As someone who's never had one, what is the general role of a manager of programmers?

Although i agree with most points made in this article, I think, having been a manager/teamlead of many programming teams, i think i might write an article on "how to be a horrible employee"...

while these horrible boss threads are always enjoyable (hey, scott adams' career is built on it), how about switching perspective for a moment.

the majority of programmers are employees.

what makes a horrible employee?

- disregard of communication etiquette. you're running late on something, a meeting, a task, anything - say it, write it, text it early, and loud enough for your boss to hear. a manager needs that info to counter-steer.

- in the same vein, the non-ability of constructive criticism. don't just think 'this won't work' but continue to work on it anyhow. communicate it, in plain language, with reasons. want to be excellent? provide an alternative.

- play politics. try to brown-nose. etc. hint: your manager likely became one because he/she is good at politics. can see through your attempts and gets easily annoyed by it.

as a manager you need to protect your team from bad apples. the no-assholes rule applies, but as programmers tend to have anti-social behaviors it is harder to apply. is the behavior of the employee destroying the productivity of others? is his/her productivity high enough to compensate? a rockstar programmer might be worth putting up with.

managing people is hard. and you can't learn it like you can with programming. no theoretical studies help, no tutorials, no forums. no stackexchange to quickly solve a problem. that's why a lot of managers suck - cause they are on their own. or as Peter Drucker put it, there are only a few possibilities to learn true management skills out there - the army being the biggest of them, followed by the boy scouts. think about that and what it means for modern organizations.

One thing that I've found extremely demotivating is when a manager tells me what NOT to work on. I'd have a side project that I'd start on my own time, and I'd tell my manager "I've got this prototype of X working, and I'd like to spend more time on it / test it out." He'd say "I don't want you to spend any time on that". Instant loss of motivation. And this wasn't my first month on the job, it was after maybe 3-4 years on the job, already having proved myself, etc.

Every manager should also watch Office Space :)

and The Corporation