Ask HN: I never managed to have good feelings about my managers, what can I do?

You’ll have all kinds of different bosses in your career. Most of them will not be looking to provide emotional support. It would serve you well to find someone outside of work for that, be it a significant other, family member, friend, or therapist. If it’s work specific stuff, a trusted co-worker.

The boss is likely in the same position as you, being told to enforce rules that don’t make sense, but that’s the job, and they have to pay the rent.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked for a CEO who even knew who I was, let alone asked how I felt. While the “all about the cash” comment is strange, I think the idea that the CEO is going to ask about your happiness is wildly unrealistic.

Without knowing the time off rules, and the type of work, it’s hard to comment on that. All I can say is make sure you know the rules and follow them. If you think they are unjust, then it may be worth finding a new job, but it’s hard to be upset at a company for enforcing rules the employees were made aware of. I’ve had bosses who let me take time off at the drop of a hat, and other bosses that wanted me to plan out the whole year at the start of the year. Your ability to adapt to these situations will dictate a significant amount of your success in your career.

Sounds like an XY problem. You have a problem with the place where you work (Y), and you ask for help regarding good feelings about managers (X).

Do you really think developing good feelings towards your managers is the secret to job satisfaction?

More likely, when you think about it, what you really want is to get out of an environment that feels toxic to you.

You won't solve that problem by asking HN, you'll solve it by either doing something to change the work culture, or quitting.

It's an absolute mess. C-suite is 80% happy with their jobs, managers are 60% happy, and individuals are at 40% from the one study I read. The economy is an exploitation machine, so you are not alone, but it's painful. It might be best to treat it as a machine like the army - clock in and clock out!

Ah if you have on hand, I'd love to see the source / study.

Can't find it atm, but I am going to take a look.

Commenting to express my interest and as a bookmark.

I'm convinced that excellent ICs equal excellent managers. Typically the type that do not want to manage. The tragedy is most managers /want/ to manage and can't IC for shit, so you end up with bullshit managers.

Have you always worked in small to medium sized companies? Sounds like you might like a more employee-oriented company, which is often the larger companies.

For example, it sounds like your current CEO is very happy with the money he's making and has a very command-and-control approach to management. That works for a while but sometimes there comes a time when enough people get sick of the company culture and quit en masse. Tends to coincide with a period where it's hard for companies to find staff and it's easier to move jobs.

Time to start looking for another job. Be picky - ask about company culture, etc. Interview them!

> What can I do?

Finding a different job with different managers is probably all you can do.

In a largeish company, it's basically impossible to change corporate rules. If you have a nice manager, sometimes you can get them to turn a blind eye to certain rules, but that's as good as it gets(in my experience).

If you're that unhappy, try to find another job. I took a paycut and now work for a tiny startup with 5 people. My "manager" is the CTO, he also writes code and is in the thick of it. There is no HR and any requests are dealt with on a per-case basis.

I like him, my coworkers and love my job.

It sounds as if you're relatively new to the workforce and have had only this, or similar, experience at one (or a couple at most) workplace(s).

I'm not going to say quit and find somewhere better because the job market seems a bit iffy, but definitely have a look at other options that are around. Every place you go will have pros and cons, and you stick around longer at the places that have more pros than cons.

> to the point that some employees started lying about the numbers.

Not lying about the numbers would be the anomaly, from my experience and anecdotes I've heard. Everyone starts out diligently recording their time, until after a while realise that no one's actually paying attention and it makes no difference to anything material. It's often just a power play from a manager who doesn't know how to manage (and likely never will because they don't get the concept).

One phrase I've heard which rings true with my actions on more than one occasion: People don't leave jobs, people leave managers.

Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities until you find your fit.

Do you trust your immediate manager enough to ask them about these concerns? Do you think they might be able to help?

Talking with HR is also an option with these kinds of concerns. But, especially given that your company doesn't sound very employee-friendly currently, you have to beware of risks: (1) HR might not be open to input, and just flag you as a malcontent; (2) HR might go to an exec to suggest changes, and exec reacts negatively and demands HR say what prompted this.

FWIW, as corporate BS goes, what you describe sounds like pretty ordinary indifferent corporate bureaucracy. I'm not saying it's OK, but if you want something better, you will have to seek that out and vet that during a job search. Also, be aware that corporate BS can get much worse than what you described.

(P.S., Although I strongly disapprove of timecard fabrications, you probably don't want to mention the timecard fabrications to anyone. I suspect that most likely bad would come of drawing fire upon that.)

If you want flexible time off and don't care about cash, you can do volunteer work. Plenty of that to go around.

You want to get paid because you want stuff? Well, tough luck finding someone to give you money for nothing (and the chicks for free). You can start your own business and spend literally all of your time worrying about cash and no time off OR you can get used to that's how things are. Switch jobs, find out other places are even worse and eventually settle into something that feels comfortable enough to deal with for an extended amount of time.

In the army, btw. they're actively trying to kill you sometimes. As long as your office job consists of a heated room with a computer and a coffee maker you're better off than 80% of the rest of the world.

Drop out, change careers, start a farm. Do whatever to find out it wasn't so bad after all or find something better. Sitting around and complaining that it isn't different won't change anything.

You can stop expecting that you will ever have these good feelings and learn to get them from somthing other than work.

You either learn to play the game, or you play the game somewhere else.

If you know your vacation request won't be approved unless you give at least 2wks notice, you either give at least 2wks' notice or you take a sick day (if you don't think you'll be caught in a lie about it).

You shouldn't expect CEOs to care about whether you're happy with your work -- it's rare if they do, and oftentimes it's purely for optics. Sometimes even your manager won't care if you're happy with your job. At the end of the day, you're being paid to do a job & that's all they really need to care about; a lot of managers DGAF. That sucks to hear, I know, but that's the truth.

FWIW some CEOs are better than others. And even if the CEOs are trash, some managers are better than others & will help insulate you from the BS above. But more often than not, you're gonna be stuck dealing with somebody's BS at some point. And it really comes down to how much you believe you'll find a better situation somewhere else, & how difficult it is to get a job elsewhere.

> Now, I always feel as if I am in the army tbh.

I recommend finding out more about the military. Nobody there "only cares about money." If they did, they'd do something more profitable.

I think they are referencing the feeling of being forced to follow orders that don't seem to make sense.

You do realize if the company doesn't make money you won't have a job right?

> Vacations get rejected because it doesn't follow the rules even if it doesn't make any sense, if an employee doesn't have any tasks to do and wants to take a day off at the end of the week, they can't, it has to be after two weeks

What are the rules? To give a 2 week notice to take time off? If it's regular PTO it sounds completely reasonable to me.

How is the world going crazy and the times being stressful by the way?

For others reading the comments here... please ignore this comment and don't engage with whatever this is.

This is HN which homes many owners and managers who possess perspectives very different from your average person, i.e. disconnected from reality.

[Edit]

Not all people of course.

There's no such thing as "reality". There is a spectrum of behaviour, circumstance, environment, experience and so on. Equally there's no "average" person, everyone is different, in a different place.

Yes, this forum includes people who work in large companies, small companies, established and startups. Yes, it includes founders, investors, managers employees, and unemployed.

It is easy to demonise those not like you. It is convenient to blame your ills on some other class, management or VCs or employees or whatever.

Particularly in the "ask" section of this site it can be helpful to hear from folks in other strata because they can help temper expectations. I might posit that it's unreasonable to expect employees to do emails on weekends. Equally I might point our that larger orgs tend to have stricter rules than smaller organisations- and the reasoning for those arguments may be complex. Or, as the top response here helpfully says, it's not usual for and employer to act as emotional support.

Hearing the other point of view, seeing the issue from all sides, and engaging in dialog rather than dismissing the opinions of others can be more productive for all parties in the long run.

"There is no reality."

Tell that to physics.

Every other post here argues their point with evidence of "in my experience..." which, given there are billions of people, is kind of superficial. If they even bother to provide evidence at all.

"Alternative facts" is a euphemism for "lies".

> please ignore this comment and don't engage with whatever this is.

Clearly the poster has some skepticism about the comment, which I was trying to reaffirm for him.

The top post currently includes "People don't leave jobs, people leave managers." It may not be the top post for long though, things can change.

I'm loving this article right now[1]; tell me, are we really in a "free-market" when there is collusion and corruption at the highest levels?

[1] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/bombshell-potential-crimi...

Sure in physics there is definitive reality. But you weren't using the word in that context, and I wasn't responding in a physics context.

As I mentioned, experience is on a spectrum, and so you can find someone with any experience you like. It's dangerous to generalise from experience.

And no, there's nothing "free" about the free market. A completely free market would abuse customers in the name of profits. Regulation is the tool consumers use to prevent the market from leveraging its position in negative ways.

When parts of the govt are determined not to govern, to prevent regulations being enforced, to prioritise company, party and profit over country, then you get an environment which is ripe for exploitation.

Don't piss on my leg (or more accurately, let your friend do it), and tell me it's raining. The poster was being verbally abused while he is suffering, and I'm trying to mitigate that suffering with understanding.

I'm not here to sing koombahya with theives and liars. Have a good day!

[Edit]

Less than one percent of the US population owns nearly 50 percent of the wealth. The reality is many rich people never took a half a second in their life to think about other people with empathy or compassion. Many even try to create further imbalance in their favor.

"Civility" is used here as an excuse by many to be sociopaths. One person I interacted with named themselves after a serial killer. I refuse to normalize it. That's going to upset people and get me down votes. C'est la vie. (That is life).

How was I "verbally abusing" the poster when all I did was ask for some clarifications?

"CEO only cares about money" is a completely shallow statement when it doesn't provide concrete examples to understand the context.

Time off is being denied because of "non sensical rules", how about providing us with examples of these rules so we can provide perspective in return?

"The world is ending!!!!" How so? Why is the world "crazier" today than it was 5 years ago? What specific struggles are we talking about here?

If all the poster wanted was a nice pat on the back without any concrete opinions or attempt to put things in perspective they should have said so.

Wow, you're condescending and rude. Way to double down and make my point for me. Thanks!

And I guess you really embody the tagline in your profile "You're probably not on this site to have your viewpoints challenged, are you?"

Easier to quip than to actually answer questions and provide details/context huh? Have fun bud.

The reply doesn't seem to be unreasonable to me.