In other words, this is pure Machiavellian politics. The truth doesn’t matter. If you don’t kiss the donkey’s ass, the best advice IMO is to shut the hell up, collect your paycheck, and go home and kiss your wife. Your family is the only people who matter. The farce will go on for years. Like all Ponzi schemes, it will eventually collapse. But it may take years.
idk if this is a US thing; its mainly a thing where a manager is tasked with supporting a product that they dont understand. managers in these situations attempt to treat their managerial role as if the product itself does not matter - the team has metrics to hit, and to them thats more important than the product.
Sure, but you won't get fired, right?
Even so, this is just about dealing in general with people who have ego (for the sake of brevity) issues. I don't understand why this should be advice for dealing with senior leadership in general.
in my experience, they will start an email paper trail as a precursor to a PIP.
Possibly: in many places there they have "at will" employment, where they can basically fire you with little to no severance at any time for any reason. There are limits, but compared to most of Europe that's the gist of it.
So yeah, you can be fired just because someone doesn't like you. And giving feedback is a good way to not be liked.
I would agree in an ideal world where salaries are tied to a qualification (a notion a tad more nuanced than just diploma), instead of their job. While there is no (nor should be any) constitutional right to work at any given company, I think people should have an inalienable right to live. Which in practice means food, shelter, and health care at a minimum, regardless of their ability (perhaps even willingness) to work anywhere.
The compromise most EU countries have settled on is that once you're employed and past some probation period (in my line of work that can last up to 8 months), then they can't fire you without a damn good reason or a hefty severance (the better the reason the lower the severance, basically). But it cuts both ways: I personally can't leave immediately, I have to tell my employer 3 months in advance. It is in a way a kind of severance.
But the asymmetries don’t end there. Terminating employment is a far greater threat to the employee than the employer. This creates a power imbalance which could easily be exploited by malicious or incompetent employers. That power imbalance is fundamental to this relationship and is reason enough (in the opinion of many countries) to bolster worker rights.
I can.
Think of what employment is for a second: shareholders (or company owners) own the capital, and the employee gets to follow orders. Structurally, the company pay workers less than their actual value: shareholders gotta hold, and they squeeze the margin out of the employee. The margin may be thin, but it's never meant to be zero (except for non-profits, but they're the exception).
Such a relationship is fundamentally asymmetrical, such an exchange fundamentally unequal. If you want any hope of restoring fairness from this system, termination conditions have to be asymmetrical as well.
I once had an owner of a small business threaten to sue me for quitting because it would cause financial harm to the business. And that was with giving 4 weeks notice.
At-will employment laws protect employees that want to quit, not just employers that want to fire.
Does your unemployment insurance work after you quit? Or does it only work when you're fired?