Ways You’re Making Your Employees Less Productive
quickbase.intuit.com
quickbase.intuit.com
Aka "passing the buck".
I have had this boss, unfortunately. To a t. He'd tell me a project was "completely up to me," that I was "the leader" of it, and that I should feel "totally empowered" to make decisions, allocate resources, etc. He proceeded to show up to each of my project meetings, often late and out of context, disagree out loud, offer unsolicited opinions, micromanage, and badger me into implementing his ideas -- thoroughly undermining any ostensible authority I had over the project, or reversing any progress the team had made up to that point. His ideas came in two flavors: a) completely off-the-cuff and unconsidered, and b) foregone conclusions (what the team and I liked to call his "pet" ideas). Both of these types I had to entertain, and often to implement. And of course, when it came time for him to chip in with the execution in any way, or even to explain his rationale, he'd bolt for the door.
Essentially, I was his task rabbit. If a project went to shit, he'd claim it was "mine" and be able to pass the buck accordingly. If it went well, he'd swoop in and scoop up the credit. Attempts to talk to him about it in one-on-ones went nowhere. Attempts to "check in" with him prior to meetings, in the hopes of pre-selling him on a plan, went nowhere. He'd be dead set on a pet idea, and it was my job to "totally lead" the execution of that idea.
Bosses like this are toxic. I'm not sure I've ever found a good way to work successfully with this personality type. If this describes your boss, figure out how to transfer, how to escape, or how to develop Vulcan-like mastery over your anger and your pride. Some tigers can't change their stripes, and I can guarantee you that this kind won't.
The solution is really to speak up for yourself. You may have to remind your boss that he put you in charge. I can be a tough boss but I will listen to any argument and will be glad to be proven wrong or told that my idea is going on the list for later. But - you must convince me that your idea is better, or more practical, or that you at least have thought things through.
I know it can be tough because bosses tend to be older and, maybe in some cases wiser (but not always). As the boss your pressure is to keep a team moving forward and so you grow used to delegating. I had to be reminded that I gave somebody a project once and I felt really bad about not letting him do it on his own. I really just didn't want to see him fail, but I was micromanaging. It was difficult for him to bring it up to me but I was glad he did and we got past it.
I'd say - face it head on. If the boss still won't listen, then start figuring out another employment opportunity.
I'm fine with that, and believe me, I tried on almost every occasion to take that approach with this boss. Whenever I did, I'd get some condescending reassurance that he'd respect my plans, etc. From there I figured, as you suggest, that perhaps he didn't understand how I'd been thinking about something. Attempts to walk him through my thinking, or my team's line of thinking, would be met with a mixture of apathy and hostility.
It became pretty clear, in this particular guy's case, that he wasn't really interested in empowering anybody. He had some ideas, and he wanted them executed. Over the months, that became the path of least resistance, and we all just sort of accepted it. Unfortunately, many of his ideas -- perhaps even most -- turned out to be pretty bad.
Wisdom was probably the one thing this guy really needed, to be honest with you. He was older than I was, but only by 3 or 4 years. He was the type of guy who'd either been good or lucky early in his career, and who'd risen to a position of leadership for which he was probably not ready, or to which he was just not suited. He had been a strong individual contributor in his early days, and what I saw in him was an individual contributor uncomfortable with delegation and management. And the frosting on the cake was a big dollop of narcissism. (Not all inexperienced or uncomfortable bosses are narcissistic or bad; this guy happened to be, pretty nakedly).
"I'd say - face it head on. If the boss still won't listen, then start figuring out another employment opportunity."
True. But depending on the case, I'd amend that to "Face it head on and start figuring out another employment opportunity." Those things should happen in parallel, because, depending on how big a narcissist your boss happens to be, and depending upon the organization's culture, facing the issues head-on could result in your getting blacklisted within the organization, or negatively reviewed for insubordination.
It's possible your boss is just looking for you to step up. But it's equally possible he's just a douchebag. Hope for the better case, but prepare for both. Hope you don't have to pull your parachute -- but pack one, just in case.
4. Pretending To Know
3. Not even attempting to communicate (or "communicating" through hints.) Particularly in high-pressure situations.
2. Microcontrolling. (By which I mean: grabbing control of some low-level aspect of the project, or of the team communications, thinking you know better than the team member who already took action to such an extent that you don't need to explain your actions. See also (1), (2).
And my favorite of all:
1. By your very presence. Seriously -- things like overbearing demeanor, poor tact, sexist or jockish language etc can not only be toxic, but instant invitations for your team members to not only begin their job searches immediately, but look forward to the task with vim and glee.
"hit and run management because managers tended to pop up unannounced, give some silly order for exactly how they wanted something done, dammit, without giving any thought to the matter, and leave the room for everyone else to pick up the pieces."
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000072.html
This is the most frustrating when you have spent an entire afternoon carefully considering different approaches to solving a problem and figured out all of the non obvious but important edge cases that show why a particular approach won't work to have someone come in and give it five minutes consideration and say "nah, we should do it that way, it'll work out".
If you hire an n, where 0<=n<=5 then you must be an m where n<m and 1<=m<=6. Because incompetent people want to hire more incompetent people to make them look good and secure their position in the organization.
If you hire an n, where 6<=n<=7 then you must be an m where n<=m and 6<=m<=7. Because reasonable competent people don't want to bring failure into an organization, but don't want anybody showing them up.
If you hire an n, where 8<=n<=10 then you must be an m where 8<=m<=10 and there is a high probability that n>=m. Because truly competent people want to bring in other truly competent people and aren't threatened by people with higher levels of competency, and even might welcome it.
Is this common in the US? Even for a single day?
I'm in the UK and my contract states (from memory) that I have to get a doctors certificate after five contiguous days of sickness. I'm fairly sure thats been the same for all other companies I've worked for.
Most of the useful work on the planet is done by B or below people.
1) You are hiring for boring but important projects
2) There is a limited pool of local talent
3) The org will have banded salary caps
4) Differentiating A talent from B players is not a solved problem
Or you can get the best people in the door on a reasonable timescale and salary, and start building and learning.
Mature companies have already made those mistakes. Startups in the early growth phase are often some of the worst places to work until they figure out how to operate at scale.
You would be surprised how many young companies fall straight into old school corporate habits as soon as they grow past 20 employees.
After three years working in Mountain View, my girlfriend got into a PHD program at the University Wisconsin and Intuit was A-OK with me working remote. So I packed up all my office gear, got issued a Desktop VPN VOIP phone, and moved to Madison, WI. I did that for about two years before I left to cofound a company with several longtime CS friends here in Madison.
So, yeah, Intuit is pretty liberal with telecommuting when it fits the situation (as long as you don't abuse it). : )
Seriously, whitelist only the domains necessary for the job. If it's programming, I would only recommend specific StackExchange sites, GitHub, and any documentation sites. Some people have horrible self control and will waste all day on the Internet, despite that they may be great programmers and can actually get stuff done if they put their mind to it. It's not even that the job is boring, it may actually be exciting, and their project may be something they really enjoy, yet the distractions are still more entertaining to them. Like reading and interacting on Hacker News.
On the contrary - filtering my internet indicates that you don't consider me capable of self-regulation... I prefer being treated like a responsible adult - responsible for my great code or my slacking off, whichever I choose.
I greatly value this level of respect from employers.
Ok. How _exactly_ do you plan to whitelist the domain of every search result for every query of the form "How do I do [technical task] in [technology/language]"?
I can find at least seven of these in my browsing history for the past week that aren't SO. Not being able to access them would have added hours to the time required to finish the tasks they were related to.