What is the worst boss that you've had?
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I have been "blessed" with the fact that I can say that I've only had 2 bad bosses. First one was actually only annoying, but the second one was the whole enchilada. He was bipolar, treated people like slaves (he is french, we are from a third world country so he thought less of us), liar, cheater, hypocrite, never lived to his promises, micro manager, annoying and the list goes on and on. What else can you ask for? What about you?
I did a stint at Detroit Water and Sewerage. The "woman" I worked for there was a micro manager in the extreme, always playing games for favors and power, and, oh yeah, didn't bathe for 3 straight months. I came close to throwing up in the garbage can just about every day.
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Dave Kreskowiak -
I did a stint at Detroit Water and Sewerage. The "woman" I worked for there was a micro manager in the extreme, always playing games for favors and power, and, oh yeah, didn't bathe for 3 straight months. I came close to throwing up in the garbage can just about every day.
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Dave KreskowiakDave Kreskowiak wrote:
at Detroit Water and Sewerage
Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
didn't bathe for 3 straight months
Perhaps she was being ironic :)
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I did a stint at Detroit Water and Sewerage. The "woman" I worked for there was a micro manager in the extreme, always playing games for favors and power, and, oh yeah, didn't bathe for 3 straight months. I came close to throwing up in the garbage can just about every day.
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Dave KreskowiakDoes her name start with "T". Not the one I am talking about, but I met someone like that.
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I think I can explain with this: You have 3 projects with no specifications You need to replace the existing client integration by working with their team on the other side of the planet. You have one month to do this. We believe in you! I used to think they were treating me like a child. Now I'm convinced.
I've been in a couple of similar situations. It is very simple, we developers are at fault for not reading minds! hahahah
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The president of the first company I worked for; I'll use his initials T.R. I was hired as a part-time programmer when I was a sophomore in college. It was a very small company; when I was hired, it was the three owners and me. I was obviously very green, and needed a lot of guidance. The problem arose from how T.R. provided that guidance. He was very judgmental and critical. I learned to be constantly on my guard, and to have a justification ready for everything I was doing. Even when I did things correctly, T.R. didn't provide any positive reinforcement. Instead, he seemed to seek out ways to mark what I'd done as a failure. Another problem with T.R. was that he was very "do as I say, not as I do". The standards he applied to me did not apply to himself, which was frustrating and confusing at times. This created problems when we were working on the same project, as it was not always clear what part of the work belonged to whom. I worked for that company through college, and for a couple years after I graduated. In retrospect, I did acquire some valuable skills from working for T.R. over and above the things I learned from the actual assignments. I learned to be thorough when analyzing a problem and considering a solution. I learned to be persistent. I also learned to have no confidence in my judgement, and to have no perspective on how far to go when solving a problem. I really wish I could have learned the first lessons without the second. It took me ten years and three employers to develop a more reasonable perspective. To this day, after being a software professional for over thirty years, I have problems dealing with managers more than a couple layers over me in the hierarchy.
Software Zen:
delete this;I feel your pain. There is a saying that "everybody raises to their level of incompetence". In this case of my exboss it is exactly that. And the problem was that given he has no friends (because nobody can stand him), he is always power struggling and trying to make everybody think he is this great shot, which of course he isn't, and he is trying to make money to make for all of it.
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A far better question would be: who is the best boss that you've had and why? I bet almost no answers to that one since they're all pretty bad: most people become managers for the wrong reasons and then fail becuase they receive either the wrong training or none at all and are socially incapabale of managing other people. Just becuae, for instance, someone is a great developer does not mean that they will be a great manager.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
I have to utterly disagree with this one. Given that I started this thread I have a reason to point out a bad boss, but about good bosses I can actually brag that my current boss is amazing. Well, actually I have two: the PMO head located in Virginia and the local General Manager located in Costa Rica. They are both great bosses, but the best is the one in Virginia. He can take on a project, even though not too technical he can understand what we tell him, he can see the big picture and work with the client on scoping out the work. He is a fair person, which added to his other capabilities make him an amazing boss. And no, I am not showing this to him and chances are he will never read this. I actually hope he doesn't read it, he might think I am just trying to earn some points with him, which is not the point. I just want to point out that there are good bosses, just that they are hard to find. :laugh:
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The worst boss I ever had wanted me to do engineering things that violated the laws of physics. I declined, so he put on my performance evaluation that I wasn't a team player. Then he dinged me for writing software to help me do my job - claimed I wasted company resources, even though I did it on my time, on my computer, with my compiler, at home during nights and weekends. Then he changed my forecasts and tried to blame me for making bad forecasts, except I had the originals and had put them in the company's correspondence files, stamped with official received dates. That was fun. He finally "graduated" up to head office and was instrumental, I'm sure, in making sure I got laid off. So I got 48 weeks of severance pay, the rights to all the software I wrote, and I would have resigned within a month or two anyway, even without the severance pay. Then they called me back and paid consulting fees for me to finish up the last project I had worked on, so he jump-started my consulting business. And then I sold lots of copies of the software back to the company. It was living h*ll at the time, but it all worked out. The best thing he ever did was make me open my eyes and notice that there were lots of other ways to make a living without having to put up with the likes of him.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
For me it was great having this bad boss. I've learned a lot, but just because "good judgement comes from bad experiences". I had a horrible experience, but that has helped me a lot now in life not to make the same mistakes. It's all part of growing up.
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I had a good boss once Allan. He knew his stuff could talk quite happily about programming and was an all round decent bloke. True the bosses above him were the usual umm not very kid sister friendly word who when he was on holiday tried to blame me for the late delivery of a project that I was only on because I was drafted in to help out when it was realised they wouldn't reach the deadlines. Of course my going balistic on the main bosses about trying to lay the blame at my door didn't help. Allan told me that if they'd done that to him he'd leave. I took his advice.
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"You can't hire 9 pregnant women to have a baby in 1 month". That's what I always say when a boss realizes that the deadline is impossible and they just add new resources. It just doesn't work that way.
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A far better question would be: who is the best boss that you've had and why? I bet almost no answers to that one since they're all pretty bad: most people become managers for the wrong reasons and then fail becuase they receive either the wrong training or none at all and are socially incapabale of managing other people. Just becuae, for instance, someone is a great developer does not mean that they will be a great manager.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
No, I've had 2 outstanding bosses in my life. Both of them had the attitude that their job was to keep the crap off of us workers so we could get our jobs done. They both were technically competent, but took care of meetings, paperwork, administrative issues, reports, etc. and let us do what we were good at and enjoyed. We took care of them, they took care of us. I can truthfully say it was a joy to work with them.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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The president of the first company I worked for; I'll use his initials T.R. I was hired as a part-time programmer when I was a sophomore in college. It was a very small company; when I was hired, it was the three owners and me. I was obviously very green, and needed a lot of guidance. The problem arose from how T.R. provided that guidance. He was very judgmental and critical. I learned to be constantly on my guard, and to have a justification ready for everything I was doing. Even when I did things correctly, T.R. didn't provide any positive reinforcement. Instead, he seemed to seek out ways to mark what I'd done as a failure. Another problem with T.R. was that he was very "do as I say, not as I do". The standards he applied to me did not apply to himself, which was frustrating and confusing at times. This created problems when we were working on the same project, as it was not always clear what part of the work belonged to whom. I worked for that company through college, and for a couple years after I graduated. In retrospect, I did acquire some valuable skills from working for T.R. over and above the things I learned from the actual assignments. I learned to be thorough when analyzing a problem and considering a solution. I learned to be persistent. I also learned to have no confidence in my judgement, and to have no perspective on how far to go when solving a problem. I really wish I could have learned the first lessons without the second. It took me ten years and three employers to develop a more reasonable perspective. To this day, after being a software professional for over thirty years, I have problems dealing with managers more than a couple layers over me in the hierarchy.
Software Zen:
delete this;Oh boy, you did another of your weird mistakes! Don't moan on public forums, c'mon instead, sit down and resume coding. --The Boss
If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
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I have been "blessed" with the fact that I can say that I've only had 2 bad bosses. First one was actually only annoying, but the second one was the whole enchilada. He was bipolar, treated people like slaves (he is french, we are from a third world country so he thought less of us), liar, cheater, hypocrite, never lived to his promises, micro manager, annoying and the list goes on and on. What else can you ask for? What about you?
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"You can't hire 9 pregnant women to have a baby in 1 month". That's what I always say when a boss realizes that the deadline is impossible and they just add new resources. It just doesn't work that way.
xavier morera wrote:
"You can't hire 9 pregnant women to have a baby in 1 month".
That metaphor doesn't make sense, though, because while women cannot collaborate upon one baby, many people CAN collaborate on a software project.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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xavier morera wrote:
"You can't hire 9 pregnant women to have a baby in 1 month".
That metaphor doesn't make sense, though, because while women cannot collaborate upon one baby, many people CAN collaborate on a software project.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
You are definitively a boss! hehe The quote is not mine, read Fred Brooks' (creator of IBM OS 360 and one of the most influential man in computing) book The Mythical Man Month. He can explain to you why adding resources to a project doesn't mean that the work gets divided. It is not like 3 1-man months is the same as 3-men in 1 month. Just read it and you will understand.
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Oh boy, you did another of your weird mistakes! Don't moan on public forums, c'mon instead, sit down and resume coding. --The Boss
If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
[My articles]Nah, for me I am not moaning. I just wanted to know about other people's experiences :laugh:
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Does her name start with "T". Not the one I am talking about, but I met someone like that.
If you're referring to her first name, yes, it does.
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Dave Kreskowiak -
xavier morera wrote:
we are from a third world country
Your profile says "United States". Well...errr...ummmm.....hmmmmm...ok....now that I think about it, thats about where we're headed.... Carry on. :((
Yeah... I've spent a lot of time in the US but I was born in another country. Aren't we all? hahaha
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If you're referring to her first name, yes, it does.
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]
Dave KreskowiakCrap... maybe its the same
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The president of the first company I worked for; I'll use his initials T.R. I was hired as a part-time programmer when I was a sophomore in college. It was a very small company; when I was hired, it was the three owners and me. I was obviously very green, and needed a lot of guidance. The problem arose from how T.R. provided that guidance. He was very judgmental and critical. I learned to be constantly on my guard, and to have a justification ready for everything I was doing. Even when I did things correctly, T.R. didn't provide any positive reinforcement. Instead, he seemed to seek out ways to mark what I'd done as a failure. Another problem with T.R. was that he was very "do as I say, not as I do". The standards he applied to me did not apply to himself, which was frustrating and confusing at times. This created problems when we were working on the same project, as it was not always clear what part of the work belonged to whom. I worked for that company through college, and for a couple years after I graduated. In retrospect, I did acquire some valuable skills from working for T.R. over and above the things I learned from the actual assignments. I learned to be thorough when analyzing a problem and considering a solution. I learned to be persistent. I also learned to have no confidence in my judgement, and to have no perspective on how far to go when solving a problem. I really wish I could have learned the first lessons without the second. It took me ten years and three employers to develop a more reasonable perspective. To this day, after being a software professional for over thirty years, I have problems dealing with managers more than a couple layers over me in the hierarchy.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
Another problem with T.R. was that he was very "do as I say, not as I do". The standards he applied to me did not apply to himself, which was frustrating and confusing at times. This created problems when we were working on the same project, as it was not always clear what part of the work belonged to whom.
Recently a contract company lead was replaced because of his inability to do the job. We'll call him by his initials also, L.H. (Little Hitler). I had to endure working with L.H. for two years and now that he is a nobody it is such a relief. He was definitely a "do as I say, not as I do" person, but that is only the start of his bad behavior. <rant> He would consistently try to do 90% of the work in the last 10% of the time alloted for any task. He would spend his days on Facebook, Duke Nukem Fanclub, discussing World of Warcraft with friends, slipping out to work on things at his family's business, taking very long lunches, etc. Another developer and I would get our work done and then have to bail him out in the end. Since he would not consider anyone else's opinion the design was always poor and we would deliver things with a nice UI (the other developer is also a graphic artist) but the plumbing always leaked due to lack of thorough design. Basically it was released without testing because there was never time for testing due to him using scheduled testing time to develop because nothing actually worked behind the scenes. We gained the reputation as "The Bad News Bears". It gets worse! When he was finally relieved of his authority my contracting company and client managers all told me that he was misrepresenting my contributions to the project. He was portraying me as someone who never got anything done and he would always have to come in at the end and finish up what was assigned to me. The opposite of what was really happening. Now all the managers smile at me and ask my opinion. I even got an additional raise retroactive to the contract years end when I complained about his rating me "not meeting expectations" on my annual review. Unfortunately the previous year is past history. <rant> There, I got that out without even one curse word. Needless to say I can never forgive the pr!ck for messing with my livelyhood. I have told management that I would prefer not to work with him directly unless it couldn't be avoided and they agreed.
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I did a stint at Detroit Water and Sewerage. The "woman" I worked for there was a micro manager in the extreme, always playing games for favors and power, and, oh yeah, didn't bathe for 3 straight months. I came close to throwing up in the garbage can just about every day.
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]
Dave KreskowiakDave Kreskowiak wrote:
I did a stint at Detroit Water and Sewerage ... The "woman" I worked for didn't bathe for 3 straight months.
How could you tell?
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I have been "blessed" with the fact that I can say that I've only had 2 bad bosses. First one was actually only annoying, but the second one was the whole enchilada. He was bipolar, treated people like slaves (he is french, we are from a third world country so he thought less of us), liar, cheater, hypocrite, never lived to his promises, micro manager, annoying and the list goes on and on. What else can you ask for? What about you?
I'm looking at who's posting, checking to see if anybody who works for me has posted. So far so good.
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
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