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?
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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 self employed and can say it can be pretty hard working for my boss. He has unreasonable expectations and sets incredibly optimistic delivery schedules. He has an uncanny ability of knowing when I'm bludging off or having a long boozy lunch. Then again ...
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xavier morera wrote:
(he is french
That's all you had to say.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
hahaha Not quite accurate. I did some biz with some guys from a company called NetReport. French and the bosses were great!
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Wow, that sounds familiar. I had a similar boss. When I ditched that company and moved to my next gig it was the best feeling ever.
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.
Same thing happened to me. I don't know why us human beings are so afraid of the new. We may be stuck in an extremely crappy situation but we don't move. I moved and now I am in this wonderful company, no really, it is great.
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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've had some great bosses [been working in IT for 25 years, though]. My first boss[es] were the best - had I had a crystal ball, I would have stayed with that outfit for all these years. Most of my bosses were just fine; the worst was an x-marine [duh], ass-kisser [duh]. His motis operandi was to trounce on anyone and everyone to get to his objective.
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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?
My first boss out of college use to tell me to use pirated software, place all my SQL code in C# instead of creating store procedures(Some cases the queries were like 6 printed pages long and would not let me use a string builder atleast), micro managed my code down to if I could use a while loop over a for loop and last but not least lied to people about his application failing always blaming IT because we were in a separate Web Development department. -- Modified Monday, July 18, 2011 3:16 PM
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My first boss out of college use to tell me to use pirated software, place all my SQL code in C# instead of creating store procedures(Some cases the queries were like 6 printed pages long and would not let me use a string builder atleast), micro managed my code down to if I could use a while loop over a for loop and last but not least lied to people about his application failing always blaming IT because we were in a separate Web Development department. -- Modified Monday, July 18, 2011 3:16 PM
Ohhhhh... the blaming game... I hate the blaming game...
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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"
I prefer this version: "No matter how many men you put on the task, it takes 9 months to make a baby."
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
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xavier morera wrote:
"You can't hire 9 pregnant women to have a baby in 1 month"
I prefer this version: "No matter how many men you put on the task, it takes 9 months to make a baby."
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
And maybe you may add "9 angry men"?
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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
This reminds me of the Peter Principle[^], which states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence".
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson
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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.
Richard Andrew x64 wrote:
many people CAN collaborate
True. The steel rods thrown into the gears is converting "CAN" to "WILL", the second is identifying the resources who KNOW what needs to be done and can COMPENTLY divide the processes so they can be concurrently and independently developed. Then you get integration where 10 people take 10 different paths to get one cohesive whole. Everything works great of course because you didn't hire slackers or incompetents and no miscommunication occured. (SURE, I've also got this bridge for sale in Brooklyn... Interested?) Collaboration can create magnificent results. It can also create magnificent failures.
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Richard Andrew x64 wrote:
many people CAN collaborate
True. The steel rods thrown into the gears is converting "CAN" to "WILL", the second is identifying the resources who KNOW what needs to be done and can COMPENTLY divide the processes so they can be concurrently and independently developed. Then you get integration where 10 people take 10 different paths to get one cohesive whole. Everything works great of course because you didn't hire slackers or incompetents and no miscommunication occured. (SURE, I've also got this bridge for sale in Brooklyn... Interested?) Collaboration can create magnificent results. It can also create magnificent failures.
No doubt what you say is true. I was only saying that the metaphor doesn't make sense.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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No doubt what you say is true. I was only saying that the metaphor doesn't make sense.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
The metaphor doesn't make sense if you look at it literally. In that sense, most metaphors fit in the same category. How about the alternate metaphor: "Throwing 9 men in with one woman won't produce a baby in 1 month"? Does that make more sense because the men CAN work collaboratively together on the process to produce a baby? Does it make more sense saying it WILL produce a baby in 1 month? The point of either one is that adding more resources won't produce better results (Unless you look at the process, plan how get better results, how to coordinate efforts, and show reasonable understanding of how the process works to get a predictive model for better results.) When that predictive model comes close to reality, then you demonstrate you are a good program manager. Unfortunately there are(were?) managers who think you can throw in double the resources and get results in half the time. You don't have to think about how that will work, it just will work that way. Doesn't that thinking exactly match the thinking of getting 9 women pregnant so you can get a baby in one month? (Don't think about how that will work, if it takes 1 woman 9 months to produce a baby, 9 women will have 1/9th the amount of work, so of course they can produce a baby in a month.) Fortunately most people know enough about biolgy that the idea is absurd. Unfortunately most people know so little about software, the idea doesn't sound absurd. You need an analogy (not a metaphor) to show the absurdity. There are real case examples where managers have thrown in more resources to get a faster result and either never get a result or one much later than the original plan predicted and the original team had a highly accurate prediction rate. Of course the "metaphor" doesn't make sense, the original premise it is based on doesn't make sense. The point is, it does show how the original premise is absurd. You can't even say that if you get 9 women pregnant, on average you can get one baby a month. That ignores the biological impossibility of getting women consistently pregnant immediately after birth, premature births, etc. That also ignores you don't want 12 babies/yr, you just want one, next month. More absurdity. If you can find a woman 8 months along, you can get one, next month. If you can find a team working on the same software problem for 11 months and they are one month from completion, if you offer 12 times their monthly personnel budget for one copy of the software, I dare say they would do that. Only that's absurd, you're will
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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 agree. It's difficult for me to pick out the worst boss I ever had since they were all pretty bad in their own way. Overall, I'd have to say that one was particularly bad in every way except he wasn't a micro manager. In fact, he was so hands off he was barely involved with the project or his workers in any way. He abdicated everything to a full-time employee who was hired as a programmer on the same project as me. This programmer was totally unfit as a project leader or manager. Anyway, back to the manager. He was too busy starting up a web company on the side and building a big expensive house to be bothered with us.
