10 Types of IT managers from hell Your boss could well be a barely restrained psychopath. Indeed, it is probable that he is the living incarnation of Cthulhu himself. Or he may be a bumbling incompetent who'll sink your career along with his. You, the downtrodden techie, need to learn how to deal with him - and fast. First, stop thinking of him as a person …
One of the best bosses I ever had was the one who realised I would just get on and do the work that was needed to be done once I'd settled in. He did have a problem with organising meetings but I had a laptop so I could still get some work done.
I think the main reason he was so hands off was he had his hands deep in the till but it was nice to be a manager level programmer without being a manager - or paid for it!
The only problem is that once you've done it nothing else will do - not even for the money!
No, often it's the incompetent are promoted. Usually to get them away from the customer side and to put someone useful in between who can filter things and pre-emptively repair much of the damage before it's done.
I guess it's to balance the competent ones who do get promoted and then are unable to spend any time doing the stuff that they're competent at as they now have so much administrivia to do first...
I had one complain that I never asked for anything without proper justification, which made the other departmental manager he controlled, who was his pet, look bad. This was where the excellent management training I got at my previous company came in useful.
I outlasted both of them.
@Jason.
If I got a penny for every illogical and impossible statement management give, I'd be rich.
The best was "swap your two one hour diary bookings around so you'll finish an hour earlier". I just walked out and left the two managers (line and assistant dept) to argue over which order would bring the greatest savings in time. Yep, two bookings in my diary, 1 hour each (and unable to finish either early), both at the same location. Somehow I did not have the heart to tell them 1+1=2 no matter the ordering of 1s...
I have the "I let the team handle it" boss. Mayor issue is that the team, how small it is do have very different ideas on how to solve common problems. As you might in vision, one part of the team is from the top side of the world. The other part of the team is from the bottom side of the world.
Second problem with this bloke is that he always tells,half of the story and depending of the people he talk to he only talks about the part that benefits him.
God help me...
I have come across a few of these in my time. The boss who you ask a simple question to, and because they don't know what they are doing has to go though the whole process/subject, in full, often without giving the answer, and then looks down on you thinking you don't know what you are doing because you asked him, who supposedly knows more than you, for clarification on one point but he thinks you don't know anything because he had to go through it all.
Instead talk to this prat and “discover” a new problem that takes longer each time he asks. Or you can actively tell him how things are going, using the message passing design pattern to mediate his non-maskable interruptions.
Personally I find the response "do you want me to take time to talk about fixing the problem or just get on and actually do it?" or something along those lines (with more or less tact, depending on who you're talking too and how pissed off you are) usually works.
It's a good antithesis to those who like to have meetings about issues rather than fixing them (to make themselves look important and/or to cover the fact that they need to be seen to be giving input on an issue that they have no clue about).
The first is the expert. Like a lot of your target audience, they really do know their stuff...and won't stop doing it, to the detriment of their real job. I've found escalating to their boss the only way of getting them back into line, but this doesn't always work if they are valued greatly and have an insane work ethic. You could always suggest they read some Norman Dixon..anonymously, of course!
The second is the token. A lot of people assume this means female or ethnic minority, but that's not always the case, since everything from sympathy and giving a M&A victim a "fair go" can be used to justify putting an idiot or arch manipulator in charge, and then refusing to move them even after the evidence piles up they are rubbish. To be honest, I've not found a way around this one other than leaving :-(
I thought the way to deal with the expert is to let them be paid (and have rank) of management, but just delegate all actual management tasks that are not directly in their expert role to someone else. Call them a compliance manager or something.
If they are mission critical, just move them off the org chart, and add them as an asset ;)
Tokens are morons shurly :)
You've also left out the Selective Fact Finder, one of the worst I've ever worked with.
"Hi Von Krakenfart, have you completed X yet?" where X = Selective Fact Finder's latest brain fart
" Eh No, it's coded but we haven' released it yet as we've had to roll out several critical service packs to all the servers" We were also trying to fix a bug in code Selective Fact Finder wrote 20 years ago that didn't handle century leap years correctly but you don't dare highlight Selective Fact Finder failings.
Selective Fact Finder then goes to the managers meeting and wants to know what the IT people are doing because project X hasn't been finished.
And HR used to wonder why staff turnover in IT was so high.
Mine's the one with the updated CV in the pocket.
I can see most of the examples in my colleagues. I am of course above reproach!
Without going into long explanations I see my role as empowering the people who work for me, (and for the person who down voted me when I said that before I mean enable them to do their job and a bit more), setting goals and communicating what the overall plan and objective is. Take of that what you will
But in return I want people to communicate with me. Tell me if you have a problem and help me work out a solution. Do it in good time and not when its impossible to mitigate
And then next - work with me with new ideas - not mumble about them with your colleagues and force me to decode them.
Two way communication is what its about.
And in return for the barrow loads of wonga - I take the fall.
empowering', 'enable', 'goals' and 'overall plan'
Good bosses know what they mean and use them correctly. My finest example of "enable" was when the company president listened to our pitch carefully, then said "Spend the money, do the job and I will fix the beancounters". "Goals" means "We will know this project is successful when [list of definite items]".
Bad bosses use management terminology as a way to obfuscate, e.g. "Delivering best value" - sacking people, "involving stakeholders" - "send out an email every quarter bitching about what hasn't happened".
"Sorry, I switched off after seeing 'empowering', 'enable', 'goals' and 'overall plan' in the same sentence."
Good post A+, would read again!
OK, dullard, if you were running an operation that was producting say 50 million of revenues a year and you had to sum up your style in a paragraph - what would you put?
Obviously I will watch and learn.
Too true. I think we need the same sort of thing but from a managers point of view. Staff can be just as much of a PITA as management, but as a manager it is part of your job to deal with that. Doesn't stop the moaner who complains about you, takes every attempt to undermine you and upset the rest of the team but will sit and smile and nod when asked directly if there are any problems being less of a PITA.
We had this a lot at our company.
If you had a useless clerical person, you couldn't sack them (also wasn't worth the effort) so the best way to get rid of them was to 'promote them out' to another department. "Congratulations! Bye Bye! Ding dong the witch is dead!"
However, this kept happening over and over so by the time I left, we had people that had zero social skills, couldn't count to ten, manage their way out of a paper bag etc. now at Head of or Director level.
The other problem was they thought they were gods as their rise had been so meteoric. Unfortunately, we were all in on the joke.
So if you've reached a high senior level, just think back how regular your promotions have been and whether any of your previous colleagues actually bother to keep in touch or walk the other way when they see you. If so then you may be one of them and everyone else knows.
Kind of where good employments rights can bite you hard.
I do like Dominic's articles, the cynicism is strong with this one!
I've experienced a lot of different company cultures and sizes as a consultant, and it never ceases to amaze me all the problems and drama that can arise from a bunch of people turning up to a building to earn some money to buy food. The amount of personal stress a bad manager can cause just because they have a need to satisfy their ego is truly astonishing.
Yes one type of boss not mentioned in the poor old "team leader". TLs are a layer of employee devised by management to avoid contact with workers. The TL essentially does the unpleasant and hard bits of his manager's job. That is, dealing with the team, their issues, performance reviews etc.
The TL gets endless pressure from above, and complaints/issues from below. He/she has no real power, no budget, not decision making input, and is paid as a team member. Team members become TLs because it seems a stepping stone to management. No. Never. When a management slot opens, an outside candidate is invariably chosen. The TL is not even interviewed. Few TL posts are advertised on job sites because no candidate would apply.
In better companies the team leader is in fact a full manager. With the power to both command his team and influence their futures for the better.
I can empathise (the last two words in my job title are "group leader"). It always brings to mind the cartoon of the "birds on a telegraph pole" management flow-chart (the link below).
The good old TL is in the middle - when they look down all they see is shit, and when they look up all they see are arseholes...
http://pinterestingideas4you.com/?p=614
The one who thinks that everyone should become a manager so when you tell him that 'no I don't want to be one. I'm happy being a <insert non mgt position here>'
Then he gives you a crap review stating 'xxx has no ambition' thus triggering no pay rise.
You do have an ambition but is clearly does not involve becoming a manager.
The worse one is Garbage in, Gospel out.
Something that has been "working" for a while, but either had a subtle bug in it or had one introduced on a later update which screwed up the output. Then it's not only the need to fix it, but the need to actually persuade the client that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. The old "it worked before" or "it's part of our established structure so we can't change it" scenario coming into play.
You then of course get the illogical evolution of that, where they recognise things need to be fixed but won't allow you to change anything. Hence the twin needs in your problem solving toolbox of a magic wand and a rather large lump hammer...
Although I'm a City headhunter, most of my life has been writing C++ code and before that, C. Thus what you read started off in my head as a mix of #define's and VC++ v4 expanded template code, as a CompSci grad I also thought in terms of closures before C++ supported them
Thus the highly personal use of brackets serves several purposes, but most commonly coercion where the semantics of a code fragment / sentence is wantonly changed from one type to another.
you missed one
"The seagull"
This is a rare sighting, but all too common, the more correct technical name for this type of manager is the ADHD manager.
This type is entirely driven by customer demands regardless of whether his decisions make any rational sense, or indeed, any sense at all.
For example, Customer A has a regular order for 1000 parts that make the company £10 each, Customer B orders 10 parts at a time every other day and complains when they dont appear at the loading dock at 9am the next day, Customer C orders 60 parts a week come rain, shine, or the last judgement.
Each of them phones the ADHD manager in turn demanding parts...... so that manager instantly runs downstairs after customer A has rung and stops everything to do their job, customer B rings 30 mins later and the orders all change, customer C rings 40 mins later and its all change again.
1hr later and the ADHD manager is flapping all over the place trying to figure why nothing has gone out of the door today, or why nothing has been made and the remaining staff are using the company internet to look up mail order AK-47s
Around here, that type of manager has an alternative definition.
Usually one of the higher-ups from the overseas or corporate head-offices who flies in, makes a lot of noise, shits on everything, pecks at a few things at random (often rather viciously) and then flies off again leaving chaos in their wake.
Sadly they're not so rare...
Missed out the 'Incompatible Operating System' Antimanager.
We had one of them. The moment she (begrudgingly) took us lot on board, she did her damnedest to bad mouth us.
That of course led to a quandary once it was time for her to move on - she'd done such a successful job at convincing everyone else that we were gawd-awful that no other manager would dare take us on.
Solution: She outsourced the entire feckin' department.
20 people lost their jobs, she got a promotion. What a bitch....
had a good team but one thickey who socialised with the director, so when I treated her according to her experience (which was nil) and gave the experienced employees more lee-way, I got accused of having "personal issues" with her, so had to treat everybody the same (lowest common denominator). Complete team cycled out in 18 months, including me. She's current doing SAP somewhere (god help them).
So, chatting with the business tutor... Says they got trouble with the email...
"Yes, before we get to that, can you see the problem with the email you sent me".
Reads email.
"No, the whole email."
"That is it." comes the reply.
"But below it, the advert."
"Yes I use that software." they reply.
"But what does it do? Why is your business advertising another companies product? What if it contains a virus (me knowing that this is malware at worse, snake oil at best). Do you want to give that kind of image to your clients".
"Quite frankly, with the kind of clients I have, I don't care."
Me knowing I'm one of their clients, do not give a reply...
Lesson learned. Be more tactful when dealing with professional clients in the future, as it's not easy to point out mistakes. No one wishes to hear of them.
I'll concentrate on offering a service of giving the customer what they ask for, what they want, and when their in real trouble what they need. All the while being polite and helpful, even if it means helping them trash their own pc. :P
Anon, for obvious reasons.
And I've had multiple instances of the 10 subhuman examples you've shown, and an 11th.
The EX-Management consultant
--------------------------------------------
This piece of shite typically shows up from high-price consulting firms after (seemingly) getting the dirt on some douchbag in your upper management. Inept at everything, quick to blame/fire/explode in fits of anger, this piece of shite will either lead to HR firing him, or HR trying to keep all his employees from resigning. This particular cretin is easily identifiable by the trail of tears, disillusionment at staff meetings, and the staff behaving as if "daddy will beat me real bad if I say anything" cowering in the corner.
Manager: A thing or person that manages.
Boss: Lump of metal on a shield for bashing people with.
Everybody who thinks of themselves as a boss should be fired. Now. Everybody who thinks of themselves as a manager needs edumacated (well, most. I've had (and been) both good and bad managers).
The role of a manager is to make it easier for the pro's to get on with their work. Anything else is bullshit*.
---
*okay, your manager might have other jobs to do, but eg. sealing a project deal is marketing, not management ;)
The Absolute Douchebag
My former boss tried to start his relationship with me from a position of power. It was our first face-to-face meeting and my yearly review. I had also requested a salary review. The meeting started out with him saying that he'd never worked for a company that had a full time web developer. He felt it was a waste of money and was a job better out-sourced than kept in-house. Then spent the next hour telling me that I was better off quitting, could make three times going elsewhere, and to do myself a favor by just leaving. From there he did his best to make me look like I was incompetent by editing my code on a project after I had gone home. Then trash talked me to the executive committee whenever given the chance.
And yet, when one of our sites fell under attack, my code and my security precautions prevented any damage or access. While I was praised by the executive committee, he said I just got lucky. Even after I gave my notice, moved on to a new job, he had the nerve to call me to see if I'd be willing to do contract work for him.
His "IT" experience was a collection of buzz words, redirection, and bullshit. He never showed any actual knowledge, and even a simple google search could be used to disprove his "claims".
Lets face it, sometimes an person can bluff their way into a position, and if they bounce around enough can pass themselves off as knowledgeable.
He is a defective component in your system – and you know how to deal with them.
For a computer, you would remove the bad part, and toss it into the trash
With a defective manager, you convince him (or her) to pull the ejector handle on their career, or if you have the connections, pull it for them.
My favorite manglement career advancement tool is a trebuchet, with me jerking the chain.
"The previous year Chicago magazine ranked him as the city's second-meanest person, and he complained about not being No. 1. (That was Michael Jordan.)"
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-28/entertainment/chi-charlie-trotter-chicago-chef-part-1-20120827_1_charlie-trotter-gt-fish-oyster-homaro-cantu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Trotter
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