I have a new Director and he’s so far up everyone’s ass he can taste what we all had for dinner last night. I hate it. I hate it enough for a Pit thread, but I have a cold and as a consequence I’m too fatigued to really whip myself into the irrational frenzy necessary for a successful Pit thread.
We have to file reports twice a week about what we’re doing, what we expect to do, how we fared against our forecasts, and include how many hours we’ve spent on various taks, etc. I honestly spend at least an hour a day on the organizational overhead necessary to track my time. It’s all very distracting. My wife tells me not to get too worked up about it - there’s something wrong in my department, and they are trying to fix it. I don’t think it’s me they need to fix, so I’m not exactly worried about my job. I more worried that the pressure of micromanagement will cause me to snap in some unexpected manner and that will cause me to lose my job.
There’s also the outside chance that they want to fire one of my team. The result of that would be more work for me. The other possibility is that they are trying to figure out if outsourcing us makes sense, and we’re providing the metrics necessary to get some proposals. I guess the other possibility is that the new Director just wants to get a handle on what we do, and this doesn’t mean anything (this is the stated purpose).
I go the other way entirely. Every. Single. Thing I do, I check with the boss. “You sure boss? Is that ok boss?” All said in the most chipper and enthusiastic tone ever. I take to ccing him on every darn thing. But I take care to make sure I am polite and cheerful and happy.
Ugh, that sounds awful. If this is a new thing, it may be that your boss has someone on HIS ass, demanding department information for budget purposes or whatnot.
Here’s to hoping this is temporary and not a new requirement, 'cause I really hate wasting time proving that I’m not wasting time.
That same report you are complaining about could very well work in your favor if you are a good employee. I would take advantage of it and see it as an opportunity.
Assuming you were busy before and didn’t have free time just waiting around, presumably other tasks are sacrificed because of these new requirements? I’d make that his problem. Nicely, of course, but he should know how much time is being spent on this.
“Hey, boss, because I’m spending X hours per week on all of these new reporting requirements, I don’t have time to do both Task A and Task B, which should I be doing? Or do these take priority over reporting?”
If you weren’t busy, I’d suck it up in the short term and, in the long term, hopefully meet with the guy once he’s up to speed and explain your concerns.
Of course, my career sabotaging tactic has been to suggest/make comments/openly wonder how they have time to do my job while doing their own job and why they hire people to do jobs they don’t allow them to do.
And seriously, if you’re spending your day micromanaging other people’s work, that must mean a rather large chunk of your own work isn’t getting done. There’s a question of work priorities here and if you’re a micromanager, you’re putting “be an asshole” and “worry about lesser tasks” above doing your own damned job.
Hire people to do their jobs and get the fuck out of the way, or stop deluding yourself that you have any kind of leadership abilities.
One of the management basics I see broken every day is “Unless otherwise proved, don’t assume the worker is an idiot,” and act accordingly. And if they are an idiot, just fire them and get someone else. It’s not that complicated.
I have found that my micro-managers actually do not have enough work to keep them busy or they don’t really know how to do Their job but are used to doing yours. Either way the situation is usually resolved by someone higher up and sometimes YOU have to be the one to alert the higher ups. How you alert them can determine your own future however so tread lightly.
Yeah, we have new leadership because our old Director didn’t understand what we do, and did not advocate for us, and I get the sense that he was throwing us all under the bus to make himself look better (or not as bad). So now the new guy needs to fight back from a deficit because his boss is really disconnected from us. If it’s permanent I’ll probably jump down the elevator shaft eventually.
I have this sort of thing going on at work myself. We have to provide reports of everything we do, and now we’re being forced to check in when we arrive, go to lunch, leave. Part of the reason is our manager is incompetent, but part of it is also that the contract is up for recompete. The problem is, these people don’t realize just how horrible this stuff is for getting work done and overall morale. I work as a software engineer, so every time I get distracted while I’m in stream, you probably wasted no less than 15-20 minutes of my time on top of whatever you distracted me for. And when you kill my morale, I’m less motivated to go the extra mile and just provide exactly what’s required of me. What’s worse, is our manager doesn’t know anything about coding or scripting or a majority of the projects that we’re working on, so when something that looks easy is taking too long, people just get punished and the project takes longer because of more wasted time, and it’s a vicious cycle. Nevermind that everything you don’t look at and don’t know anything about either looks ridiculously easy or impossibly hard.
Anyway, I refuse to be passive agressive with my boss and be cheerful about it and hope to annoy it into non-existence. I’m here to do my job and this stuff just kills my productivity and my morale. And when it’s reached a point where I can’t remember the last time I didn’t hate going to work, it’s time to stop fooling myself that I can change that situation and just find another job. Fortunately, it does seem like more of the newer companies are figuring out that micromanagement is outdated and counterproductive, so I’m hopeful there’s enough of those out there that maybe when more people start changing jobs and being more productive, that style will die a slow death.
The other problem with the whole passive-aggressive cheerful approach is that the sort of manager that is too egotisical, incompetent, or untrusting to feel the need to micromanage is also likely to see that sort of response as positive feedback, only making it worse.
So really, I just think the options are, suck it up and deal with it, resist it, complain about it, or provide alternatives and risk the consequences, or quit.
Ugh, I once had a horrible boss who micromanaged everyone to near death. At one point, she wanted me to run every e-mail I sent by her! Pure craziness. I complied at first, then kind of went the Anaamika route, asking her permission before everything, but I got sick of it before the boss did. I eventually just stopped doing the ridiculous bullshit she was requesting of me. Just plain stopped doing it, and went about doing the job I was paid to do, instead feeding into her control issues, or whatever her problem was. I was taking more time preparing status reports of every light switch I flipped than I was doing my actual job. For a while that seemed to be okay, but then something crawled up her ass again and she went back to being crazy. I got fed up and quit. I worked there for months, and just could not take it anymore.
It’s pretty much out in the open that the new Director’s boss doesn’t know what we do, and doesn’t necessarily beleive we’re doing much of anything. I perform well, but my team doesn’t. I’ve got four sys admins reporting to me and they need to step up but haven’t. I’m afraid one of them is going to get fired as a result of this. (I go back and forth about why management is doing this)
