Depends on the level of competence. If I have a choice between incompetent and asshole, I’d fire them both and hire someone who had at least basic competence and didn’t piss people off.
Because being an asshole is a form of incompetence. If you are an asshole, you don’t get shit done because when you pick up the phone to do the hand off, it doesn’t happen. And when someone needs to pick up the phone to do a hand off to your area of expertise, they call someone pleasant to deal with.
I work with an asshole. He’s competent. He could move ahead with a change in attitude. Unfortunately, his attitude makes me - responsible for task assignments - sometimes juicy ones - pass him over every time I’m asked to pull a team together. And I’m not the only one who passes him over. He is unpleasant to work with and as a project manager, I don’t want to deal with it - I don’t want to deal with it from him and I don’t want to deal with it from the other team members who call me to complain about him.
I’m not talking about being the cheerleading “go team go” sort. I am talking about stating your concerns, and then STOP WHINING when management makes a different decision. I know you are disappointed that you didn’t get a raise, I’m not expecting people to be HAPPY. I am expecting them to be understanding and keep the griping to a minimum - because to continue the gripe treadmill for a full year doesn’t help me run a team. And I’m not expecting you to think bowling is the best thing EVARRRRR!!! But do understand that handing you $50 was NOT among my options or I probably would have done it. And I expect that if you are so unhappy here that you have to spend your time griping about management - regardless of the face you put forward to me, that you start looking for another job for your sake. Not because I’m about to fire you (although if I know that’s going on, I’ll give you a push out the door if I get the opportunity, laying off people I know are unhappy is way easier than laying off the happy ones), but because you spend 40 hours a week here - no one should spend 25% of their life unhappy.
But my POINT was, Mister Attitude is NOT doing the job. He is actually impeding the completion of the job. He simply IS the problem in the mix. I was not the only one who walked out of the project, with the blessing of our Tech Lead. I see, you’d continue to reward the Psycho, and enable him, while he turns the workplace into a battlefield. I do my work. I help others. In return, I have my “don’t fuck me over” rule. I see I would never want to work for an incompetent like you.
If he isn’t doing the job, then he isn’t competent. And no, I wouldn’t reward him. Because you’d be telling me he’s an asshole and I’d be saying “gee, the rest of the team doesn’t like him.” And that is being an asshole, even if you are rah rah about team meetings.
No, I think you’d never look past the “good attitude” he shows you and give him a pat on the back. You’d be completely snowed. While the rest of your people are being used.
And thanks Lynn Bodoni for your words. I can be pleasant and sociable, but if you were to say “sorry but I’m a little busy right now” I would respect that and let you concentrate. I’d even offer help, SO LONG as you are not dumping all your work on me or taking advantage.
(Serious question, not snark) - is that really what they’re teaching management types in college? I see a lot more of the “game-playing as management” style than serious, “do a good job and get appropriately rewarded” type of management.
And your point about management shortcuts is excellent - that puts into words a feeling I’ve had for what is going on in the corporate world for a long time now. You can’t force rapport.
I think one good thing about TBE is that it causes people to become closer to each other by discovering they have a common hatred of TBE and other twee bullshit management crap.
ETA: I’m a Manager. I am fairly sure people respect me because I just get on with the actual work, than suggest people might win a free Easter Egg for the best idea to increase profits (Or, as they are more likely to read what’s written between the lines - “There’s a free tiny monetary reward for whichever schmuck is stupid enough to want to find a way to line the already-rich pockets of the people on the board of directors”
That’s what I remember from my management courses…but I took them back around 1980, so there’s no telling what sort of theories are taught today. And I don’t have my textbooks or my notes any more.
Obviously some people hate the idea that you don’t agree with the almighty and all benevolent management. It’s people like that who make work totally and unnecessarily miserable.
I don’t know why you are being so hostile to a bunch of strangers you don’t even know, but I have to believe you must be at least as big an asshole at work.
Speaking as a manager in some pretty big companies, here is the deal:
I’d try to have you fired regardless of how good you think your work is. And here’s why. A crappy attitude like yours is infecteous. You probably make your coworkers miserable and you undermine your bosses authority. No one wants a malcontent fermenting rebellion in their group.
Yes, I want you to “pretend” as if you like being there and like getting along with your coworkers. You don’t need to grin like an idiot all day, but I expect my people to be respectful and courteous and professional and I will treat them the same way. You see, the truth is I don’t really care about you. Not really. At the end of the day, both our careers are better served by me being your boss, not your friend. Which is not to say we can’t become friends eventually. But I’m your boss first.
As a mid-level manager, I actually have little control over company policy or things like Super Fun Team Outing Day. Those things are thought up by some idiot sociology major in Human Resources. My role is making sure projects get done and apparently a lot of asskissing to more senior management (which isn’t a “core competency” of mine).
And believe me, if it comes down to ruining your career or allowing you to ruin mine with your attitude or incompetance, guess which one of us will be applying for unemployment.
Yes, there are a lot of incompetant managers out there. You have managers who don’t understand what they are managing beyond a vague theoretical level. You have managers who don’t care about anything but their own self-agrandizing. Some are arrogant entitled snobs. Some are just plan lazy or stupid. But the fact of the matter is that it is hard to manage people well. Not only do you have to get the work done, you need to deal with all the crazy personalities as well.
Everyone thinks their boss is an idiot until they have to do his job.
Oh I believe most of it is bullshit. I’m just trying to explain some of the thinking that goes into it. A lot of it is very much premediated. They seem to take their playbook from the James C. Collins management books “Good to Great” and “Built to Last”. It’s a side affect of having super-educated management who is completely distanced from actually having to ever implement anything.
I have done management, and I have done bottom of the totem pole. To be perfectly honest, modern management techniques tend to suck ass.
Look, take retail electronics, I went to get a birthday present for a friend, and I know what I wanted to get her. I went to a national electronics store. I got badgered every step of the way, and tormented to buy the extras, and I know that the employees are pressured to upsell, sell the maintenance programs, and flog the credit cards and everything, but if the customer says NO repeatedly, then they seriously mean FUCK NO I DO NOT WANT TO BUY ANYTHING EXCEPT WHAT I CAME TO GET STOP BADGERING ME. Corporate needs to stop forcing management to punish the employees for not making quota. Putting the poor employee in fear of keeping their job is NOT a good management technique.
If I have a job in a call center, and the jackass calling in starts dropping the f-bomb, yelling and refusing to accept no as an answer, and gets even more violent and obscene, the CS employee should be able to hang up on that jackass, not get marked down and forced to tolerate that kind of treatment from a caller and have their metrics screwed up because they can not hang up or transfer the idiot to a supervisor.
If my store has a closing time of 9 pm, then the customers need to be made to leave at 9, not let them keep the poor closers from actually closing and going home. When the idiot entitlement whores get their panties in a twist about anything like not being allowed to use expired coupons, or return that 3 year old worn pair of shoes it is always the poor saleshuman that bears the brunt of it. With corporate making management have no balls to actually tell the idiot EW customers NO, we are getting entitlement whore customers thinking that they can do anything they want. Corporate management needs to learn that they are losing more money caving in to these jackasses than they are by bending over and lubing up.
You should try reading Customers Suck sometime, for the lowly peons viewpoint at how management could actually improve. Unfortunately the jackasses who all seem to be writing the policies and books that are so damned popular with management have probably never worked as a lowly peon in their little sheltered lives and have no idea how soulstealing and demeaning corporate tends to treat the poor front line employees. Every attempt to short the employee manhours to save money, and make them try to do the same amount of work with neither the time nor manpower and expecting the employees to have any sort of loyalty to the company is assinine … and then add any sort of forced bonhomie? please. All most employees want is a decent wage, a decent health insurance and perhaps retirement plan, and to be treated as real living people with a life away from work. They do not want any insipid fake forced friendship to prove they are a team.
Well, holding your boss and your job in contempt kind of means your an asshole. Or stupid, since why would you work every day when you hold your boss and your job in contempt.
I don’t want you to be my friend. I want you to be a manager, That means you MANAGE. That doesn’t mean you set yourself up like some king or hide in your damn office. It doesn’t mean you let the wannabe pukes run roughshod over the rest. You fucking MANAGE. Here’s the deal. I work the electronics (waivers, deviations, inspection requirements, MRB,s etc ). I work the software (spec review, design review, program review, code walkthrough, all of it) I administer and run and maintain our local database (thanks to me and it, we had a “center of excellence” recognition). I fill in doing inspections out on the floor. I wrote the guidelines telling the floor inspectors what to do. When we have audits, people send the auditors to ME for answers. I wrote a lot of the guidelines and procedures we use. You know what CMM is? Well we are operating at Level 1 maybe level 2, where you depend on the “heroics” of a few to carry the rest.
I’ve filled in as acting Tech Lead, I’ve filled in as acting Supervisor. Guess what. Shit gets done. It generally gets done faster and with fewer fuck ups. And nobody gets their tit in a wringer either.
Get me fired? Who’d do all the work? Go back and read the details of my posts. Read the part where I said MY TECH LEAD WAS JUST AS PISSED OFF AS I WAS, shit for brains. The moron trying to dictate to me was DUMPING HIS WORK AND HAD NO AUTHORITY. GOT IT??? So you managed at “some pretty big companies”. Uh huh, Couldn’t stay at one? Too hard? I been at the same place for over 20 years and I’ve seen pukes come and go. I’ve had a 30 plus year career and guess what - the only one who currently dislikes me is the little wannabe who tried to order me around with NO AUTHORITY. Somehow, I have had MANY sustained superior promotions and I have boxes full of awards. I’ve seen your kind come and go. Get me fired? You’d be better served watching your own ass. Go after me, and you’d have my undivided attention. I’d do my best to end your career if you went after me. I’d have so many grievances, ULPs, and paper on you, you’d be gone long before me.
Here’s something else to think on.
I’m the Union VP, chosen by my CO WORKERS, who like, trust and respect me. I’m the guy who stands for the employees when someone like you would tries to fuck them over, and I’d have your ass. Go on you power trip, you’d be the one gone. In a flash. Chew on THAT.
When we had a loony physically threatening (yeah it really happened) people repeatedly, management did NOTHING. Isn’t that their job? To do something? Instead they protected him and coddled hm because they were scared of him. Imagine that. He didn’t stop his aggression against co-workers until I personally offered to take his sorry ass out. When the latest jerk (WHO HAS NO AUTHORITY) pulled his crap the only management who did anything was the Tech lead, and you keep ignoring that too,
So your some big boss? Color me under fucking whelmed.