Probably 80% of the managers I’ve had were good, though some were weak in that they weren’t respected by their managers and thus weren’t good advocates. I only had two bad ones. One was dumb, the other was a psycho. And my first was so brilliant he was confident enough to hire really good people, and build his underappreciated group into an organization respected in our field. He got two major awards, one of which I nominated him for.
I went to that lab because of him, on instinct, which shows that if you have a choice of jobs you might want to pick one based on who your boss will be. Not everyone has that luxury, I know.
You’re lucky. I spent most of my career in consulting firms. Other than a few exceptions, my experience has been that they rarely seem to give a crap about their employees. They are basically run by self-serving salespeople and everyone else is just a “resource” to be utilized. They aren’t interested in providing “leadership” or “mentoring”.
I did work in the IT department of a large insurance company briefly. My manager quit shortly after he hired me so I don’t know what he was actually like to work for (I heard second hand he was a bit of a scum bag). His boss (who became my boss) was an indifferent psycho who left the company soon after. She was replaced by some woman who was widely regarded across the industry as an idiot.
I did like my managers at my last last company (not the one I just got fired from). I felt they actually gave a crap about the people who worked for them. Making sure I had a “mentor” to show me the ropes. Making sure got training on the companies products. You know. Basic “make sure you succeed here” stuff. Then that got all fucked by COVID-19.
But you’re right about picking your boss. The company I described above, I hit it off so well with my bosses, they extended me an offer by the time I got home. This last job, the first thing I thought after meeting the guy who ran our group was “I think I may want to keep looking”. Turns out I was right.
But yeah. Maybe it’s a product of the types of companies I work for. But in my experience, most of my managers have basically been corporate scumbags and bullshit artists who pretend to be your best friend if they think they can get something out of you, otherwise they don’t want to know you.
I’ve certainly met my share of bad managers, and I’ve had the misfortune to work for one or two (though not recently). Actually, thinking back, I’d say that my experience has been far better of managers within the IT sector, than outside of it. I wonder if that’s just the sample set I have encountered, or if it’s general.
A lot of it is company culture. Bad managers fit well into some cultures, but eventually get forced out by others. When I recruited I played up the aspects of our culture that I felt would appeal to the candidate I wanted to hire.
If you have a bad boss in a company with a good culture you might be able to change groups. If you’re stuck with one in a company with a bad culture you have little choice but to leave. I’ve done both.
I’ve never worked for anyone who would not expect a reply to inquiries like this. Unless, of course, one of my coworkers volunteered for the task or provided the answer.
But no response leaves the manager in the position of not knowing if they’re going to need to ask someone else to do something/answer something, when a “I can’t tackle another widget project until I’ve completed X and Y. How time sensitive is this project?” or “I haven’t logged into the program today” doesn’t leave them waiting on Schrodinger’s response where maybe you do have time/the answer and haven’t replied yet or you just haven’t indicated you’re not the right person to ask.
Sounds dystopian. Out of curiosity, what part of the country is this? You don’t have to say which state ( I’m assuming from context it’s in the US ) but maybe just a general geographic area. Not trying to blow anybody’s cover, just that it’s interesting to me know, and all the better for me to avoid the place.
Middle management checking in (late, as usual). Depending on the environment you’re working in, another reason it might be beneficial to reply with a polite, “Shoot, I’m crazy busy, but keep me in mind for next time!” is visibility. Yes, it’s shitty - politics suck universally. But the reality is if your management is evaluating two people for a promotion and one of them happens to be more vocal in an appropriate, friendly way, the more vocal guy is more memorable.
But yeah, if your boss is worth his salt, he should know what you’re doing already and be capable of delegating appropriately based on workload and skill set. Were I in the same position, there’s no way I’d send out a group email. And he should be able to conduct an annual review without his own boss present unless he’s completely new to management. Also, in my experience, if my employees don’t already know what I’m going to say for their annual review, I’ve been giving them piss poor feedback all year and that’s my fault.
That said, I’ve been known to reply all when my boss sends out a group email if only because sometimes she needs someone who’s not her (she’s terrifying in a Miranda Priestly kind of way - hyper intelligent, no patience for insecurity or mistakes) to get responses flowing. Occasionally if people see one person respond, they’ll feel like they could/should respond as well so it feels more like a team environment than having management push stuff downhill.
I think it depends on the context. Is it a team leader sending an email to 5 people or is the head of the practice addressing an entire department of 50 people?
One of my frustrations at my last company was their overreliance on Slack for everything. Not just messaging but links to documents, assigning tasks and reporting. It’s fine for casual chat, but it just becomes this noise after awhile.
IMHO, that’s one of the main problems with email and messaging these days. It’s too easy for people to use it as a CYA. “Oh I sent them this email last week, so it’s not my fault that they never did it.” Maybe because you send 50 such emails a day?
I can only conclude that such places don’t really care about things like “deadlines”. They only care to see people scrambling as fast as they can to keep up with an arbitrary set of tasks.
OP was working on a team of 3 people which most people seemed to have missed out on when formulating replies.
I didn’t catch that. If that’s the case, then yes, not responding would be a bit rude.
Just wanted the OP to read this twice. I keep wondering how much trouble it’d be to send a quick NO email. Maybe something like “Sorry, wish I could, but busy on [that other important project]!”
And I do wonder if the OP learned this lesson yet…
Now, Esprise Me went on to explain exactly what I’d do:
Do exactly what the boss wants, because they’re the boss (as long as it’s not hurting the company). But yes, there would be a lot of eye-rolling and maybe even mocking involved.
I probably would have felt the way you did, but I wouldn’t have actually argued with my boss about it. Instead, I would have gone to my co-workers to see what they thought. If they all felt the same as me, or at least if the ones I liked agreed with me, I would’ve bonded with them over our shared contempt of our idiot boss, while still placating said boss with a bunch of useless emails.
Before you do your eye rolling it is a good idea to try to figure out why the boss is acting like they do. Others have given good reasons for this request. I’ve had to do stuff that seemed stupid, even to me, but which were done for reasons my reports weren’t privy to.
If this is the worst thing a boss does, you’re pretty lucky. When I joined one company my boss had 16 direct reports. When I left a year and a quarter later only one original person was left - and his staff was all managers and senior engineers. That was a bad boss.
One thing to keep in mind as well is that your boss is probably just another link in a chain of bosses. And most of them have their own agenda and may be indifferent to the effect it has on people below them.
Eh, sounds like someone is a little out of touch. If they had sent you a REAL mail, personalized to just you instead of some email list, then yeah, maybe you should respond to it. But nobody does that anymore.
Nothing is worse than someone sending out a corporate email, especially one where they say “If you don’t believe you were the intended recipient, please request to be taken off” and then you’re bombarded by jerkoffs all day hitting Reply All, then get MORE even emails saying “Don’t hit Reply All!!!”
The default negative response for emails should be nothing at all.
While a lot of people have posted good reasons to reply with “no can do” to the boss’s emails, I have to say that I’d be leery of it. You totally have to know your boss of course, but if the OP is busy enough to be constantly working, I’d be more than a little worried that after three or four “sorry too busy” replies, the boss would mark him as never being willing to take on more / never volunteering / not being a team player. And if the boss is like that, it’s very likely he’d never actually tell you, but it would definitely impact future promotions and raises.
You’d have to be actually busy to respond too busy, or else you will eventually get found out. The OP was, far as I can tell. It is also good to be able to guess how important the new job is, and how useful to you.
Not everything we do is equally vital. When I asked someone to take on something new, and knew they were truly busy, I’d tell them which of the things I had given them could be delayed in favor of the new job. If the boss doesn’t do that, you could say “I’ll have to push back project X by two weeks - is that okay?” The boss may decide that they want project X more than the new one, and give you credit for volunteering while not giving you the work. We call this “holding up your hand and not being called.”