51–60 of 75 posts
22. Hire antisocial self-declared "rock star" employees who can't stand other human beings. 23. Encourage sociable, pleasant employees to read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. 24. Peer reviews and stack ranking! 25. Stress that everything must be done in-house. If your employees want a wheel, they must reinvent it themselves. 26. Play video games in your office during crunch-time or, heck, just take the day off. You deserve…
* Have CEO live in another state, but not let his absenteeism stop him from insisting the entire company change
* Throw chairs at people who want to release the code after it's feature complete [Ah, TJ, I wanted to give you a big ol' bear hug for finally pressing the point after hitting feature complete more than 10 times and us never releasing]
* Be constantly high on amphetamines
* Steal the identity of a math textbook author in suburban California
* Announce in a quarterly all hands meeting that it was a positive quarter because, even though the business lost money, and lost money faster than last year, the negative year over year growth got smaller (read: closer to zero), so you'll be losing the same amount of money YoY in no time!
If you guys think it's a harsh reality that companies do the stuff in this article... I guess I am curious if you guys have worked at venture funded startups?
> 14. Humiliate people in public. If you have to choose only one item from the list, this one is really, shockingly effective and easy to implement. My wife was in tears the other day because she made two trivial, easily-fixable errors on some paperwork she was doing as a stand-in for someone who was out sick. She fixed the errors and resubmitted it when they were brought to her attention, but her boss still sent the…
I am of two minds about this. On one hand, a "you broke the build dunce cap" isn't the worst of ideas. (Although by far I prefer a check-in system that doesn't allow the build to be broken for everyone...) I've been shamed, and semi-publically (within the team) shamed others, for not having written any unit tests before check-in. I'm also a big fan of publically celebrating successes. When a tester writes up a good b…
Otherwise I would not advise.
"14. Humiliate people in public."
Sounds like a personality disorder, possibly anti-social personality disorder. See: http://www.wikihow.com/Spot-a-Sociopath, in particular:
"9. See if the person makes uninterrupted eye contact. Sociopaths are known for giving intense uninterrupted eye contact. The person stares because he or she is completely comfortable staring at people to make them uncomfortable. Staring at others intently is a way to further his or her own means."
"1. Look for a lack of shame. Most sociopaths can commit vile actions and not feel the least bit of remorse. Such actions may include physical abuse or public humiliation of others."
There may be a story behind this post as it feels quite personal, but this is a pretty good composite of bad management behaviors. I see this more of a collage than a specific rant. I could be wrong, but I've seen one or more of these traits expressed by almost any supervisor I've encountered (not all the time or all at once).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Teasing, shaming and other forms of negative humor are very hard to do with a positive result. People are astonishingly different in what they can tolerate and how they respond. I suppose, with the right people, and the right team dynamics it can be OK. But as a manager, I would strongly advise you to steer clear of that tactic. Even if you've got awesome emotional intelligence (and I don't) it's easy to screw up. It…
Some industries seem to have a culture of harsh negative feedback given publicly and it seems to work ok, but then people have an expectation of that going in to the industry.
Dude. Just find a new job.
> 14. Humiliate people in public. If you have to choose only one item from the list, this one is really, shockingly effective and easy to implement. My wife was in tears the other day because she made two trivial, easily-fixable errors on some paperwork she was doing as a stand-in for someone who was out sick. She fixed the errors and resubmitted it when they were brought to her attention, but her boss still sent the…
I updated my resume and was gone in three weeks.
22. Hire antisocial self-declared "rock star" employees who can't stand other human beings. 23. Encourage sociable, pleasant employees to read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. 24. Peer reviews and stack ranking! 25. Stress that everything must be done in-house. If your employees want a wheel, they must reinvent it themselves. 26. Play video games in your office during crunch-time or, heck, just take the day off. You deserve…
Oh boy. I worked one place where they handed out copies. It did not occur to me that this was a warning sign at the time, but... yeah.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Teasing, shaming and other forms of negative humor are very hard to do with a positive result. People are astonishingly different in what they can tolerate and how they respond. I suppose, with the right people, and the right team dynamics it can be OK. But as a manager, I would strongly advise you to steer clear of that tactic. Even if you've got awesome emotional intelligence (and I don't) it's easy to screw up. It…
> Teasing, shaming and other forms of negative humor are very hard to do with a positive result. People are astonishingly different in what they can tolerate and how they respond. I suppose, with the right people, and the right team dynamics it can be OK. So true. I've had great managers that had great rapport with the team and everyone was tight knit enough that the manager could stand in the hall and say "hey, come…