Study Says 2 In 5 Bosses Lie 446
Freshly Exhumed writes to tell us about a Florida State University study of 700 employees indicating that nearly two of five bosses don't keep their word. The study will be published later this year. From the article: "The abusive boss has been well documented in movies ('Nine to Five'), television (Fox's 'My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss') and even the Internet. 'They say that employees don't leave their job or company, they leave their boss. We wanted to see if this is, in fact, true,' said Wayne Hochwarter, an associate professor of management in FSU's College of Business."
Re:grievance committees (Score:3, Interesting)
Not very scientific (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying there aren't bad bosses, but there are a LOT more bad employees than bad bosses, just because of the raw numbers. Given the bosses are just employees (duh, I hope), the rate of bad employees ought the be the same as the rate of bad bosses. If we assume that the average boss has an average of ten grunts, then we have ten bad employees for every bad boss.
So how many of these employees are bad-mouthing their boss because they're lazy idiots who expect a paycheck for as little work as possible and skewing the statistics? This study doesn't seem too interested in this question.
Decontructing the Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:grievance committees (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't look like much, but one day I brought one of my grip exercisers to a meeting. During the meeting (while this bozo was shooting his mouth off), I just sat there quietly, squeezing the handle, but I made sure it was visible to everyone. When the meeting let out, I intentionally left it lying on the table. A few witnesses told me that this guy picked it up and nearly busted his gut trying (unsuccessfully) to move it. After that, he quieted down quite a bit.
Re:grievance committees (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked somewhere where the managment took advantage of the REALLY terrible job market to basically say "this will be done ON our unrealistic schedule, without listening to your suggestions, or you can all find jobs elsewhere" (which they knew didn't exist). "If it takes weekends, evenings, it will get done, or you can find another job."
Halfway through the project, at a critical juncture, when they'd sign contracts that committed the company to delivery, an employee cracked and shouted at someone else. They fired him on the spot. Half the team looked at the job market, realised it had since become VERY VERY good, and more than half the team walked out.
Needless to say, managment were on the chopping block in a big way when the promised delivery date rolled around and there was no product. The businesses who had signed big deals for the project were demanding major price reductions or cancelling.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch.
Re:Lockheed Martin (Score:2, Interesting)
While I wouldn't generalize the whole company as that way, it's certainly true for some divisions of all military contractors.
The finest and worst managers I've ever had were former military officers. The finest was a former Air Force colonel (and fighter pilot), who was very able to translate his military leadership training into the civilian world, and he had a fiercely loyal set of employees.
The worst was a former Marine Major General, who for the life of him could not figure out his employees were NOT Marines. Whenever we had a "feedback" session, he became quite defensive. Now, any good executive knows that employees are going to come into those forums and gripe, you need to accept it and use it as valuable feedback.
Instead we'd get lectures from him on loyalty to the company and "taking it for the team". I'm sure our competitors loved it, because they'd usually swoop in shortly afterwards with the headhunters. "General Jake" never understood we could actually LEAVE his shitty organization, unlike the unfortunate Lance Corporals that were once under his command....
Re:grievance committees (Score:5, Interesting)
"I can't believe this shit..." Made you feel like you were a three-year-old. I was 18 at the time and I didn't know how to mentally disengage from him. I was the best employee ( the other long-term employees were adults with no education and just didn't care at all ). I did a good job; he told me I was his best employee. I wanted to do good, but when I screwed up, however minor, he would berate me like he did the others that worked there. I just took it like a bitch; while the other folks would get in heated arguments. I felt bad about myself. I had all kinds of stress responses -- headaches, muscle aches, etc. I developed GIRD (gastro-intestinal reflux disease) and the doctor prescribed me Nexium -- at 18 years old. So much for western medicine. The real answer was to leave the mentally and emotionally unhealthy environment. Which I did.
I think the reason that there is so much anti-depressant use these days is because, as our economy slowly swirls the drain, we have no mental health care industry to take care of people dealing with the fallout of not having enough resources to provide for themselves and their families. Having more opportunities to talk about our feelings would be good, but I think the real answer is more power to the individual in the workplace.
In pursuing my anthropology degree in college, we watched a video of a native healer in Uganda or somewhere. His patient was having general sickness such as tiredness, upset stomach, etc. The healer guy went into his trance and danced around wildly. The healer diagnosed the problem being with the man's father-in-law or something like that, and within minutes, the father-in-law was in the room, and they were having it out -- emotionally airing their grievances, arguing, and coming to a new agreement, all mediated by this crazy medicine man. The whole village was gathered around, watching, and I have no doubt that they would help enforce the new agreement.
It would be great if I could have sat down with my then-manager and explained what he was doing wrong. If he could learn to manage by also being nice. But no, my doctor had no authority to call him into the office, I had no authority as a kid to question how "The Real World" works, and, being the best manager in the district, the oil company had no incentive in getting him to change his ways. He continued emotionally abusing people, perpetuating burn-out and turnover. So the abusive, destructive environment continued.
In the US, do whatever BS management tells you or get fired. The rest of the department has been outsourced, so you have to do the jobs of 3 people. With unions on the wane, it is just a lowly individual against a vast corporation. The working class had their jobs outsourced to the 3rd world, and now it is happening to white collar jobs. All the while the media tells us that we can mitigate our unhappiness with new cars, alcohol, and bling. Terrorists attack us on our own soil, we are entering an endless war against a nebulous enemy called "Terror" and Bush says the best thing we can do is go shopping.
I realize a lot of slashdotters are well-educated and many of them have decent jobs. It seems to me that this is a child-like view of "Things are going well for me; if anyone else is having a problem, they are just not working hard enough." Well, the $#i+ seems to be hitting the fan with outsourcing and now the white-collar middle class is beginning to feel the effects of limitless corporate power. If left unchecked it will lead to virtual slavery and serfdom.
competant HR departments? Where? (Score:3, Interesting)
Never seen ONE.
They're the ones who hire the assholes in the first place.
A much better bet is a small company where the big cheese is the HR department. That way you only have one potential asshole to worry about.
Colonels better than generals (Score:4, Interesting)
Generals, on the other hand, deal with people in the abstract. If they address the workforce, it is to issue a few windy generalities about loyalty,patriotism and team spirit like the guy you describe. And, a terrible downer, they have to talk to politicians, which would make anybody cynical about human nature.
Colonels should be allowed to transfer their management expertise to civilian life. They are, in my experience, often remarkably reasonable and open minded. Generals should be allowed to retire with honours. (OK, there are rare exceptions like Eisenhower.) The Roman Empire started to go into the shit big time when retired generals started to become emperors, and I see no reason why the same should not be true of companies.
Re:Not very scientific (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't ask me no questions... (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, though - I've learned what questions I should expect real answers to, and have learned to recognize truths about them.
Other questions, though ("what's this meeting really about?", "where do you see us in six months from now?" etc) will tell you a lot about the boss. Some bosses will hem and haw about their answer (discard results - you got at best a watered-down version of reality there); some will smile and tell you something (trust not at all); the best will say, "that's something I can't tell you right now", and you have to respect that answer, because employees are often not privy to the real answers, and personally I'd rather be given this answer than a load of crap.
Re:grievance committees (Score:5, Interesting)
I make a poor manager, so I let others run the small business I founded. However, I do recruit guys and have a plan for getting the most out of our employees... I try to do it above-board, and let them know about my tricks during the interview.
In short, I try to hire super-bright guys right out of school, with salaries slightly lower than competing offers. I also explain that I expect them to work like heck, and eventually quit when other companies offer them salaries I can't match. In return, I promise they will have a chance to learn everything I know about EDA, and instead of fixing bugs in someone else's code for a living, they'll have a chance to make a major contribution. I tell them they'll have a chance to see their efforts directly help grow the company. I buy them laptops so they have a chance to work around the clock, both at home and at work.
In Silicon Valley, this strategy worked very well. It works fairly well in NC, but the laptops don't work out. Around here, people just don't seem to take work home with them. Partly, I blame the favorable ratio of girls-to-guys here relative to Silicon Valley, and the stronger focus on families. It's also just the culture. I also have difficulty getting the guys here emotionally committed the way that they do in Silicon Valley, which makes a big difference. I moved here partly figuring that since salaries are 25% lower, I could start the company with less capital. That was wrong... the guys in Silicon Valley make up for their pay with 25% more work.
I also have another way of motivating a programmer. If I look over their shoulder, and sneer at some code that wasn't done quite right, I find that's much more effective at getting them fired-up and coding right than trying to directly teach them how to do it right in the first place. Their own code is very personal to them, and they'll work like heck to make it meet my standards, but no one likes to simply be lectured about how to write code in the first place, especially if they're very bright and use to writing better code than their teachers.
Verbal abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only that, but in a horribly inappropriate place, too.
Was on a trade show floor, in our booth, and the boss was unhappy about how some code was implemented. He went ballistic on me and a coworker... RIGHT THERE IN OUR BOOTH!!!!
I kept my mouth shut, but was thinking, "You know, there's a time and a place for everything, and this is neither the time nor the place."
Re:Griefers in the workplace (Score:3, Interesting)
It certainly isn't. Meetings, paperwork, more meetings, sit downs with the employee, six months of an employee doing just enough to not piss you off enough to get written up again, etc. The whole process is almost Yossarian-esqe. But not one wants to even get the ball rolling. Firing isn't the first and only option, but it seems like you literally have to take a dump on the bosses desk in some places to get any kind of disciplinary action, and even then you'll probably just have to watch an OSHA video on hazardous materials in the workplace.
If a manager is constantly singling out one person, it may appear that they have some personal grudge. I think that is the real reason why they would send a whole team to training instead of one or two person. If you are in a management position and considering firing somebody, you need to have some data to back up your choice. Namely, be able to show that the employee in question was given all the same chances to correct themselves as you would give somebody else.
And that's bad part number two. You're not being "singled out" if you are a fuckup. You're a bad employee. Bad employees make more work for the other employees, but not directly more work for the boss. The boss tends to just shift work from where it doesn't get done to where it does. Correcting a bad employee's habits make more work for the boss, but not the other employees. If you're the boss, what do you do?
Job security is very important to people like me (software engineers), even though the market is really good right now. We like to feel valuable... part of that is feeling comes from knowing that we can screw up on rare occasion and get a fair chance to make it right, so to speak. Additionally there are things like severence that can complicate firing people without having a solid, legally valid reason. If there is a contract involved, it is pretty easy to imagine cases where it would be cheaper to keep a bad employee on staff while you make a good case for firing them.
Again, I'm not saying you can't make mistakes in your job. But if you've got a consistent pattern of just not fitting the job you're assigned, it's time for both parties to re-evaluate their positions, and a bad employee surly isn't going to do that on their own. I'm sure it seems cheaper to keep someone on staff, but the intangible costs have to hurt the bottom line as well. Office morale, production out of other staffers who are carrying workload of the bad employees. I think the sweet spot for keep vs. fire is a lot sooner than most managers want think it is, but you're right about the associated documentation.
Some times I think the mob has it right. You screw up, you get whacked. Everybody else sees that you screwed up and got whacked, so they are motivated to stay in line or get better. The guy giving you trouble is whacked and now out of the equation. Win win on all accounts. Of course, then you end up with a bunch of people scared to death not to screw up in the first place who lose focus on the job at hand, but you get the drift.
All this pertains to small tech firms or 50-100 employees, since that is where I have been employed. Things are probably very different at the warehouse...
I really would like to see how that boss would play in IT (my current field). My guess says he'd have a great department of happy, motivated employees. And an HR department actively looking to fire him while being surrounded by jealous managers. So it goes.
Re:Griefers in the workplace (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen it in my personal life. I've seen minorities in my personal life threaten to do this and other minorities actually do this. I've seen the stupid lengths companies have to go to document everything so they can, if need be, prove years later that there was no racial or sexist reason for a decision.
Some of this was at a company where 80% of the managers were females of variety races and nationalities. The next level had one white female, two black males, a hispanic male and one white male. The next level was a female executive class- no idea above that tho I know there were female high executives.
Despite this racially and sexually diverse staff they still had to document everything and carefully make everything provably gender and race neutral to the point where our annual reviews had nothing to do with our actual jobs or job performance. And they were *still* sued (by minorities but not by white males) when they fired people for trading sexy material via email.
That being said, I can't trust any site on either side of the racism issue. The sites on the right pretend it is over. Some sites on the left are so stupid as to say if half the positions are not black, it's racism (CLUE: 12% of americans are black.. less than 50% are white.. there's this small group called "hispanics" and then there are tons of other small groups like asians and native americans). The fact is that whites, blacks, asians, and hispanics are interbreeding in increasing numbers. I look forward to a day when the distinctions are pointless. In all likelyhood I'm native american, european, and a teensy bit black. Probably no asian blood. The fact that I'm tall probably had more impact on my life than any of those things. There will be a day when being black or hispanic means as much as being irish or catholic.