Yes! The #1 determining factor of my productivity and contribution across my career has been my boss, and quality of relationship with boss. Don't waste your precious time trying to please assholes.
I don't know if that's universally true. Some of my best work has been under tyrants. I think as long as we have shared expectations and the "tyrant" genuinely believes in the success of the project, I do not think you should always avoid working with them. Life priorities always change and obviously you should be careful of burnout, but if you have the bandwidth to work on a project with them in your life, I don't think you should avoid it just because.
You might be co-dependent. You see it often with narcissists that need their crowds of admirers, and co-dependents that need to admire somebody. It doesn't work for most people though.
I've probably had more problems trying to work with bosses who were couldn't make decisions at all and avoided all confrontation and let the project slip to the level of the lower common denominator. By any reasonable definition, Linus Torvalds is a "tyrant", and the resulting quality of linux speaks for itself.
All successful projects of sufficient size probably need a tyrant at the top someplace who can and will make final decisions and enforce them, otherwise everything falls apart in conflicting requirements and bike-shedding.
Ahh, you might reply, but these are "toxic" tyrants, a phrase this article never bothers to define, allowing everyone to just project their own vision of a bad boss onto it.
Linus Torvalds might be behaving in a tyrannic way, but I think everyone would agree that he does it to enforce the philosophy and goals of the project and drive it long term, which is fine.
I think the "toxic" tyrant has an agenda unrelated to the company performance, stemming from their lack of self confidence mixed with a lack of empathy. They overcompensate by seeking praise from those they perceive as weak, and sabotage those they see as treats.
When I find someone a bit aggressive or overbearing professionally, I try to observe how they behave outside of their job. If they're moderate and respectful, they are usually just very focused people, and probably good allies with the proper boundaries and communication.
If the behavior happens outside work as well, I'll just assume they're a lost cause and kill them with neutrality. Never let them bother me but never give them credit either, be extra zealous when they send me on a wild goose chase, until they get bored and latch onto someone else. Oh and raise my eyebrows before agreeing with them.
Your post seems to be a "I have lived this" version of the quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw:
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to
adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
>By any reasonable definition, Linus Torvalds is a "tyrant"
I don't think writing colorful rants at core committers who unapologetically do the one thing he tells them not to - break userspace - really qualifies him as a tyrant.
I'd honestly love a boss who only blows up over things he's warned me about many times and are under my control.
Mostly true, but techs can over-estimate how much choice many people have. My ex wife was horribly bullied at work, and lived with it because she was early-career in an academic field she loved but where jobs were scarce. She won out through dogged and dignified persistence, and became respected by all (including the erstwhile bullies).
She's a highly intelligent and credentialled professional and unless she wanted to throw away years of work, did not have a realistic option not to work with tyrants. Millions less gifted and lucky than her have less choice still. Life's also too short to go homeless or hungry for long.
It's also -- for the very majority of people -- way too damn short to simply cut one's self off from salary and (don't forget, please), health insurance. Especially when your industry suffers from the illusion that "all the good people have high-paying jobs they love, that you could never possibly woo them away from", and hence "if you don't have a job already, what the fuck is wrong with you? You must really, really suck." Especially when one has family and/or other dependents to support.
I had a colleague that ended up in a mental hospital for a while after their boss bullied them for a few years and flashed colleague's major achievements to own bosses as their own. The colleague didn't like their boss for sure. I guess that might be one hint to "tyrant boss"? Would that work for you?
His is truly the only way, if he owns the company he will soon lose business if more people do this and if he's middle management then his bosses will see where the problem is
What if you really like your job? What if you have invested years in building your product and want to keep working on it? What if you have lots of stock options that are vesting in the coming years?
There are lots of reasons why people would want to stay at a job.
Also, you are going to run into assholes in all walks of life. Learning to deal with them gives you options and puts you in control. If you lack that ability then your only option is to walk away.
This is kind of a zero sum game though, someone else will take your place under the tyrant.
Yes some of us are lucky and work remote, have a large portfolio of nice enough clients, and not have to deal with corporate overlords. Let's be real though, this is a very small portion of the workforce.
Not to mention that if you go through the trouble of changing, which is bothersome for many practical reasons, you won't be able to tell if it is better or worse before you've been working for a while, which is a pretty discouraging for risk averse people.
In my case. Been trying to! Even with a good resume, if you have other constraints like geography, it can take a long time to find another position. Like, going on 6 months now. And with dependents, you need the income until you have another option. And, sure, I thought about quitting and pulling taps at the pub for a while, but that would make it likely harder to go back to my field of work. So, you suck it up, and navigate the quagmire of a dysfunctional workplace and spend your spare time networking and looking for other opportunities.
In my experience an abusive boss-employee relationship is made of two halves;
a) An abusive boss
b) A subject who accepts the abuse
So what are your options if you don't accept the abuse. Most people say "Quit". In my experience it's far more effective to deal with the abuse directly so that the abuser knows that you're not willing to accept their behaviour.
Of course there's a fear of being fired, but IMO that tends to be over-estimated. Getting you fired in many companies is not an easy process. Your typical tyrant doesn't want to make work for themselves and like most bullies if you show resistance, they'll leave you alone.
How you show resistance really varies - YMMV. For example if they make fun of you in public, making fun of them back _immediately_ is pretty effective - even if you're not funny showing you're willing to be loud in a group is the point. Calm one-on-one feedback is probably the best approach e.g. "I understand you might be under a lot of pressure at the moment but I don't like how you spoke to me this morning. I found it rude / aggressive / etc. and it makes me think about what my next steps are if this should continue". Local legal situations might mean you want to do that together with HR although the moment you involve HR, you've already escalated...
And of course you need to have the courage to act, but once you make the first step, it all gets easier. Life's too short.
My abusive boss was my CEO, who I reported to directly.
I attempted to deal with the abuse directly, after appeasing for a while. I just couldn't feel good being treated the way I was - CEO was passive-aggressive to the extreme and treats every other than herself like they're idiots.
Anyway, two days after politely and diplomatically attempting to stand up for myself, I was fired.
In the future, if you’re in the states, make sure you file a complaint with your state’s labor board when this happens. It costs you nothing, and the abusive behavior becomes public record.
Sadly many people behave like that in positions of power, frequently because they are ill equipped to handle the pressure and responsibility. The root cause here is we need to better educate those leading others.
How do you feel about it in retrospect? Do you regret the outcome? If so why?
I'm actually happy to be out of the situation. It wasn't good for me, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to hopefully move on to something better. On the other hand, I'm pretty angry about how it went down. I moved my family 900 miles, and sold my house, to take this job, and was sacked over something extremely trivial, in a casual manner. The whole thing is a massive inconvenience to me and I can't fathom what goes through someone's head when they treat others this way.
Something I think the article misses to point out are the cliques that form with the groups who appear to execute well under the tyrant vs the groups who are sabotaged. The colleagues who feel sabotaged become resentful and then make it harder for things to get done. Then depending on the office culture, this can spiral into a toxic mess where everyone goes behind everyone's back to get stuff done and then no one gets anything done.
Indeed, it can be very much worse than the present article even imagines. I’ve seen incompetent, tyrannical managers scape goat and fire developers because the teams failed to make releases. Never mind the mountains of technical debt, lack of tests or even the most basic documentation that made even the most trivial changes into bug fests.
yes. really good point. I've seen that happen to a minor degree. I'd start by carefully documenting everything that's agreed and changed and then raising to issue to senior management on both teams so they can sit down and discuss it. Worse case you also flag this to HR and during the 360 review process but there's only so much you can do ....
How about surviving toxic tyrant websites? Gray-on-gray text, popup overlays when you scroll far enough, random redirects when you click away the overlay... WebExtension NoScript, you can't come fast enough.
Can we all agree that choosing a photo of Kevin Spacey when talking about bad bosses is in really bad taste at this point in time? I get the House of Cards reference, but...
I dont agree that choosing a photo of him is in bad taste. What I disagree with is choosing a House of Cards reference though; he played a memorable (IMO) tyrant boss in Horrible Bosses.
One thing I haven't figured out is how to deal with such a person who shifts expectations, even with good documentation.
1) Have meeting where you establish the walls should be painted this specific shade of blue.
2) Document this in an email summarizing the meeting and the todos
3) Start painting the walls blue, maybe even finish
4) Toxic Boss comes back and wonders why the walls aren't green. Apparently, they had been looking at the color swatches while sitting under a red tanning light, and expected for you to know what they meant.
5) Go back and paint the walls green.
6) The toxic boss now looks at them and wonders why they aren't red. And you need to paint the ceiling black, because they had a meeting with a potential client at a trade show, and black ceilings are the new hot thing. Clearly, you can fit all of this painting, and repainting, into the original timeline (despite your protestations), because the toxic boss told the client you'll be shipping it by date.
No amount of documentation works here. When you point out to the toxic boss your original agreement, they look puzzled at you, wondering why you aren't team player, and why you aren't listening to customer needs enough. There's another team at work who paints signs, and they are fine with daily changes.
You talk to the toxic boss about making a process for iterating on this and documenting expectations better, but then they say you're too rigid and process will slow things down- they are an idea person, and just like thinking about colors, not the details.
That's a great example. One solution here might be to find an intermediary who works well / gets along with the Toxic boss and involve them in process somehow. You might just go to them for advice and try to understand how they they work with the person and what process has worked well for them. Another one would be to try and meet with your Toxic boss outside the office in a more neutral setting where you can have an open and honest conversation about what's going on. What I've found is people behave and open up differently outside of an office setting. You could also discuss your problem with other folks who work for this person and see if they are coming up against the same problem. If they are, then there are clearer grounds for you all to bring the problem to someone else to try and present it objectively coming 360 review time.
61 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 69.3 ms ] threadAll successful projects of sufficient size probably need a tyrant at the top someplace who can and will make final decisions and enforce them, otherwise everything falls apart in conflicting requirements and bike-shedding.
Ahh, you might reply, but these are "toxic" tyrants, a phrase this article never bothers to define, allowing everyone to just project their own vision of a bad boss onto it.
I think the "toxic" tyrant has an agenda unrelated to the company performance, stemming from their lack of self confidence mixed with a lack of empathy. They overcompensate by seeking praise from those they perceive as weak, and sabotage those they see as treats.
When I find someone a bit aggressive or overbearing professionally, I try to observe how they behave outside of their job. If they're moderate and respectful, they are usually just very focused people, and probably good allies with the proper boundaries and communication.
If the behavior happens outside work as well, I'll just assume they're a lost cause and kill them with neutrality. Never let them bother me but never give them credit either, be extra zealous when they send me on a wild goose chase, until they get bored and latch onto someone else. Oh and raise my eyebrows before agreeing with them.
I don't think writing colorful rants at core committers who unapologetically do the one thing he tells them not to - break userspace - really qualifies him as a tyrant.
I'd honestly love a boss who only blows up over things he's warned me about many times and are under my control.
She's a highly intelligent and credentialled professional and unless she wanted to throw away years of work, did not have a realistic option not to work with tyrants. Millions less gifted and lucky than her have less choice still. Life's also too short to go homeless or hungry for long.
It's also -- for the very majority of people -- way too damn short to simply cut one's self off from salary and (don't forget, please), health insurance. Especially when your industry suffers from the illusion that "all the good people have high-paying jobs they love, that you could never possibly woo them away from", and hence "if you don't have a job already, what the fuck is wrong with you? You must really, really suck." Especially when one has family and/or other dependents to support.
You know, stuff like that.
1. A cruel and oppressive ruler.
1.1 A person exercising power or control in a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary way.
1.2 (especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized absolute power without legal right.
There are lots of reasons why people would want to stay at a job.
Also, you are going to run into assholes in all walks of life. Learning to deal with them gives you options and puts you in control. If you lack that ability then your only option is to walk away.
Yes some of us are lucky and work remote, have a large portfolio of nice enough clients, and not have to deal with corporate overlords. Let's be real though, this is a very small portion of the workforce.
Not to mention that if you go through the trouble of changing, which is bothersome for many practical reasons, you won't be able to tell if it is better or worse before you've been working for a while, which is a pretty discouraging for risk averse people.
But when one is highly skilled, one does not simply "just quit and get another job".
Er.. so you want me to do his job too? I can give him options if he mature enough to take them and not blame me for then later
A lot of points in this post are about appeasing toxic behavior and working with difficult bosses. Why? Appeasing toxicity only increases toxicity.
In my experience an abusive boss-employee relationship is made of two halves;
a) An abusive boss
b) A subject who accepts the abuse
So what are your options if you don't accept the abuse. Most people say "Quit". In my experience it's far more effective to deal with the abuse directly so that the abuser knows that you're not willing to accept their behaviour.
Of course there's a fear of being fired, but IMO that tends to be over-estimated. Getting you fired in many companies is not an easy process. Your typical tyrant doesn't want to make work for themselves and like most bullies if you show resistance, they'll leave you alone.
How you show resistance really varies - YMMV. For example if they make fun of you in public, making fun of them back _immediately_ is pretty effective - even if you're not funny showing you're willing to be loud in a group is the point. Calm one-on-one feedback is probably the best approach e.g. "I understand you might be under a lot of pressure at the moment but I don't like how you spoke to me this morning. I found it rude / aggressive / etc. and it makes me think about what my next steps are if this should continue". Local legal situations might mean you want to do that together with HR although the moment you involve HR, you've already escalated...
And of course you need to have the courage to act, but once you make the first step, it all gets easier. Life's too short.
I attempted to deal with the abuse directly, after appeasing for a while. I just couldn't feel good being treated the way I was - CEO was passive-aggressive to the extreme and treats every other than herself like they're idiots.
Anyway, two days after politely and diplomatically attempting to stand up for myself, I was fired.
How do you feel about it in retrospect? Do you regret the outcome? If so why?
1) Have meeting where you establish the walls should be painted this specific shade of blue. 2) Document this in an email summarizing the meeting and the todos 3) Start painting the walls blue, maybe even finish 4) Toxic Boss comes back and wonders why the walls aren't green. Apparently, they had been looking at the color swatches while sitting under a red tanning light, and expected for you to know what they meant. 5) Go back and paint the walls green. 6) The toxic boss now looks at them and wonders why they aren't red. And you need to paint the ceiling black, because they had a meeting with a potential client at a trade show, and black ceilings are the new hot thing. Clearly, you can fit all of this painting, and repainting, into the original timeline (despite your protestations), because the toxic boss told the client you'll be shipping it by date.
No amount of documentation works here. When you point out to the toxic boss your original agreement, they look puzzled at you, wondering why you aren't team player, and why you aren't listening to customer needs enough. There's another team at work who paints signs, and they are fine with daily changes.
You talk to the toxic boss about making a process for iterating on this and documenting expectations better, but then they say you're too rigid and process will slow things down- they are an idea person, and just like thinking about colors, not the details.