Ask HN: What made your least favorite/most hated manager/supervisor/CEO so bad?

7 points by limonkufu 7 years ago | 8 comments

Inspired from reading similarly titled ASK HN post(about favorite managers). I wondered what bad behaviour/attitude your managers had/have.

dvanwag 7 years ago |

I can deal with bad management/leadership, which I'm sure all of us have experienced at one time or another. The law of averages dictates we will work for someone who sucks at some point in our careers.

Even worse than bad/toxic management to me is No management or leadership. The worse job I ever had involved managers who couldn't make even the simplest of decisions or provide even minute guidance. I worked as a high level project manager who executed on different projects across the organization. I would bring back facts and figures to support the objectives of the organization and usually have three to five recommendations for consideration just to be told "they would get back to me". Weeks would pass with no direction and my team would then be subject to abuse from other stakeholders on why we weren't doing our jobs.

If I tried to take initiative to keep the org moving I'd be hanged by our senior management, so it was a Catch 22 situation. Ultimately I made the decision that the best thing I could do was protect the members of the team by siloing our operations as much as possible while they struggled to do their jobs with as little outside interference as possible.

Bad managers can be mitigated by sometimes playing their game to you and your team's advantage, keeping certain actors at arms length, or "feeding the beast" to simply be left alone. No leadership is the worst because it's the equivalent of not just being on a rudderless ship lost at sea but with everyone on said ship sick and expected to build the rest of the ship after it's already left the dock.

[Update due to grammatical issue]

orcs 7 years ago |

Lack of backbone, cowardly backstabbing behaviour, condescending opinion of all the people he managed. He was a bully and oppressive. He was of the opinion he would progress if he disciplined someone so he was always trying to screw someone over.

On the flip side I'm now untouchable as far covering my own ass when it comes to these wankers.

jackgolding 7 years ago | |

First sentence is what I was going to write (bully but cowardly and backstabbing) but would add my manager was also entirely hands off and would cancel weeks of catch ups then complain when a deliverable didn't match their pedantic requirements.

justtopost 7 years ago |

20 to 100 person startup. CEO was 'brilliant', but never delegated, and was never there. Work stopped hapf the day as everyone in the office waited on him. An open secret affair with his office helper while his wife had a kid. Bankrupted a skyrocketing food service products company for his ego, after firing everyone competent around him as they became dissillusioned or called him out. He went from the most engauging gentleman to the most distant and feckless asshole. Ended up one of those guys who would explain why the company doesn't have enough money for critical infrastructure as he buys parts for his classic muscle car in another window.

Lesson: Don't be a jerk, even when you can 'afford' to. People got you where you are. Be thankful and continue to support those that support you.

matt_the_bass 7 years ago | |

Good use of feckless!

jackfraser 7 years ago |

Had a project manager who eventually became my director. The quick summary:

- Was focused on empire building, wanted lots of underlings to help prop him up into management, vs. actually getting his project done, to the extent where he actively blew out the scope and made requirements gathering take almost an entire year - for a simple IT ticketing system - just so he could hire a team of BAs

- Had different versions of the truth for every person he talked to, insisted on closed-door conversations with individuals, avoided ever bringing multiple people together, but consistently talked about people who weren't in the room in a disparaging way. No doubt he was disparaging me when I wasn't there.

- Gaslit multiple people to believe their experience/views (and we're talking about a big team experienced IT professionals) were useless, wrong, that they were out of touch, and that they should be worried about their jobs

- Conspired to get the existing director, who rightfully questioned all of this, fired, and succeeded, and then took his job, which he managed to have for six months before he was fired for incompetence (which is pretty hard to do in academia).

I hear he asked one of my former colleagues who was also a victim of his near-sociopathy to help him find a job not so long ago; he was told to go and f* himself.

RNeff 7 years ago |

They are never, ever wrong. Never.

They shoot the messenger. Any bad news is the fault of the person reporting the news. Result is no one tells him of any problems. Manager: "Will the software ship on time?", Programmer: "Yes, of course". Any other answer will result in yelling, screaming, and abuse.

Managers with huge bonuses tied to software ship dates, not software quality.

oldsklgdfth 7 years ago |

IMO the worst attribute a manager can have is low self-esteem.

I've seen it manifest as having a chip on their shoulder. This can be toxic. I've seen rational design discussions into relentless arguments where the conclusion is "let's agree to disagree".

I've also seen it manifest as a boss that does not have the respect of his team and people just kinda do their own thing because he is not willing to confront people and hold them accountable to their work.

I've also these two types work together and it makes for a very dramatic, toxic and down right unprofessional work environment.