Managers Are Not Evil, Pt. 1
“What, exactly, do you do?”
Slack.
Jawed.
Amazement.
This question is coming from someone I trust. A trusted employee who has been working in my group at the start-up for years. This guy always tells me the straight dope and now he’s asking me what I do with my day because he honestly does not know.
Let’s recap my day. I got to work just after 8am. After my usual thirty minutes of scrubbing and answering email, I did a quick check of tech news… taking a quick pulse of the planet… and then it’s off to my first meeting. It’s my bosses staff and it runs for almost two hours as usual. After that meeting, I spend 30 minutes digesting notes from that meeting into actual tasks for myself and the team while also tidying the corporate news I received for my staff meeting.
Lunch. I’m eating with the web applications team today. It’s thirty plus minutes and then I’m back for bug database scrubbing… a daily thirty minute task before a cross-functional meeting that turned ugly… needed someone to do something and they are incapable of doing it and that means I’m screwed. After that sixty minute debacle, I’ve got an hour and half of one-on-ones. It’s during this time that I am asked the lamest question ever,
“What, exactly, do you do?”
My first reaction to this question is the wrong one. I want to leap over the table, grab my friend by the shoulders, shake him, and yell, “WHILE YOU WERE USELESSLY STARING AT THAT ONE BUG THIS MORNING I WAS KEEPING THIS ORGANIZATION MOVING PAL.” My second reaction is to take a deep breath, so I do.
This basic “what-do-you-do” disconnect between employee and managers is at the heart of why folks don’t trust their managers or find them to be evil. I’ll explain why in great detail in my next piece, but first, I want more content.
Today’s question is, who is the worst person you worked for? And why? I’m looking for sour grapes, I’m looking for irrational rants, I want to hear about that manager experience that STILL MAKES YOU YELL.
Like the Remotely piece, I’m hoping the comments are far more interesting than the question.
