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BigHead posted:Anyone else work with people who are really, really good at their job, but only so long as they are specifically micromanaged and pointed in the exact direction they need to be pointed? I spent 10 years in government funded research and what you describe sounds exactly like a lot of very specialized post-docs/PhDs. Not all of them, but a large portion.
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Apr 17, 2023 17:45
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Cthulu Carl posted:Not an e-stop, but because we all face the walls, none of us see if someone is at our counter area, so we put out a big, red, candy-like button that plays Super Mario music to get our attention. There's at least three signs saying to push the button. There's a gas station down the block from my place that was converted from an old repair garage, so there's no "store" to go in, just a booth with a window and sliding drawer to throw in your card or grab cigarettes from. The buzzer to get the persons attention is broken. There is a very large sign that says as such, and to either knock on the window or just say "hello" for service. The number of times I've seen people just stand there like idiots...if I had a quarter for every time, I'm at least on my second free coffee from Starbucks.
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Apr 17, 2023 17:48
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zedprime posted:There's a cottage industry making estop/chunky mushroom buttons that you can hook up by USB to your computer and use to control things like shutting down or playing a fart sound effect. Also plenty of info on the internet of how to get one and wire it to USB and find/write some simple drivers for. I can hook up the largest knife switch I can find to my computer? I must hook up the largest knife switch I can find to my computer.
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Apr 17, 2023 18:01
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BigHead posted:Anyone else work with people who are really, really good at their job, but only so long as they are specifically micromanaged and pointed in the exact direction they need to be pointed? In my industry that's just called being bad at your job. My performance matrix codes "achieved the objective, but required excessive supervision" as Needs Improvement.
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Apr 17, 2023 18:57
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"Gee what color do I make the spreadsheet" expects more, excessive coaching input "I don't feel like learning how to input expenses so you're going to give me a coordinator or junior who can do it for me or else you're going to put up with weaponized incompetence as I completely gently caress them up on the reg" management potential, schedule leadership classes and encourage MBA to fail upwards before too much lost productivity
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Apr 17, 2023 19:42
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COPE 27 posted:In my industry that's just called being bad at your job. My performance matrix codes "achieved the objective, but required excessive supervision" as Needs Improvement.  but basically for all of Denmark. If you cannot work without direct supervision you basically can't work in a professional setting except maybe entry level positions.
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Apr 17, 2023 19:50
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BigHead posted:Anyone else work with people who are really, really good at their job, but only so long as they are specifically micromanaged and pointed in the exact direction they need to be pointed? I work in a weird niche industry so not only are these people good at their job, they're some of the top experts in the world at this particular weird little niche. And yet, they have no capacity to take independent control over their lives to complete tasks. I remember taking a sort of leadership test in college that would spit out some general work styles that went along with this. Some people are just built to be assembly-line type workers, some are excellent and happy as can be being told where to jump and how high as an individual contributor and of course there are your leaders. I tested more along those of an individual contributor which I do feel is a more natural state for me. My creativity is poo poo and I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel on anything since it's likely been done prior and better than myself. Where did I end up? I'm a director now because I like money and being in leadership isn't THAT hard.
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Apr 17, 2023 20:01
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My Wonder Woman personality test results were pinned completely opposed to director even in the compensated" results which were supposed to represent how I respond to stressful or new situations. It was part of a big training event and the day after we discussed what the Wonder Woman personality test was we started a group project. I unilaterally became the group leader because no one else spoke up and I hate chaos and have not nearly enough filter on not applying myself to stupid poo poo and we kicked the other groups rear end. I spend most of my time now trying not to Peter principle myself any higher not because of eventual incompetence (although my nitty gritty project management is horrendous) but because Wonder Woman is actually correct and I do hate it.
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Apr 17, 2023 20:33
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armpit_enjoyer posted:I can hook up the largest knife switch I can find to my computer? Bonus points for also hooking it to a Tesla coil so that it makes a large spark when you flip it.
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Apr 17, 2023 20:45
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Thread discovering why managers exist as a job title in realtime, lol A lot of people are just really bad at getting poo poo together, no matter how smart they are. There's this expectation that people have to get good at every aspect of live to exist, but the reality is we all help each other with the things we are bad at. No man is an island, and frankly the more poo poo they got going on in their head, then usually the more helping they need with the 'basics'. No one is actually expected to do everything, but bosses pressure people to do everything to see what they can do, test their boundaries, and then assign people with compementary strengths to take on the poo poo that needs helping.
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Apr 17, 2023 20:52
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BigHead posted:Anyone else work with people who are really, really good at their job, but only so long as they are specifically micromanaged and pointed in the exact direction they need to be pointed? I work in a weird niche industry so not only are these people good at their job, they're some of the top experts in the world at this particular weird little niche. And yet, they have no capacity to take independent control over their lives to complete tasks. Oh good god I wish my people would actually ask me about this tuff instead of just ... not doing anything about it. Like how hard is it to spot a problem and do something about it? Very hard. basically impossible. Noone can address problems. Once something goes wrong it's just wrong forever. Improvment is a pipe dream. I think it's all learned helplessness.
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Apr 17, 2023 20:54
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Reading between the lines, as an outsider who could be totally wrong: it's from having done it 'wrong' often enough with little enough instruction that they're now not willing to take action without explicit information first, so they don't perceive their time as wasted, and also so they won't be perceived as doing it 'wrong'. I know people say that you should just take a swing and your boss can correct it, but we also live in a capitalist world where mistakes are tallied up against you as your worth as a worker. You want to use that 'mistake' capital wisely and not be perceived as messing up on the most mundane of tasks, but unfortunately this then sets up another dysfunctional dynamic of being paralyzed and unable to start the tasks without oversight. It's behavior I usually see in folks who've been yanked around by an unclear boss and have lost confidence in their ability to figure out what is needed, since they basically got work gaslit. StrangersInTheNight fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 17, 2023 21:03
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Cthulu Carl posted:Not an e-stop, but because we all face the walls, none of us see if someone is at our counter area, so we put out a big, red, candy-like button that plays Super Mario music to get our attention. There's at least three signs saying to push the button. What do you need is a scanner hooked up to a speaker so when someone says "before you ask, yes you do need to push the button". That'll take care of the first 25% and presumably the other 75% as well. make it extra annoying and repeat itself every five seconds until they push the button.
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Apr 17, 2023 21:32
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StrangersInTheNight posted:Reading between the lines, as an outsider who could be totally wrong: it's from having done it 'wrong' often enough with little enough instruction that they're now not willing to take action without explicit information first, so they don't perceive their time as wasted, and also so they won't be perceived as doing it 'wrong'. At weekly meetings, I explicitly say poo poo like: 'I don't care if you make a mistake. I don't care if things go wrong. I do care if you make a mistake and things go wrong, and you ignore it.' 'Don't ignore problems; bring them to me.' 'Identify problems, come up with solutions and then come to me for approval before implementing so if anything goes wrong, it's on my head' 'I expect frequent feedback to approve things so everyone is on task and there are no surprises.' 'Check-in with me before making any big decisions I even made a flowchart with multiple 'check-in for approval before proceeding' steps. It's like screaming into the void. I don't have time to micromanage people and they loving hate being micromanaged. But when I check in on them it's obvious they're just doing whatever they feel is a good idea at the time without a real plan or coordinating their other deadlines.
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Apr 17, 2023 21:38
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You can explicitly say poo poo like that, but there is still an implicit part. And what a lot of managers actually mean are: "I don't care if you make a mistake. I will use it to justify your bonus but I don't care." "Don't ignore problems; bring them to me so that I can tell you to just solve it yourself." "Identify problems, come up with solutions and then come to me for approval so that I can deny it for some arbitrary reason and make you redo everything around that arbitrary reason." "Check-in with me before making any big decisions so that I can sit on it for so long that the decision was made for you to fight a fire rather than prevent one." Good bosses and lovely bosses will both tell you they got your back.
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Apr 17, 2023 22:31
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Salami Surgeon posted:You can explicitly say poo poo like that, but there is still an implicit part. And what a lot of managers actually mean are: So how do you tell the difference between a good boss and a lovely boss?
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Apr 17, 2023 22:55
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Yesterday it felt like my boss was holding our team hostage. He was in a foul mood, marching up to desks randomly and barking orders or demanding answers to arbitrary things - he would then walk away halfway through the response! The whole team was exchanging looks like wtf do we do. Twice I grabbed him away from his desk/others and asked if he was okay (I thought maybe he was stressed about something). First time he walked around me without eye contact and told me he was "just thinking about things". Second time he did a fake smile and said he was having a busy day. gently caress I hate it here lol
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Apr 17, 2023 22:58
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Outrail posted:So how do you tell the difference between a good boss and a lovely boss? I don't
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Apr 17, 2023 23:10
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DeeplyConcerned posted:What do you need is a scanner hooked up to a speaker so when someone says "before you ask, yes you do need to push the button". That'll take care of the first 25% and presumably the other 75% as well. make it extra annoying and repeat itself every five seconds until they push the button. Oh, if they walk up and try to use psychic pressure to let us know they're there, we have a solution - we just ignore them until we absolutely have to look in that direction.
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Apr 18, 2023 00:26
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StrangersInTheNight posted:It's behavior I usually see in folks who've been yanked around by an unclear boss and have lost confidence in their ability to figure out what is needed, since they basically got work gaslit. Ha, exactly one of the higher up managers here loves gaslighting. You're magic for sussing that out.
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Apr 18, 2023 01:16
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Outrail posted:So how do you tell the difference between a good boss and a lovely boss? Direct experience with them. Anything else can be misleading. With good bosses, I can go literal months with nothing more than (task assignment) (task completion) notifications. With bad bosses I want that poo poo fully specified in writing for when they inevitably try to hang me out to dry for one of their poor decisions. Related to that, I guess one way to detect a bad boss is "they expect you to put stuff in writing, but they won't". Very clear red flag.
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Apr 18, 2023 01:54
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Salami Surgeon posted:I don't Spotted the poo poo employee Atopian posted:Direct experience with them. Anything else can be misleading. This is the dream
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Apr 18, 2023 01:54
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Well another frustrating day, got 3 chambers line down, 2 missing a shield and 1 missing a baratron. The wrinkle is the 1 has its shield and the other two have their baratrons. But we aren’t allowed to shift them around. It’s like the fox, duck, and grain riddle if the answer was “you don’t cross the river”
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Apr 18, 2023 03:57
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TaurusTorus posted:baratron I swear this was the name of one of my old DnD characters.
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Apr 18, 2023 05:00
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Outrail posted:This is the dream We do a lot of Kanban. I create far more cards for myself than my manager assigns me to. We're both really happy with the situation.
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Apr 18, 2023 05:37
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Atopian posted:Direct experience with them. Anything else can be misleading.
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Apr 18, 2023 12:10
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Cheesus posted:The warning signs I've experienced: Yea
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Apr 18, 2023 14:57
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Cheesus posted:The warning signs I've experienced: This is my current direct report but he also loves to compartimentalise/fragment important information by only telling it to selected colleagues instead of using our all-hands meetings.
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Apr 18, 2023 16:26
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The worst bosses gaslight you, shift blame, and deny reality.
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Apr 18, 2023 20:00
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My wife is going through the pains of having zero leadership support when dealing with a group that is giving her hell over anything. Just blatant disrespect and it’s mentally exhausting. They just spent months crafting careful responses on things and saying no to this and that and here’s why because of political reasons. Now it’s just give them everything they want, just say yes to everything but also you better stay under budget. The whole thing is hosed and her job is otherwise great with the exception of this group she has to deal with twice a year that makes her life hell.
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Apr 18, 2023 21:17
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Cheesus posted:The warning signs I've experienced: oh hey it's all of my former managers
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Apr 18, 2023 21:50
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champagne posting posted:oh hey it's all of my former managers Same.
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Apr 18, 2023 22:23
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My managerial red flag is when they have a baseball bat in their office "in case someone gets out of line"
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Apr 18, 2023 22:36
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I finally lost my poo poo about meetings not ending on time. Granted, it was in private conversations with fellow employees and not like, during a meeting with the VP or anything, but yeah. Why bother scheduling meetings at all if the host is going to be late and the meeting's going to go over time? Just have Slack huddles or impromptu Google Meets instead, for gently caress's sake.
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Apr 18, 2023 22:44
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Cthulu Carl posted:If we asked our firewall guy to do that, we'd probably get a lot of I'm almost certain we could replace most of our IT support people with chatgpt and we'd get the same result.
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Apr 18, 2023 22:56
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about our network then if we didn't walk away fast enough, probably like a 20 minute rant about NAFTA or the Chinese or how he keeps getting 'harassed' by 'wokes' at O'Charley's.
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Orvin posted:I vaguely remember hearing in a college electrical engineering course that one type of e-stop for a 3-phase motor effectively swaps two phases. I can’t imagine any part of the motor/wiring/machine likes that action. "Great news. I tested all the SawStops, they all work! See you tomorrow."
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Apr 18, 2023 23:02
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Chewbecca posted:The worst bosses gaslight you, shift blame, and deny reality. You forget they also pout and whine when you start resisting their bullshit and/or fixing their mistakes right in front of them. Two worst bosses I had: -Incompetent chef who refused to understand that there's no such thing as "medium well chicken". Doubly so when you're making bulk-made, pre-portioned health food for a chain of stores that sat on the shelf for up to 5 days before being purchased. Then there's no "medium well" of any kind of meat. Company refused to fire him since they were planning on closing the kitchen down anyways. -Refused to take any hint that I knew enough about Game of Thrones to not be interested in being compared favorably to any character because they were either decent human beings and guaranteed to die horribly (usually by betrayal) or horrible people who had a chance at still being alive. Yet he insisted until he said I reminded him of Hodor. "So the halfway decent human being who can only say his own name and STILL died horribly because as I said he was halfway decent?" He later was moved to another department where he hatched a scheme with 2 other managers to basically get extra productivity out of his workers by pissing them off. Worked right up until everyone just walked off mid-shift, throwing the entire warehouse into chaos. Dude wasn't even there that shift, he was out on bereavement, yet Amazon yanked his rear end back just to fire him because his actions had encouraged an entire department to basically strike and Amazon can't have that.
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Apr 18, 2023 23:02
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Cheesus posted:The warning signs I've experienced: Did you post my company's "Primary Uses For Slack" list?
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Apr 18, 2023 23:07
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Outrail posted:Spotted the poo poo employee poo poo posting aside, the best bosses I had were the ones that made it clear what my actual job function was and generally set me up for success, especially in ways I didn't understand at the time. Then I could use that to earn and spend political capital in my organization, in my company, even outside my company. The things that go on in your group don't matter, they don't help you move up and out. The worst bosses refuse to play that game, play it horribly, or play it against you, and that gets you hosed hard. And sometimes I can't even tell until it's too late to fix. If you don't understand who or what is influencing your employees to take a direction counter to what you've told them, that's a bad sign. Salami Surgeon fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Apr 19, 2023 00:35
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Salami Surgeon posted:poo poo posting aside, the best bosses I had were the ones that made it clear what my actual job function was and generally set me up for success, especially in ways I didn't understand at the time. Then I could use that to earn and spend political capital in my organization, in my company, even outside my company. The things that go on in your group don't matter, they don't help you move up and out. The worst bosses refuse to play that game, play it horribly, or play it against you, and that gets you hosed hard. And sometimes I can't even tell until it's too late to fix. One huge indicator of an effective manager is getting everyone who wants to moving up or sideways to fill needed positions. If the organization as a whole is effective, there should be no problem back-filling a position.
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Apr 19, 2023 01:57
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