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I have to assume you've never worked in IT since you mention "the office".
It's statistically much more likely that the person writing the most flawless code is NOT going to be the person who makes the best or even a good manager.
Quite the opposite.
The most valuable and difficult things to find in a manager are: leadership, people skills, judgement and effectiveness.
"Workers" are a dime a dozen the company management team should be creating a positive, productive work environment in the company.
Most are just envious of supervisors and need to validate themselves. I know because it used to be me...I'm not perfect and used to moan and get angry that my superiors were bumbling idiots. Had I focused my energy into other things, maybe I'd be better off today. I'm doing ok but can always do better.
I went on a trip with my mom when I was in my 20's and not making the living I thouht I should be. She paid for the trip and we rented a car. Big Ford Explorer. This thing was amazing. I loved driving it and all the cool stuff it had and the leather seats! Man, I was super impressed with it. When my mom needled me about my work circumstances (which weren't great) and the fact that I wasn't close to affording that type of car, I shot back with saying that I hated the car and wouldn't get it if I could. And I was happy not to be able to afford it because it sucked gas, was bad for the environment, i didn't need it to feel good about myself, etc. It was pure BS. I was 20 something, I did want it, desperately. But I came off sounding as if it stunk and that people who drove those kinds of cars were morons. I was the moron.
Same kind of thing here. The OP isn't in mgmt and ridicules and insults those that are, all the while desperately wanting to be there. If he were more successful, he wouldn't be saying how bad it is to work in an office. Again, I know because I've been there. I confronted my own feelings of inadequacy and dealt with them. I'm a happier and more satisfied person now that I know a little more about what drives me and makes me feel the way I do. I don't expect the OP to be super successfull but he should try to understand why he doesn't enjoy working in an office. It's likely not working in an office that's the problem, it's just that he's not doing as well in that environment as he'd like. If he had a stable permanent position with benefits, a salary that sustained normal life and where he could save some $, etc. I have a feeling the complaints would dissipate.
Sorry about that! I guess this was your initial idea.
So far our points are being proven time and time again from those who have never been in this type of position and "think" they know what it takes to be a manager or how we all got there. I think some in management should share their stories of HOW they got there.
I was 28 when I became a manager. I started out in the company managing a small project of spacers (yes the little metal things) and no people. The company made a lot of money selling these to a company that produces aerospace windshields. All of the work was subcontracted to a third party and my job was to try and get the production under control. We had a lot of trouble with forecasting, planning, getting deliveries on time from the supplier, and quality control.
I started at square one and over time was able to get a handle on the forecasting by working closely with the customer. So first I began making sure materials were in house and ready to go to the supplier to meet forecasted deliveries. Once I had the ordering under control, I started tackling scheduling for the vendor as they had no scheduling system or quality system in place. Over the course of a year I worked closely with the supplier to develop a quality system and to put labor standards in place for their company and taught them how to schedule out their work. Working with them, we got their deliveries and production on track and vastly improved their quality control by helping them put a quality system in place.
We got to a point that my job became very easy. It took me all of thirty minutes per morning to do my job. I began asking management if I could take on some additional tasks. I was offered a spot as the production manager over the fabrication department. Did I know anything about fabricating windshield frames? Absolutely not. Could I manage it? Yes. So I took that position managing 23 employees and took the entire customer product line. I taught someone else how to manage the spacer portion and I became an overseer of that position while working on more difficult tasks.
At the end of the day I was responsible for maintaining the GM, production schedule, customer relationships and employee relationships. All the while listening to one or two people (similar to what I see here) say that I must love sitting at my desk doing absolutely nothing. Funny considering I was at work when they arrived, and at work when they went home making sure they still had a job to go to. It's not what you see that makes the manager, it's what you DON'T see.
G-fused, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's reverse discrimination based on a mix of paranoia, jealousy and a splash of being a young person with your head up your behind. We've all been there, but at least some of us were smart enough to look around at what we were really seeing and get it right. Once I figured out that the complainers weren't really achievers, I stopped aligning myself with them.
NLambert, I was also 28 when I got my first job as a manager, in a department where four of the twelve applied for my position. I felt bad for them until I saw what their work ethic was, and read their reviews from previous managers. Eventually I had to let most of that department go because they weren't fit to do the job they were doing, let alone moving into management.
Just to show that we all seem to work in different worlds, in mine "being a suck up" is the exact opposite path to moving up. Management here is FAR more concerned with you being RIGHT. And not right occasionally, right all the time. We spend our time telling internal and external clients how to do things, giving out bad information will end a career very quickly.
And if it takes telling your boss they are wrong, then that is not considered insubordination, that's actually what is expected. It can get ugly and you had better actually have the facts on your side, but in the end, that's what is expected. Having the right personality to tell someone above you they are wrong and have them appreciate it does take good "soft skills" but I wouldn't consider that sucking up.
If you give the boss bad info and they perpetuate it - they look bad when eventually corrected - and yep, they'll blame you for not sharing the proper knowledge. Sucking up, or being a "yes man!" will ruin you here. Some of the highest ranking people I know are there for one reason and one reason only - they are always right. Even if they have to ruffle feathers to prove it, that is what got them "ahead" of others, and no one ever seems to have any hard feelings even after difficult disagreements.
I feel for some of you that work in places where the "yes man" gets ahead. To me, that's gotta hurt the overall product the company is putting out. And it would be pretty soul sucking to watch, not sure I could hang around long in that environment.
Ive had some great bosses that rose up through the ranks because they were GOOD & they taught me ALOT because, A> They knew their &%$# & B> They knew how to work with their men. There have been other "bosses" that only became "bosses" because they were pet favorites & knew FAR less about the job than the men on the crews & were so lazy that they stunk. In the end, these "bosses" all meet the same fate. The crews will make their lives utter h#ll in every imaginable way & eventually, they either learn to play ball, quit or get tossed. Its no different than house training a dog. Being a boss suck*** in my line of work, is ultimately a death sentence.
Ive had some great bosses that rose up through the ranks because they were GOOD & they taught me ALOT because, A> They knew their &%$# & B> They knew how to work with their men. There have been other "bosses" that only became "bosses" because they were pet favorites & knew FAR less about the job than the men on the crews & were so lazy that they stunk. In the end, these "bosses" all meet the same fate. The crews will make their lives utter h#ll in every imaginable way & eventually, they either learn to play ball, quit or get tossed. Its no different than house training a dog. Being a boss suck*** in my line of work, is ultimately a death sentence.
I had a boss for a short time that knew nothing about our department or the other department that he was over and made no secret of the fact that he didn't want to know anything about either department. The people that knew him before said he was a good normal employee, but his stupidity started to show when he became a teamlead and then he got worse as a supervisor. This guy did eventually get fired, but it wasn't because he was a bad boss, even though he should have been if you ask me. It's because one department would start at 10pm and ours would start at 11pm. Each of us would have a start-up meeting, but this boss would show up at 10:30 so the 10pm people wouldn't get information passed on to them in their meeting. Then, on top of that, he would still leave at 6 or a few minutes after like he showed up at 10, which he never did. He showed up in time for the 10pm meeting maybe 3 times in 8 months. I know this because I would usually show up to work about that time and he would often be walking in when I walked in or while I was sitting in the cafeteria and he would have his lunch with him, which implied to me that he hadn't already been there.
The final straw for this supervisor was when the Warehouse Director and the VP of Operations showed up one night and he missed the 10pm meeting. I was there early that night for OT so I was in their meeting and the VP asked where the boss was and the teamlead said he'd be there about 10:30 like he always is. The Warehouse Director asked how long this has been going on and the teamlead said ever since he became supervisor. So when 10:30 came that night and the boss walked in, the director and the VP were sitting in his office waiting on him. They walked him out about an hour later and I haven't seen him since. If he would have just shown up on time, he would still be there because the company didn't care if he was a bad boss as long as they didn't have to hear complaints about him.
I'm still amazed at the assumptions people make about management based solely on what they see and the office gossip. Management absolutely cares about how managers are doing because that affects the bottom line of the company. Bad leaders make bad decisions, and bad decisions make the company suffer. Management is responsible for ensuring each department in the company runs to the best of its abilities. Otherwise, their job is up for grabs. When companies stop making this a priority, the company fails.
Every manager has a duty to not only keep the company afloat, but also to keep your jobs. While you may disagree with the manager's methodology, if you have a job and the manager has theirs, then they're doing something right. I can't tell you how many nights I lay awake trying to work out some budget issues caused by a customer so that I never had to tell any employee that their job was going to end. Did employees see this? NO. My responsibility was to keep them employed and keep them on track and work these issues on the sideline. They didn't need the stress of worrying about their job. That was my job to shoulder it. Eventually the issues were worked out after much conversation with the customer and not many ouside of management were any wiser.
Yet I still used to overhear comments from 1-2 problem individuals that I looked like I spent too much time staring at a monitor and not working. Had I shown them that I was working on keeping them employed they may have quieted down. Although I doubt it because many had some of the same unjustified opinions I see here. I think many want to complain so they can be the "victim" and feel better about not putting in the effort to get where many of us have gone.
I even noted above that I got fired from a horrible manager, yet never dared group management into the category with him. Blanket statements like those are unfounded.
Maybe that's just your perception of things? Most people who don't get promoted think those that do are only getting promoted because of some reason other than the truth.
It may happen sometimes but I'm guessing it's rarer than you think. Those who complain are usually the one's stuck in a crappy job with little room for moving up due to their skills, experience, attitude, etc...
How about when you have to quietly correct the boss's errors??
I'm still amazed at the assumptions people make about management based solely on what they see and the office gossip. Management absolutely cares about how managers are doing because that affects the bottom line of the company. Bad leaders make bad decisions, and bad decisions make the company suffer. Management is responsible for ensuring each department in the company runs to the best of its abilities. Otherwise, their job is up for grabs. When companies stop making this a priority, the company fails.
Every manager has a duty to not only keep the company afloat, but also to keep your jobs. While you may disagree with the manager's methodology, if you have a job and the manager has theirs, then they're doing something right. I can't tell you how many nights I lay awake trying to work out some budget issues caused by a customer so that I never had to tell any employee that their job was going to end. Did employees see this? NO. My responsibility was to keep them employed and keep them on track and work these issues on the sideline. They didn't need the stress of worrying about their job. That was my job to shoulder it. Eventually the issues were worked out after much conversation with the customer and not many ouside of management were any wiser.
Yet I still used to overhear comments from 1-2 problem individuals that I looked like I spent too much time staring at a monitor and not working. Had I shown them that I was working on keeping them employed they may have quieted down. Although I doubt it because many had some of the same unjustified opinions I see here. I think many want to complain so they can be the "victim" and feel better about not putting in the effort to get where many of us have gone.
I even noted above that I got fired from a horrible manager, yet never dared group management into the category with him. Blanket statements like those are unfounded.
In the case of my bad supervisor, he would stare at the monitor and all he would do would hit F5 to see what how another department was doing. I'm in receiving so the stuff that I'm doing isn't in the system yet. He wouldn't send emails, he rarely passed along information that was emailed to him. In fact, there were at least 15 times where I had to go ask another supervisor on the shift something because my supervisor wouldn't follow up on anything. I asked him once about our Christmas schedule because we would often work Christmas even to avoid going in on Christmas night. He told me that I could ask HR about it myself. The other employee in my department wanted to know about working on a Saturday because it was being offered on the other shifts, but nothing was said to us about it by any supervisors. He told my coworker that he (the coworker) would have to call the 2nd shift supervisor the next day to see if he would be allowed to come in.
I agree that most supervisors are doing more than they appear to be doing, but that was totally not the case with the supervisor I had. He was an extremely nice person, but as a supervisor, he sucked. This guy once printed out the wrong report and had the employee take the time to verify everything on it and then when she pointed out that it was the wrong report, he wanted her to hurry up and fix everything that HE did. We were once supposed to take a survey about management. Most of the questions were about our immediate supervisor, but towards the end, there were a few about upper management. They decided on a day that we were all going to take the survey, but it was busy that day so they said people could stay over an hour and do the survey if they chose to do it. The survey itself was anonymous so the only proof of who did the survey was that certain people clocked out late that day. Our supervisor decided it wasn't important and never passed along the information to us that the survey was being done that day and that we would get overtime also. Now, had he passed along the information like he was supposed to, then I may have decided not to do it and not worried about the overtime either. Since he didn't take the time to do HIS job or he was trying to tell us what was important to us, then we complained and got to do the survey a couple of days later and I made sure to do the survey then and they saw nothing good about my boss. He went into the receiving office one night when I was in there making copies. A trucker came to the window and wanted to get unloaded. This guy was early, but he was the first truck on the schedule in the morning so if we had room, we should have been able to unload him. This supervisor, for whatever reason, believed that all truckers were just trying to sneak in anytime they wanted. I was going to just go ahead an unload the guy since we had room and like I said, he was the first truck on the schedule for the morning. My boss decided to start talking to the guy and was being rude to him telling him that he should plan his times better so he doesn't show up so early and then decided that he wasn't going to let me unload him, so instead the guy could wait. A few days later, during our meeting, the boss asks me and my coworker if we'd had any problems with truckers or if we had been rude to any of them. Of course, we both said no because we hadn't been. He said that he got a complaint from a trucker. The complaint was against him, but he was just looking for a way to nail us on it.
We would also have a board that would show our monthly production for the department and the department's accuracy. The year this guy became our supervisor, the department didn't make an error until June of that year. When I got my review in February the following year, he tried saying I made an error. Now, if you get hit with an error in my company, they document it and talk to you about it, mainly just to see if you know what you did wrong, not to punish you unless you make a bunch of them. So I asked him when I made this error and why wasn't I ever spoken to about it. He started looking and tried saying I made an error in March. I knew that was wrong so I argued it, but he wouldn't take the error off even after the first shift supervisor told him that there were no errors made in our department until June. Another time, I was processing and as part of the processing job, we were told to open up one case at random on each pallet. So I do that and everything inside matches up with what the outside of the case says and what my paperwork said. So I receive the product and the only discrepancy was that I had 2 pieces more than I was supposed to. I was supposed to have a partial case of 4 pieces, but I had 6 instead. It gets checked, staged, and put away and everything is ok. Once another department started pulling the product, they discovered that there were 3 layers, all on the bottom, on 6 different pallets that had the wrong product inside, but everything on the outside of the case showed it was the right product. So there was 162 cases of the wrong product of 1620 pieces of the wrong product. Everybody that looked at this product said it would have been impossible to avoid this error unless the procedure would have been to open up every case we got and that simply wasn't an efficient way to do it. Every single one of them also said it was a vendor error, not my error. My boss tried counting that as 162 errors against me (1 for each case that was wrong) and would then remind me not to make the same mistake every time it was my turn to process. How can I make the same mistake when it wasn't even my mistake to begin with?
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