
Surviving a Tyrant at Work - madmork
https://www.madmork.com/single-post/2017/11/11/Surviving-a-Tyrant
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tibbon
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.

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tomjen3
Sounds like you need to go over the head of that boss, or find a place less
toxic.

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tibbon
No longer there thankfully. Toxic cultures often go straight to the top.

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jarjoura
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.

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marktangotango
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.

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mtkd
Life is too short to work with tyrants.

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DavidWoof
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.

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ht85
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.

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Waterluvian
Did I miss the part where a tyrant boss is defined or did that not happen? I'm
not exactly sure what that is. Just a boss you don't like?

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whathaschanged
Yes, which is why you see words like 'toxic' bandied about.

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vosper
Toxic is so over-used these days that I think it often means "anyone I don't
like at work".

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DonbunEf7
This site's JS made me very sad.

A lot of points in this post are about appeasing toxic behavior and working
with difficult bosses. Why? Appeasing toxicity only increases toxicity.

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harryf
This needs a massive up-voting.

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.

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potta_coffee
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.

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harryf
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?

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potta_coffee
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.

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rglovejoy
Why not just quit and get another job?

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amriksohata
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

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amriksohata
This is _

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amriksohata
Be a problem solver not a problem bringer.

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

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bitL
Ofc, why do you think that person is your boss?

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dredmorbius
Article is unreadable as presented, and fails to render in Outline.com,
Pocket, or a console HTML-only browser.

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madmork
Thanks for the feedback. I'll notify Wix.

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djrobstep
No mention of the actual best solution: unionizing

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madmork
Unionizing? In the United States under Donald Trump? in this day and age?
Somehow I don't see that happening ;)

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flyinghamster
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.

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purplezooey
Yeah really. I want my 5 minutes back.

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madmork
do you know how rich I'd be if I could do that? ;)

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karmel
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...

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praneshp
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.

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trgn
He also did in Swimming With Sharks!

