
Bullying bosses negatively impact employee performance and behavior - EndXA
https://www.pdx.edu/clas/news/bullying-bosses-negatively-impact-employee-performance-and-behavior-study-finds
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finaliteration
I just put in my notice at my current job (which I’ve only had for six months)
due to an abusive boss. I’ve always been great at my job, received a lot of
praise for my work, and generally felt motivated to give and do way more than
was asked. Not at this job. My manager’s behavior and attitude totally dragged
me down and I’ve been the least motivated I’ve ever been. I’ve been depressed
and stressed and basically shut down at work. Because of that, I’m going back
to an old job to work for a manager who was much more positive and supportive.

The adage about employees leaving managers absolutely applies in this
circumstance.

~~~
flashgordon
Hey mate. Can you share some of the behaviours (while not giving away any
personal details) as that would helpful for managers and employees in better
identifying it and with it?

~~~
finaliteration
Sure. Just a few things that stand out:

\- Constant criticism and nitpicking. Essentially I feel like nothing I do is
right and even the smallest mistakes get a private Teams message about how I
shouldn’t have done X, and then any apology from me is basically met with “Ok”
as a response rather than any sort of empathy. I don’t think I’ve ever felt
like small mistakes in a new position were never allowed.

\- Micromanaging and controlling. They referred to themselves as a “dictator”
on more that one occasion and had a “my way or the highway” attitude. I was
hired on at a senior level and essentially ended up with close to zero input
on design choices, so basically I stopped giving my opinion because I knew it
would always be met with being shut down.

\- I also felt singled out and was essentially told not to socialize in our
Teams channels. This cut me off from the team quite a bit and made me feel
totally isolated. I’d also try to suggest things globally so that knowledge
could be shared and discussed with everyone. Again, I’d get a follow up
message on Teams about how I shouldn’t be doing that and any suggestions like
that need to be discussed with the manager first.

That’s just a few things. Overall, it’s just a feeling of not having any
autonomy and any attempts to gain any being shut down. I want to say they
maybe feel threatened, but I don’t like to jump to that conclusion.

Maybe it’s not yelling and screaming, but it’s a more passive-aggressive type
of abuse and toxicity that in some ways digs deeper because it’s not easy to
pick up on immediately or as visible.

~~~
flashgordon
Damn that is toxic! Thanks for sharing mate. Glad you are getting out. Hope
you didn't have any Visa issues that would have made the stay unnecessarily
longer. I know how stressful it is to stick at a job just because you need to.
Hope your next role and manager are energizing and engaging!

~~~
finaliteration
Thanks! Fortunately I don’t have any Visa issues to deal with. Could have been
a nightmare otherwise.

I put my notice in last week and they terminated me early today because they
didn’t “have anything left for me to do” in the next few days, which I think
is code for “I’m pissed you’re leaving so I’m going to make it look like I’m
in control”.

------
Panino
> abusive supervision, which is becoming increasingly common in workplaces,
> said Liu-Qin Yang, the study's co-author

That abuse is _increasing_ might be less obvious than the conclusion in the
article link text. Good to have data on both of course.

My wife currently works for a place with a new senior director, a malevolently
toxic psychopath. Her direct supervisor's hair has gone from brown to grey in
only a couple months, and from conversation it sounds like yearly employee
turnover has increased from maybe 10% to around 90%.

This is impacting my wife's health and happiness, so I'm encouraging her not
to give customary 2 weeks notice after getting a new job. I think the
circumstances warrant it.

As an aside, Wim Hof Method breathing has made an _incredible_ difference for
both of us and I feel so fortunate to have come across it during this
challenging time. It makes stress management so much easier, while the nice
things are so much brighter and more joyful.

~~~
ams6110
Assuming you're in the US, and not under a contract that says otherwise, a
two-week (or any) notice is entirely a courtesy. And if you're not being
treated courteously at work, I don't see a good reason to be one-way about it.

~~~
pm90
I do see a reason: even if the boss may be abusive, not giving sufficient
notice would flag you down with HR so they may not ever hire you again. Maybe
not so important for smaller firms, but if this is a place she would like to
work again, might make things a little more hairy.

~~~
lovich
If you're quitting over bullying, _and_ you are concerned that HR would flag
you as unhireable for pointing that out to them, why would you care to work
there again?

You may be burning bridges but those bridges didn't take you anywhere you
wanted to go anyway.

~~~
z3t4
If one exec makes 90% of the people quit it will not take long until that exec
is fired or they have to close down.

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erentz
What is a workable solution to this problem? How does a company prevent it?

In the US if you're working under a bully, you can't really call them out
because they'll punish you, you can't go to HR because they'll defend the
bully and you'll be poisoned now in the eyes of other managers. You can't go
to your skip level, because they're permitting the behavior, and if they're
not then (too often) you'll be the lone voice saying this as everyone else is
afraid and just wants to keep their jobs. So the skip level just assumes
you're the problem. And so on.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
You keep a file with all the bullying (dates, emails, anyone else in the room,
etc). Collect all that then plan your exit. During your exit interview explain
the bullying and give them a copy of the file. Be polite and professional.

You’ll be burning bridges, but you don’t wanna go back.

~~~
moomin
Let’s be frank, quite often not only do HR know, they’ve been actively
protecting these people for years.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I realize that. What they may not know is how many people have left directly
because of that bad manager.

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expertentipp
Pity that it takes research to state the obvious. Pity that unless specific
well defined behaviour is explicitly penalized, bullies will continue with it
- with poker face and shrugging on any attempt to call out their abusive
practices.

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kram8
Who would need a study to state the obvious? In which Universe is a bullying
boss help a company? The only example that comes to my mind is when a
corporation wants to reduce workforce but doesn’t want to pay severance pay.
But this puts people’s health at risk and who in his right mind could want
this? I’m working for a SaaS company who takes very much care of its employees
and I’m asking myself if I am just naive...

~~~
sgillen
Even if something seems obvious to you it’s still best to verify it
rigorously.

From a cynical point of view a bullying boss might be able to extract more
working hours out of employees, or get them to upsell products at places like
Best Buy.

~~~
noir_lord
Absolutely, 'What everyone knows' has been so frequently wrong throughout
history, a few people get ill and suddenly that harmless old lady who lives
alone outside the village is on the bonfire...

Humans are _terrible_ at attributing cause and effect without a rigourous way
of reproducing it.

------
bitL
What would you do if you had an abusive boss in a dream workplace like
Google/FB or even higher rated companies like Lightbend/JetBrains and your
boss & HR teamed up on you? (Purely hypothetically/asking for a friend)

Would you even have any desire to continue in tech if the "world's best
company" gaslighted you and tried to destroy you?

Is there any known way for an institution to detect and remove abusers given
victims are afraid to talk (rightly so)? What if something really dark
resurfaced from your favorite director's past? Cover it up and pretend it
didn't happen?

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
Big companies like Google usually have internal mobility programs which, in my
experience, work pretty well.

~~~
bitL
Do you know more about it? I am building a company and want to avoid the "kiss
up" effect when I only get heavily filtered/biased info from subordinates that
are afraid of being presented in bad light, and team up together to "adjust"
facts, discarding innocent people in the process.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
Alas I don't know the internals of it, I'm as far from the HR department as it
can be. But here's what I've noticed:

\- regular performance feedback, not only from the bosses, but from the peers
as well. First, it gives you a good understanding of internal connections and
relations. Second, it makes much harder for some bad mid-level boss to say
"this guy has always been a loser": it had to be backed up by the historical
evidence.

\- internal mobility is explicitly encouraged. Bosses know that having a one
of your guys in another department improves your communication network and
makes dealing with that department much easier.

------
vermooten
In other breaking news: the Pope is a Catholic.

------
goldenkey
I have an abusive manager horror story from 2014-2015 Seattle Amazon. I opted
to quit rather than being subjected to further abuse. The manager's name was
Maulik Patel. He had the worst attributes you could ask for in a manager.
Unsupportive, jaded, and emotionally draining. He kept threatening to fire me
but never would...for something like 4 months until I said fuck it and quit.
His main reasons were that I wasn't fast enough despite finishing the tickets
in my sprints pretty much all the time. He had a vendetta against me for being
hired to do the job he couldn't. He had flat files of libraries like jQuery
and KnockoutJS and d3 committed into our repo. He used the synchronous ajax
call flag to download language files...freezing every page for a quarter of a
second. There was no way to upgrade all our libraries or fork them properly
without undoing all of his mess.

I put us on Bower for web packages and rerolled everything. He was pissed
about that. Pissed I fixed his mistakes. He would say things like I am level 4
so I need to pull tickets from the next sprint when I am done with the current
sprint. Fundamentally he did not understand what role management had in
planning and how to do it properly without antagonizing individual
contributors.. Maulik attacked team members including me with qualitatives
like slow and fast. He would spread his hands like he was showing a quantity
and say you are here but need to here [moves hand higher.]

It was his first time as a manager. When I took the job Jeff Grote was
actually signed on to be my manager..but Jeff pulled a bait and switch early
into my start..sticking Maulik as a middle manager under himself. Coulda all
been avoided if Jeff did me proper.

When I left I sent an email to the team explaining my grievances which I felt
they deserved but which is for sure unprofessional. I probably shoulda went to
HR but I had heard bad things about HR at large companies. Couldnt have been
worse than not getting severence or unemployment. Live and learn... Care to
share any similar stories? Would probably make me feel better to hear how
someone else dealt with a bad manager scenario. If not its fine.

Here's an email I had sent to Jeff (his manager):

Jeff, I'm coming to you about Maulik's behavior. Literally, it's so bad that
even when I come home, or I'm off on weekends, I'm thinking about how to deal
with the guy. It's totally unsuitable for job satisfaction. My job
satisfaction isn't even reflecting the tickets I do anymore, it's literally
tarnished, shit on, by the passive-agressive comments Maulik makes on the
regular, he usually sticks a smiley face at the end of his insults as if that
makes them less offensive.

When I came onboard, the javascript and front-end workflow and ui, and code,
were absolute chaos. I am not one to cry over spilled milk. I fixed 90% of it
and did not insult Maulik, because I understand that it isnt productive to do
so.

However, I don't know why Maulik feels the need to stomp on me for what
amounts to the smallest kind of things. If you look at my ticket resolving
rate, I'm like a speed demon, Ashley can vouch for this. So I'm getting my job
done.

But either Maulik has a personality or managerial deficit, he is somewhat
envious that I am doing a category of task right (front-end) that he only was
shoddily able to do. Or he has no idea, is oblivious, and thinks his unelegant
and critical behavior is conducive to being a good manager. And it isn't, I
can tell you, based on my satisfaction and willingness to do good work. He's
going against that with his continued vitriol.

For example, this timezone issue. He has 100 other issues to deal with. And he
chooses to spend 20 minutes researching and finding a different library than
the one I used (Which he may not have found...20 minutes could end up empty
handed..) Just so he can trump me.

And it's a habit with Maulik. He ended up saying "This kind of research is
what is expected from an Amazon engineer."

All too common for me to talk to him, and then he ends up using corporate
culture rhetoric to crap on me. "Andrew, most people don't last long here. A
lot of people get fired. Amazon culture, you need to learn it" Intimidation
tactics, dismissal of my concerns, and basically abusing the idea of Amazon
culture to avoid taking personal responsibility.

I really need you to step in here and deal with Maulik. He's a new manager and
is showing it. A good manager is supposed to improve the teams efficiency,
correct? He's actually making me not want to work, because of the amount of
vitriol I get for performing well. It's anti-correlated. It's negative
reinforcement.

