
The boss, not the workload, causes workplace depression - signa11
http://sciencenordic.com/boss-not-workload-causes-workplace-depression
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0xmohit
To elaborate, the things that often lead to unhappy workers also include:

    
    
      - Unknown expectations from the job
      - Little or no control over decisions that affect your job
      - Missing feeling of involvement
    

The fair treatment bit is mentioned in the article. The reality is that people
tend to be more irrational than they probably ought to be which usually has
significant (negative) side-effects.

~~~
brianvan5155
These factors indeed would stress people out. Put poor compensation and poor
quality-of-living on this list as well, since we now live in a race-to-the-
bottom global labor marketplace, and companies are aiming for absolute low
payroll costs rather than location-adjusted costs. People will take a job at a
unsustainable salary in the hopes of proving themselves and eventually
receiving a compensation upgrade; there is a non-zero number of companies out
there who have the exact opposite plan as a rule.

We can also say that not-every-boss is the irritant in a bad workplace
situation, but that's a nitpick. Yes, I've had the bad-boss-in-a-good-
organization and I've had the great-boss-in-a-rotten-job scenarios. In the
latter type of situation, at least one human in a management or executive role
made decisions that adversely affected my personal growth, workplace
conditions, or feedback relationship with the company. It was often many
humans up-the-chain making these kinds of decisions, in a loosely
(sadistically) coordinated fashion, fully aware that their handling of
resources was resulting in human suffering. If you have a great boss, both
your job and his/her job can still be very, very stressful and limiting. Since
we know that it's possible to run companies that don't have chronic worker
stress issues, it's very much immoral to put people through this in the
service of any business or organizational goals. (This applies to not-for-
profit orgs, too)

~~~
0xmohit
The following image sums up the stress/burnout part rather well:

[http://imgur.com/a/k6MPj](http://imgur.com/a/k6MPj)

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lormayna
I had a problem of burnout in the past. My boss was an asshole, he lacked any
planning or technical skills, he want impose his point of view without listen
anyone opinions. He change assigned priority every seconds and want to take
technical decisions without any knowledge. He was crusty when someone try to
reply to him and explain a different point of view. He changed position during
the time trying to earn merits and charge others to his own faults. He ever
defend one of two employees who he like, even if they are completely wrong.
Also holiday planning was a nightmare: he pretend to stay one month in holiday
and we have to cover this period (I come from Italy where everyone usually go
in holiday in August). Unfortunately he was one of the founder and of the
owner of the company. When he decided to sell his share, we opened a big
bottle of champagne. Now, with a democratic, polite boss (that is also a
technical guru) the climate in the office is great and no one want to leave.

~~~
dvtv75
Lucky. My boss, who was very much like that, got a promotion in the owning
organisation, and now has more power (and pay), and still runs our place into
the ground.

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LeozMaxwell
There's also this very real phenomenon: "Retaliation: A Guide for Vindictive
Bosses" \-
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffschmitt/2012/12/10/retaliati...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffschmitt/2012/12/10/retaliation-
a-guide-for-vindictive-bosses/#6fe16402461d)

~~~
brianvan5155
True and frightening.

There isn't a particularly good reason why a modern middle manager has that
much power over their direct reports.

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jkot
> _concludes an extensive new Danish study._

> _A study of 4,500 public employees... at Danish schools, hospitals,
> nurseries, offices, etc._

Public employees in Denmark work 35 hours a week, with 8 weeks holiday for
teachers and 5 weeks holiday for others.

I really do not think this study applies to people who work 12 hours a day
with no holidays.

Also it was published in 2013

~~~
throwawayReply
It's banal to say "this was 2013" as if such results age so quickly.

It amazes me how on one hand "Peopleware" (1987) and "The mythical man-month"
(1975) are held up as ground-breaking ideals here but a published academic
study is dismissed because "it was published in 2013".

As for "Well it's not transferable to 12 hours a day with no holidays", what
you're describing isn't reality for most people in most countries. It is not
even legal to work 12 hours a day for 5 days a week in any of Europe+.

If you are doing 12 hour days and don't have holidays then you are a slave not
a worker.

\+ Except UK, but only if you have specifically opted out of the law,
otherwise the 48 hour week maximum still applies.

~~~
jkot
I think mods should add (2013) into title.

12 hours a day is not uncommon. Even in EU and public sector, for example
doctors in some eastern countries have to work this way.

Anyway, my point is: this study should not be miss represented.

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rdtsc
It is funny to see this on the same day as the Amazon story, especially with
the comment about how Bezos, in the wake of the negative press, encouraged
people to come forward and report issues they see. People did, and he fired
those who complained.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260891)

~~~
clock_tower
I was going to reference the Hundred Flowers Campaign, but it looks like a lot
of people got there before me.

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vkat
Employees quit their bosses not the company.

~~~
VikingCoder
Maybe sometimes, not always.

I quit to go to a new company, but I would have gladly kept my boss. Actually
that's happened to me a couple times.

~~~
Noseshine
I've got a "me too" comment.

In my first job post university, after about two years, the moment I realized
"I don't belong here" was when a coworker in the 80% underground open plan
office stood up and asked in a loud voice to be heard by everybody "Does
anybody need a few project hours for billing? I've got some hours left in my
project that you can have." My boss responded "Yes! I'll take whatever hours
you can spare for myself and for [Noseshine _(me)_ ]". We had to have a
billable customer project for each and every hour of our time at work.

My boss was great, the "system" sucked.

~~~
T-hawk
I'll me-too your me-too. I had that exact same situation on a job and left
because of it. The only question I ever heard from my boss was "Are you
billable?" She didn't care anything about technical quality, career
development, tooling, architecture, morale; the only thing that mattered was
billable billable billable. It wasn't entirely her fault, it came transitively
through her from upper management, the entire division only cared about
billable hours, but she sure didn't do anything to help either. Classic "shit
pipe" rather than "shit umbrella".

The product had a hideous installation process involving hundreds of manual
edits to settings in IIS and configuration files. I was deliberately told not
to try to improve that via scripting, because they wanted to keep being able
to charge customers dozens of billable hours for each installation.

~~~
mgkimsal
One of my early software jobs was at a shop and we built conference
registration 'pages' (a big form with a bunch of perl stuff behind it).

Each project was... a lot of hand-customization, and usually took 8-12 hours,
and we did a few dozen per year (IIRC) and that number was growing. But each
one was... a pain.

I spent some time putting a lot of configurable stuff in a a config file, and
some runtime checking of the configs, and dynamic behaviour, and... we had
something that would make setup of the form and _most_ 'custom' requests down
to about 1-2 hours max.

I wasn't filling out my timesheet, and someone said "you have to put what
project you were working on"... so I filled in 42 hours (over 2 weeks - part
time here and there) for "project X" and... holy crap I got a verbal beating.
We're going to lose this client - we're overbilling, we're gouging, etc.

I tried to very little avail to demonstrate that... we can keep charging 12
hours ($2500? IIRC) for the pages in future, but now they'll only take an hour
or so. Apparently I was talking to the wrong people because they thought I was
advocating fraud, and I probably almost got fired over that. My code was
erased, everything was put back the way it was, they 'ate' the overage to the
client (read... I just had 42 less billable hours for 2 weeks) and ... I was
sort of 'demoted'.

Had only been there a month or so, and I think had I been able to explain to
the owner (a tech guy, and decent business guy) what I'd done, he might have
understood. My cube was only 30 feet from the guy. In my eyes at the time,
though, I thought this wrath was coming from him through someone else. Looking
back now, I doubt he was even aware of it.

~~~
flukus
> Had only been there a month or so, and I think had I been able to explain to
> the owner (a tech guy, and decent business guy) what I'd done, he might have
> understood. My cube was only 30 feet from the guy. In my eyes at the time,
> though, I thought this wrath was coming from him through someone else.
> Looking back now, I doubt he was even aware of it.

He probably didn't know about that situation, but he should have been aware of
the billable hours culture and the problems that was causing.

~~~
mgkimsal
agreed, although... in his defense, it was a crazy time and crazy growth -
they were hiring and putting a lot of policies and structures in place at that
time, and I know some things got lost in the shuffle. This was definitely one
of those "hindsight" insights from me years later though...

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HenryTheHorse
Serious question: how would a psychiatrist distinguish "workplace depression"
from your garden-variety depression that strikes people outside the workplace?

~~~
johnward
I've been to a psych and he has never actually suggested that my issues are
caused by my work place but he has suggested I take short-term leave on
several occasions. I have refused to do it thus far but that seem obvious that
he thinks work is causing or increasing my issues.

I've also talked to a therapist's but in general have no other major causes of
stress in my life. I make more than double the median income in my area, my
family is all healthy and close, etc. Work seems to be a major cause of
stress. I've tried to find another job but the interview process in tech is
more stressful than the actual work. So many rejections just wear you out over
time.

To your point I would say the only way they could really tell if it was job
related would be talking to each person and ruling out other causes.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
Thank you. So what you are saying is, the psychs view the workplace issues as
exacerbating factors.

~~~
46Bit
An abusive work environment is akin to an abusive home environment. Given that
at work you don't even have the option of standing your ground, it's at least
as bad.

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20yrs_no_equity
In my experience this is a common problem in tech startups, often because "the
boss" is a "business" guy who is imposing unfair things on engineering. For
example, instead of following a lean startup or customer discovery method of
determining the product, he is imposing feature-of-the-week management based
on whatever random thing a "potential" customer wanted that week, and never
changing the delivery date even though the spec (spec? No he just requests a
feature, never integrates it with he product design) ... is constantly
changing.

And this isn't a specific example, this is just something that has happened so
often that it seems to be an epidemic.

I think Agile is partly to blame for this. Sure, changing direction every 2
weeks is ok, but you have to leave room for designing the new features, you
can't just add them to the workload for the next sprint.

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keeringplastik
Yup, I'll buy that sauce.

Been there, done that, not again.

Testify, brothers!

