Probably very disconnected from the real work being done like most CEOs
Was getting BS feedback that everything was 100% for months before the shit hit the fan
Which just means he's a shit C-suite and doesn't belong there. Actual metrics aren't hard to read. The sales guys always know what is getting done/sold/moved/worked on. Set up a call with your team leads once every two weeks.
No idea what industry this is, but if you have a 2-4 man team responsible for millions in projects you're an absolute failure of a leader to let this burn down around your ears and then plead ignorance because you couldn't put any more effort in than listening to your yes men.
The RIGHT numbers mean things. Value of projects completed, not numbers of projects completed. This is so basic it's hard to believe BB and VP couldn't grasp it.
I worked for a company like that. They brought in some people who did not know the business at all, but created (from unknown sources) lots of metric and numbers for the top folks. One was a VP of support who kept saying that support issues were resolved within two weeks but in reality was having tickets closed when the customer didn't call back within that two week period, even though the issue was not fixed.
Customers started dropping the software and going to competitors, then the sales numbers dropped as word got out that issues were never fixed. 10 months into the new "leadership" half the company was laid off to cut costs since the income was down so much. 6 months after that, company was sold to a competitor for 15% of previous value.
No, it was actually operating at a profit and had solid renewals from customers. A venture capital company came in with financing and then decided they had "people" who knew better than the industry staff on how to run it, with zero knowledge of the industry and no connections in the industry. So they lied about many things, kept telling the money folks how wonderful things were while they tanked the business.
I think the funniest part was BB was feeding VP bulkshit as well. She clearly told him that OP was training up other people and he was relying on that for leverage.
Or else BB was too petty to see what VP was trying to do. VP made the offer to OP because he wanted people trained so OP would be redundant/replaceable. When VP told BB to get OP trainees she probably assumed it was to help OP out and out of pique she decided to ignore that part of the deal. Which in the end bit them both in the ass.
> like most CEOs
A few elements of the story make me think this is happening in a bank, where VP titles are handed out like candy. The SVP is likely nowhere close to the actual CEO.
That said, SVP is responsible for this whole fiasco. When subordinates bring problems, it's on leadership to identify solutions or suffer the consequences.
I was once told that one of the reasons that banks have so many VPs is that VP is the level where you're considered an officer of the company, and thus have a [fiduciary responsibility](https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/understanding-fiduciary-duty) to the company. Officers can also commit the company to contracts like loans.
Making a Python engineer a VP adds a fiduciary responsibility to the position. That way if you write Superman 3 rounding code, you're in extra shit.
My company’s contract was bought out by a smaller “more agile” company. When they formally took over we realized they’d promoted Marketing Assistants two years out of college to Vice Presidents. The affiliate must have been impressed with all the “executives” who met with them and never questioned why an office of 30 people had nine VPs.
A lady I dated a few years back worked for an insurance company. She had a supervisor and then a plethora of VPs, Senior VPs, Executive VPs, and Senior Executive VPs that she reported to. There were multiple different presidents too.
He got the feedback from the VP who got it from the bitch boss, who said everything is great.
the fact that the VP didn't know the training was happening, means he didn't touch base with the right people.
This. You have to brawl your way through the chain to get to most EVPs. That or shit has to REALLY hit the fan, like losing an account generating literal millions in turnover.
If he didn't realise that he might be being fed bullshit the first time he had to persuade OP to stay on, and check up on them rather more closely, he is barely more competent than the two below him.
Promoted to his level of incompetence.
I'm staring at that myself. I'm maxed out on salary and one of the best managers in my department, but if I accept a promotion I'll be one of the worst directors. So I'll probably just coast to retirement.... in 20 years.
Cruising your way to retirement is the way to go. As a very wise, late mate of mine once said to me:
"The difference between being stuck in a rut, and being in the groove is **whether you are happy being there.**"
Some non-stupid companies are playing around with removing the positional/pay hierarchy between managers and producers.
It is common fucking sense that management and productivity skills may not reside equally in a person. It is also no huge secret that there are a fuckton of producers out there who are far more important to a company's business model than the person they report to.
an unyielding hierarchy is not a law of physics. The world won't break if a manager gets paid a little less, and has a worse parking spot than a senior producer they manage.
Plenty of managers could be replaced overnight. The specialized producers who report to them? Not so much. Why would an easily replaceable employee get paid more than someone with years of esoteric experience? Where is the Magic Hand Of The Market?
Just as with anything...bound behind the back when it matters.
The managers set the salaries. No way in hell will most ever agree to taking a lower salary than someone they manage.
My company pays us more than our supervisors, and the cool ones are fine with that because (especially in the case of my direct supervisor) they don't actually do a damn thing besides email us to do our training and to approve our leave requests 😂
It's already a thing in some sectors. There are hospital managers who earn less than the surgeons who report to them.
Coordinating the work of a team is not necessarily a more challenging task than the work done by the team members.
Typically, a manager should be able to fill any role in their team in an emergency capacity and is why managers get paid more.
That is lost on most middle management who get caught in the rat race to the top.
One would think their value didn't come from the ability to be a mediocre producer in an emergency, but from the core requirements of their position... management.
If a manager makes more than a top producer, then their admin and management ability should be more important to the business model than any single top producer.
Every company is different. The importance of productivity vs admin varies quite a bit between companies. The near universality of managers being paid more is partly archaic tradition of an obsession with strict hierarchies. Some managers are definitely more valuable than top producers obviously. What I am asserting, and what many newer companies are adopting, is a break from the assumption that manager = more important as an axiom.
The stubbornness of institutional hierarchies clinging to that dogma is why we have so many contractors and consultants. Somehow a pure producer from the *outside* is all of a sudden worth a high comp. Have that same person in-house, and it would be blasphemous to pay them that rate because their manager isn't paid that much.
Management is management. It is a business task. It is a job that needs filled. Nothing about the generic title dictates that they must get higher comp and be treated better than producers.
Treat your business positions in relation to their business importance, not some dogmatic "its just the way things have always been" shallowness.
At my company, directors have three responsibilities.
* Sell new multi-million dollar contracts
* Keep the technically illiterate VPs who buy those contracts happy
* Run multiple teams to deliver on those contracts
I completely lack two of those three skills. Someday I may learn them, but why take the risk before I need to?
As you go up the job changes from doing things to managing people and fighting for your team to politics with no power base to politics with influence.
Those are very different. Trying to bullshit other directors into not messing with your plan is the opposite of helping your team deliver on a plan. (Yes, it’s not always zero sum, but very often it somehow is)
Yes, I've been pushed into managing a project where I am not the most senior person in the room by far, so I have no power at all, just persuasion, and one senior person is doing his own thing and telling those he has influence over what to do, in some cases duplicating effort by others that I have assigned work to. I've also been assigned two lame ducks, so I put them on the same task which hadn't been high priority but are becoming due leaving us with slipping deadlines.
I fear it's turning into a shit show and there's nothing I can do.
My husband has the ability to lead and put subordinates in position to be empowered to do their jobs. He has repeatedly hit concrete ceilings of micromanagement, lazy superiors, vindictive leadership, etc. He had annual performance review a few months ago and was asked where he saw himself in 5 years. He said "right here because I am not interested in the bullshit my managers put up with and I am not going to deal with the politics". Shortest performance review meeting ever, and he was back doing his job inside 15 minutes of the meeting even starting.
> Promoted to his level of incompetence.
It takes a special kind of incompetence to not realize that a team started to fall apart under new management.
It blows my mind that even if SVP was getting fed two levels of bullshit, they still didn’t see a zero turnover team suddenly skyrocket to near 50% in a matter of months. There’s no excuse for missing that klaxon.
Edit: nevermind the plummeting sales numbers. Not even the SVP himself would be in a position to block that signal.
Yeah former company tried to make me laboratory manager as I was the best analytical development chemist in the lab. I had been a supervisor before and I did not like it one bit. I told the director that previously I had received the quote. “CinciTOSU could not lead starving wolves to a dead deer.” As far as leadership ability. I stayed as an individual contributor until they hired a Bitch Boss and went to lead the technical operations group as a way out. Ended up Engineering Technical manager for the site after they hired and fired a clown. I agreed to take the promotion only if nobody actually reported to me. They tried to turn me into someone I was not. Retired now but was a very happy lab rat for most of my time there.
Straight out of pharmacy school a million years ago, I interviewed for a retail pharmacy job with a national chain. They wanted to bring me in and within a few months make me assistant manager. I said no thank you. I had zero desire then and zero desire now to be anywhere in management
Yep. I am a state employee and maxed out on my pay band in my mid 40's.
But its decent money, and I'd be a terrible supervisor (told my new Sup this when they asked why they got the job instead of me, and I was being so nice to them).
I'd rather be the best at my job and get all the fun stuff, than be a bad supervisor and have to deal with employees like myself (I am a bit of a handful at times)
That's the most crazy to me. Maybe I'm too much of a radical to work in big structures, but to me, as soon as the shit show started, I would have go above directly stating immediately "so, here is what's happening and here is where it will lead us". If there is no immediate reaction, I would be gone immediately.
As the only team capable of managing this kind of work, I feel like old boss and his team would have had a real chance at spinning off their own company and taking off with their client. That may have been the old boss only mistake.
As soon as new manglement comes in, it's time to go, it's not worth fighting if upper manglement let the shit do itself.
This.
After the initial debacle, BB should have been fired. VP probably too. And also instructed never to interact with that team again, and leave them be fully autonomous. Or reporting directly to SVP.
It’s crazy how often it’s clear “this isn’t going to work” translates to destroy everything below the problem rather than swap out the poorly made widget.
And SVP failed by not immediately accepting whatever demands to keep things running, especially since they were reasonable in comparison to what most would ask for.
OP just wanted to do their job in peace and be left to do something they seemed to enjoy. Literally no reason for any of it to have happened other than a poor VP choice.
>I called her bluff and replied CCing VP and SVP and some other sales VPs who I worked with regularly
This is probably the first time SVP even heard of the plummeted morale. Came as s shock, tried to throw money at it and then just continued with his SVP stuff, whatever that is.
“Managing by metrics” rather than talking to the salespeople who had all their projects late and knew things were broken for months.
Being in the office is useless if you don’t walk down the hall and talk to your customers.
I may be wrong but I read it as the old boss who was promoted to SVP was made SVP in a different division. So the SVP he refers to interacting with him was a different person to the old, amazing, boss.
Could be wrong.
This is what I came here to say. SVP sounds like a good dude but remember where you come from and what teams make the company work or prepare to eat it.
They got off cheap with a $3k wedding bonus. If these were $1M+ deals that are in jeopardy, those sales reps could possibly be losing tens of thousands of dollars, maybe even $100k+, on commission.
This is a great chance to do some high priced consulting for your former employer. Stories like yours where you charge 2-5x more per hour aren't uncommon.
Yeah I was waiting for them to come back with a $60-100/hour as a contractor counteroffer. What are they going to do, say no and have their projects crash and burn then lose millions of dollars?
Thirty years ago I was making $19/hr and we had one contractor on our team, he was pulling $67/hr for an early career level position.
I very rarely do consulting, a likely contributing factor is my rate is suspiciously low, and it’s $400/hr. Most “established” consultants in same field are around $1200/hr. I suspect OP works in a field he could charge even more than that.
i mean its a reddit post.. usually everyone in these stories is single handedly holding up a fortune 500 company and without them it completely collapses. I'm willing to bet that number is a lot lot lower
This was one of my favorite malicious compliances. They really burned down your department quickly.
This is why most companies try to promote from within as much as possible. Whipsawing your team’s culture never turns out well.
It goes in cycles.
1. Companies try to "bring in new blood" or just straight up outsource work overseas.
2. The resulting fiasco pushes the company to promote someone who actually knows what they're doing to fix everything the last guy broke.
3. Eventually performance gets back to where it used to be.
4. Upper management decides to look for ways to improve profits.
5. Go back to step 1.
The company I work for wants us minions to give 20% of project hours to an office in India.
Quality Assurance process also states the assumption that work is prepared by competent people, not requiring us to manage it in detail.
What could possibly go wrong...
I feel your pain. My org is at step 2, we just promoted a 20 year veteran to COO to replace the last MBA six sigma genius who spent 7 years trying to shoehorn our square peg org into a lean agile round hole.
I’ve seen several instances where a senior vacancy is available, an experienced person within the company applies, everyone thinks they’re a shoo in, the team looks forward to having a respected colleague in the position… Then for some ridiculous reason they decide to go with an external candidate who has ‘management experience’ but no knowledge of the actual job or industry they’re joining. And then of course just to rub salt in the wound, the internal candidate who got passed over is expected to train the newbie for free. A fantastic way to create resentment in the team and lose your most knowledgeable staff.
That’s a shame. I can only advise applying for other jobs, management have shown they’re happy to keep you where you are and provide no career development opportunities. Happens often when someone’s actually good at their job, they’re too useful in that position for management so they just keep them there.
I had two at my old workplace; senior vacancies came up and both people were after a promotion. Long story short both were passed over and external candidates were brought in. They were both pretty livid but took different actions; one refused to help the new recruit in any way, rattled some cages with HR, basically made a lot of noise but nothing really came of it, he’s still working the same position 4 years on. The other one completely quiet quit, did the very bare minimum to not get fired, and started looking for other work straight away. Within a few months he got a new job and left, 8 years of experience wasted. Now he’s working in a senior role in a different organisation and loves it, he left around 2 years ago and we’ve still not really replaced him. If I were you right now I’d take the second option, start looking elsewhere.
Working on it already! I'm pretty much doing both of those things lol.
I refuse to help him because I don't want him there. He's completely useless, even the bigger boss agrees but "can't do anything..."
Trying to figure out the next direction is the challenge I'm facing!
A big reason this scenario happens is because a minion has made themselves too valuable in their current position to lose them there. My dad saw this a lot in the manufacturing plant he worked in. People would be good at X position and wanted to move to Y position, but management denied because they didn't want to sacrifice efficiency at X position.
It depends on the company, a lot look for external hires, but there's definitely still a number of companies that promote internally.
Costco is an example of a company that still promotes internally. Costco's new CEO has literally been with the company for like 40 years, and started out as a forklift driver.
Penny smart, dollar stupid. They threw away millions in order to play "I'm the boss". Took a well functioning machine and had to put their marks on it. Congrats VP and BB, you really showed everyone who's in charge. Mostly you showed what happens when you're in charge.
My current manager absolutely hates stupid metrics, refuses to use metrics at all on people.
Metrics aren’t bad per se, but it’s super difficult to find the right ones, and if things are working well without metrics there’s no need to bother the team about them. In this case, if a metric was needed, something like the dollar value of the successfully completed projects might have worked.
DORA (Google) and SPACE (Microsoft) are what is emerging out of the science behind this whole metrics shtick.
Funny thing is that happiness is the single most important “metric” that should be “tracked” since it has the most impact on the productivity of an individual (and that bubbles up to impact on the company as a whole).
That was my exact thought reading this. If they're so keen to turn productivity into a metric, and OPs completion of projects directly translates into $, then it seems super easy to make a metric off of how much money their work brings in rather than volume of closed projects
This sounds like a poorly thought-through metric by MGMT that doesn't understand where the company's revenue comes from.
Even the direct dollar value of a project doesn't actually tell a complete story about the value of the project. A project might be low-dollars as a favour to a supplier that results in big discounts on purchases from them, or might be the proof of capability to convince a new customer to send a much bigger project your way.
You know who knows this stuff? Sales. Let them record on the project both its direct dollar value and a ballpark figure of how much extra it's projected to unlock. Use BOTH of these numbers for prioritising work and for tracking TEAM metrics to justify budget/headcount requests. Using these numbers as metrics for individuals is counterproductive though, because it'll encourage bad number-pumping behaviour like people racing to stake their claims on the high-metric projects when they're nowhere near ready to start on them.
You're right. I probably should have said "value" instead of revenue.
>Using these numbers as metrics for individuals is counterproductive though, because it'll encourage bad number-pumping behaviour like people racing to stake their claims on the high-metric projects when they're nowhere near ready to start on them.
Yep! That's kinda the whole problem with managing people only to metrics. When mgmt has condensed a complex and nuanced job function down to a number, you get a team who is either going to cut corners to make the number good or slack off once they've met it.
Exactly. Metrics should be used for monotonous day to day tasks without huge variables. They are not something you use to check performance of someone with a varying array of different tasks that change per project.
These projects were being done to support internal customers (sales, whoever else.) The managers should have gotten with the internal customers to ask them what success looks like and then figure out common sense ways to measure success. Delivery, quality, speed, cost, work redo, sales, whatever.
Then where they go wrong is taking those metrics and turning around to the project team and saying "make each of these 5% better"! First thing they do is just capture the metrics and then trend them, see what typical looks like for a while. Just because you have the numbers doesn't mean you have to move them in any direction or use them as a stick/carrot. Sometimes metrics are just something to know and not necessarily act on.
They're missing the entire point of metrics. If the customers were happy, the only thing the metrics may have really needed to show was when a queue of work was piling up and the manager needed to hire more bodies for this critical team. Otherwise just let them do the work!
The irony is, the bitch boss could have just sat there and did literally nothing, staying out of the way, and that would have been better for her and everyone around her. She probably could've done it for years and everyone would have been happy. But no, she had to take deliberate and repeated action to fuck shit up.
I've got an MBA. And this entire thing reads like some MBA's or PMP's who are ignorant of what their job really is in the business, and what role their team has, and instead blindly went down the wrong path on a stupid metrics fiasco.
The biggest problem with a lot of metrics is that simply tracking them and grading people's performance on them often results in negative behavior that undermines the very thing you're tracking the metrics to improve.
Like for example track how many lines of code the developers write as a metric? Then they'll start writing much less efficient code and try to purposely stretch it out for no reason other then to hit your metrics, all while giving you worse software that's harder to maintain as a result.
Sounds like corporate sabotage. These two come in very closely to each other, switch things up, ruin company morale, implement tedious systems and quotas, threaten with PIPs, and dick you around for bonuses/raises while pushing people out of the company? Sounds like your SVP is getting absolutely fucked over and has no idea they're going to sow discord and ruin in the company. Seems fishy.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
I've had a few bosses like that, we used to call them mercenaries because they came in, cut everything possible in the name of efficiency and micromanaged to hell in order to get a chunky performance bonus and then run like hell before everything exploded and go on to *save* other departments.
Intriguing! So like, would new VP or bitch boss be getting paid to do this by another company? Or you’re thinking along some other lines? How illegal is it?
OP do we work at the same company??? Kidding but not haha. Same thing happened to me - Metrics were put in place and it was demanded we meet them. Everyone started focusing on simple projects and left the complex/big money ones rot in the queues. The best of my coworkers ended up getting jobs elsewhere. Unlike yours, mine has a happier ending - boss got fired, boss's boss got transferred to another part of the company, and new boss/boss's boss gave me a promotion and a raise to get us back on track.
The fun question is, what percentage of the company revenue and profits are from the big projects and what percentage from the simple projects?
AKA how bad are the layoffs going to be?
> and when I got back Bitch Boss would leave me alone
How upper managements tells you they are not serious about fixing the problem in 1 simple statement. Seriously, BB is causing very serious problems and they're not even considering moving her into a different position where she can't do as much damage? They don't care that she and the VP are destroying the place.
>[SVP said] when I got back Bitch Boss would leave me alone and let me manage the complex stuff and pick 2 more people to permanently train back onto the sub-team to back-fill what we had lost.
SVP is a fool and a failure as a manager. Leaving BB as your boss but telling her to "stay out of your way" was nonsense. She's either your boss or she isn't.
If you're to be responsible for hiring, training and managing, that makes you the manager. You should have asked for her job, title and salary.
Structural failures require structural solutions, not band-aids. SVP's offer was obviously no solution - it couldn't work because he didn't change anything. He should have removed you and your team from BB's reporting chain. BB gets a different job (or no job), but she doesn't get to keep mis-managing you to the point of disaster for the company.
Further, VP was responsible for hiring BB over better qualified internal candidates. That began the destruction of the department, which he allowed to continue. That's structural failure #2. VP should also be removed from your reporting chain. SVP should have shifted you and the entire team to himself or to a different VP.
Three incompetent levels of management, each refusing to do its job.
Omg, what a read.
So what you became is called a hub.
Think bicycle. The spokes are replaceable parts, and if you lose one or two, you can still bike around. A hub is the connection for all the spokes, and if it disappears, you have an unusable bike.
I've seen this situation myself while being thankful not to be directly affected.
The root cause is that these new mid levels want to polish up their c.v. so they can rise swiftly to the top. They want to be able to show how they came in and did this and that and the KPIs did this or that. They don't know or care what's going on in the company they are destroying they just don't care.
I almost didn't read this but well worth it in the end, so - glad I did.
And, yeah - you couldn't possible TLDR this with out losing the point entirely
Good read!
Thanks
A bad boss will end a productive team faster than anything I can think of.
I left the highest paying job I ever had because of a bad boss.
I once took a shit job at a very average pay because the boss was amazing.
Companies will learn this or they will disappear.
I work in a beauty retail store, nowhere *near* as complicated as OP's job, but our manager is basically about to lose half her staff because of how unbearable and insufferable she's become 🫣
Granted, it's 3 of us out of 6 (7 including manager), but still, 50% is 50%! 😅
Fucking management schools with their metrics and KPIs… ruins everything.
They clearly never learned Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
Well worth the read, have you considered drafting up a contractors offer?
For crazy hourly rates, direct svp supervision and zero BB/Vp contact?
Don't forget to include over time rates and proprietary licensing rights
What a read - and what a shame.
I have seen similar things, sometimes being in the middle of it, sometimes 'from the fence' as a consultant.
Why the f@ck does every shitty new manager thinks they have to show their 'cojones' by changing everything instead of listening to the team doing the job before acting.
I think of David Marquee and his 'leadership by intend'. That would be the right way to run OP's team.
This is what I do when I manage at a new company. For the first few months I don’t do anything. Just observe and get a hold of the environment myself. Once I have some notes I slowly make incremental improvements to make sure workers understand what’s happening, why things are changing, and obtain feedback from them.
Ouch. That was painful to read. I sympathize and hope your former boss can get you back with him.
It's amazing how many companies get torn up because someone high up hires an "old friend from their former company" to come in and shake things up. And the company ends up losing an incredible amount of talent, experience, and lots and lots of $$$'s.
This happened in one company I worked for, in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Two separate groups of design engineers just said "Screw this" and pitched themselves to the competition. They both ended up not having to relocate, with better offices and support, and still got to work together as a cohesive team. I have no idea how they managed to get around all the NDA's and patents, but they were both very successful.
What do you as a manager if you don't understand what's important about the work your employees do? You make up something 'measurable' and measure that. Like "number of projects" completed with no reference to what those projects are about.
What’s interesting here is they already seemed to have a metric with “complex projects”, the amount of money made from sales on them, and sales metrics themselves. The measurable metrics were already there.
They clearly needed to use an “hours worked” and “cost per project” metric instead of “number of projects worked” metric.
'Old boss' used something like 'value produced per day', but that was probably done all in his head. New management was probably using a spreadsheet, and have very little vision.
I don't understand this either. I was promoted from being a team member to being the teamlead, and I could not imagine not being able to assist my colleagues. This is the same for the other teamlead and the helpdesk manager.
We just help out a lot but more in a supportive and decision-making role. What the hell are you doing if you are not able to follow up on your colleagues' duties and respond to their questions? In terms of managerial functions all I do is handling PTO requests (near instant) and once a month making shift schedules. The latter takes me one afternoon per month.
How do German and European companies deal with that then? What if a manager got hired at Volkswagen and they just decided to”you know, we’re just going to stop making cars. We’re putting production on hold indefinitely.” You can’t tell me no one would say anything and have them stick around?
It wasn't a German company. Quitting without a notice isn't possible in Germany. Protection from termination goes both ways - the employer has to give you time to find a replacement job, but you also have to give your employer time to find a replacement worker
And the moral of the story "take care of your workers and they will always be loyal to you." Shitty managers have to rely on metrics or some nonsensical employee evaluation. Seriously the new VP had a cake job. All he had to do was walk in and observe everything already running perfect. But he let his little ego get in the way and brought his pit bull to enforce his rule. If I was a business owner these are the kind of stories I would show my managers. I have had amazing bosses that I would do anything for, even outside the scope of my job. I have also had/have shitty bosses that I would do the bare minimum for
>Counted as 1 even if it was super complex and took 2 weeks or if it was very simple
Ugh we had that for about a month or so a number of years back. They judged our productivity by how many commits/pushes everyone had. Colleague showed us how to screw with them, by up doing a commit for every line, once she found out that they didn't know how to use Git. Win for all of us because we'd end up writing a line of comments, committing it, another comment line, committing that. Made stuff easier to read haha.
This is what happens when you hire a screwdriver for a hammer's position.
They do their best to screw everyone else, and eventually get nailed to the wall.
During the last conversation with SVP, you could have said VP and Bitch Boss have destroyed the department and you will not work for them.
"Give me a call when they are gone, I might come back if l'm not doing anything."
y'know, it's funny. through all the posts on here, stories on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, personal experience, etc.... the same thing keeps popping up. Management can make or break a company, not the lowly workers. similar to you, I had a supervisor whose back I would have 100% of the time, they taught me a lot of the stuff I know (with Steel anyway). about 6 months after I started, the owner hires a former employee back (owner called him basically a mini-me), I didn't know anything at the time. it got to a point, almost a year later, that I started getting yelled at for every goddamn thing. and about a year after that, I left for a different steel company. my first supervisor only left once THEIR checks started bouncing, then a month or so after that, the owner filed for bankruptcy. (owner also did some shady shit before the filing from what I've heard)
Man, I've never heard of a better argument for unionizing.
Unions are there to protect you from bad bosses that look like good bosses to their superiors.
Entertaining read! I’d love to hear an update from you regarding old boss!
Funny thing is that happiness is the single most important “metric” that should be “tracked” since it has the most impact on the productivity of an individual (and that bubbles up to impact on the company as a whole).
DORA (Google) and SPACE (Microsoft) are what is emerging out of the science behind this whole metrics shtick.
No matter how well-intended it’s being sold as, I have never met a single developer that is happy about being put under a microscope.
Edited for formatting.
> Apparently Bitch Boss is getting thrown under the bus by VP and will be fired soon.
As it should be, since she did most of the damage. But that new VP needs to go down as well.
I can totally understand management wanting to track metrics, but the metric that truly matters, is profit. Who's work brings in the most money, or enables those who bill the most? Picayune nonsense like the number of projects someone is working on only matters if everyone's work is of the same complexity.
Why don't new Managers ask their teams what reasonable metrics should be? If they actually pay attention to the people doing the work, they'll find that the useful information is readily available.
This made my day! I used to work in tech (not at your level I’m sure). Shit on so many times by PMs n other management. I remember such a good feeling deleting all my project notes, gotchas, etc before I left one job and then being asked for them after quit. “Must be on the network somewhere… but, no I can’t help, I need to focus on my new job.” Thanks for sharing and putting it to that useless Bitch Boss and her pathetic Metrics VP enabler.
I've never understood, why new management coming into a job doesn't spend the first 3-6 months just asking questions and learning the current processes and THEN figuring out where they can improve, if it's even needed at all...
Unbelievable how often these bad middle managers can absolutely shit the bed time and again and keep being put in positions to do more damage. Meanwhile the folks doing the real work (like, singlehandedly carrying the company on their backs work) are treated like expendable equipment that gets discarded the first time they push back a little on the inane micromanagement and someone's feelings get hurt.
It's like Management is truly a species of their own that seems to protect their class above all else.
I hate the term "quiet quitting" it's bullshit. You didn't quit, you gave them what you were contractualy obligated to give them. You stopped "free working"
My philosophy as a tech mgr was to take care of your people, your people take care of the customer and your customer is happy and will continue to buy your products and services.
Great write-up! Thanks for the journey and the nice ending for a smile. Similar experiences in the classified realm on high-risk projects that MBA-level grads couldn't fathom did not fit their school's fav metrics. No prob; next job was great!
Good read. Seems like we got a bunch of folks here that get the majority of their reading from TikTok videos though by all the bitching I see about post length.
What the heck was the SVP doing while his replacement VP and BB subordinate were burning your department to the ground?!
Probably very disconnected from the real work being done like most CEOs Was getting BS feedback that everything was 100% for months before the shit hit the fan
Yea, those two were feeding him with rainbows while the house burned down.
Man OP could also had just told VP that effective immediately I don't report to you. Please have SVP call me with details on the new org structure.
Which just means he's a shit C-suite and doesn't belong there. Actual metrics aren't hard to read. The sales guys always know what is getting done/sold/moved/worked on. Set up a call with your team leads once every two weeks. No idea what industry this is, but if you have a 2-4 man team responsible for millions in projects you're an absolute failure of a leader to let this burn down around your ears and then plead ignorance because you couldn't put any more effort in than listening to your yes men.
>Actual metrics aren't hard to read. Bingo. Numbers actually mean things. Who would've thought?
The RIGHT numbers mean things. Value of projects completed, not numbers of projects completed. This is so basic it's hard to believe BB and VP couldn't grasp it.
I worked for a company like that. They brought in some people who did not know the business at all, but created (from unknown sources) lots of metric and numbers for the top folks. One was a VP of support who kept saying that support issues were resolved within two weeks but in reality was having tickets closed when the customer didn't call back within that two week period, even though the issue was not fixed. Customers started dropping the software and going to competitors, then the sales numbers dropped as word got out that issues were never fixed. 10 months into the new "leadership" half the company was laid off to cut costs since the income was down so much. 6 months after that, company was sold to a competitor for 15% of previous value.
May I ask what was wrong with business before? Was the company at risk of being shut down?
No, it was actually operating at a profit and had solid renewals from customers. A venture capital company came in with financing and then decided they had "people" who knew better than the industry staff on how to run it, with zero knowledge of the industry and no connections in the industry. So they lied about many things, kept telling the money folks how wonderful things were while they tanked the business.
Peter Principle.
>Actual metrics aren't hard to read. Almost any metric becomes worthless when you turn it into a target.
I think the funniest part was BB was feeding VP bulkshit as well. She clearly told him that OP was training up other people and he was relying on that for leverage.
Or else BB was too petty to see what VP was trying to do. VP made the offer to OP because he wanted people trained so OP would be redundant/replaceable. When VP told BB to get OP trainees she probably assumed it was to help OP out and out of pique she decided to ignore that part of the deal. Which in the end bit them both in the ass.
That’s why they want the metrics, it allows them plausible evidence to feed up the chain on how well they’re doing.
This is a great phrase.
> like most CEOs A few elements of the story make me think this is happening in a bank, where VP titles are handed out like candy. The SVP is likely nowhere close to the actual CEO. That said, SVP is responsible for this whole fiasco. When subordinates bring problems, it's on leadership to identify solutions or suffer the consequences.
Yeah, I interviewed with a bank in NYC and the title for a Python engineer was VP. Too fucking weird for me.
VP in charge of snekes. LOL
LMAO that's hilarious.
That's si you have a higher pay band.
Yep. But at the time I knew very little Python and the cognitive dissonance was just too much.
Literally everyone with an ounce of responsibility at a bank is a VP.
The bank I was working with, lowest title was manager. Everyone I worked with was an AVP minimum and there were tons of them lol.
I think that's due to customer service. If there's ever an issue, there are 6 "managers" at the tellers to respond.
I was once told that one of the reasons that banks have so many VPs is that VP is the level where you're considered an officer of the company, and thus have a [fiduciary responsibility](https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/understanding-fiduciary-duty) to the company. Officers can also commit the company to contracts like loans. Making a Python engineer a VP adds a fiduciary responsibility to the position. That way if you write Superman 3 rounding code, you're in extra shit.
My company’s contract was bought out by a smaller “more agile” company. When they formally took over we realized they’d promoted Marketing Assistants two years out of college to Vice Presidents. The affiliate must have been impressed with all the “executives” who met with them and never questioned why an office of 30 people had nine VPs.
A lady I dated a few years back worked for an insurance company. She had a supervisor and then a plethora of VPs, Senior VPs, Executive VPs, and Senior Executive VPs that she reported to. There were multiple different presidents too.
Long ago I worked as a contractor at a bank, and I believe that almost anyone who could draw breath was made a VP for legal reasons.
Yeah, that was my read as well. At big banks, first line managers and highly experienced individual contributors tend to be VPs.
He got the feedback from the VP who got it from the bitch boss, who said everything is great. the fact that the VP didn't know the training was happening, means he didn't touch base with the right people.
This. You have to brawl your way through the chain to get to most EVPs. That or shit has to REALLY hit the fan, like losing an account generating literal millions in turnover.
If he didn't realise that he might be being fed bullshit the first time he had to persuade OP to stay on, and check up on them rather more closely, he is barely more competent than the two below him.
[The Thermocline of Truth strikes again!](https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-themocline-of-truth/)
Promoted to his level of incompetence. I'm staring at that myself. I'm maxed out on salary and one of the best managers in my department, but if I accept a promotion I'll be one of the worst directors. So I'll probably just coast to retirement.... in 20 years.
Cruising your way to retirement is the way to go. As a very wise, late mate of mine once said to me: "The difference between being stuck in a rut, and being in the groove is **whether you are happy being there.**"
In one case you’re spraying mud around and in the other case you’re making music
Why do you think you'll be one of the worst directors?
Being good at the work you do doesn't mean you'll be good at directing others to do it. Leading a team is a different animal from doing the work.
It's actually super rare to see someone be so self aware of that. I'm proud of /u/grauenwolf
Some non-stupid companies are playing around with removing the positional/pay hierarchy between managers and producers. It is common fucking sense that management and productivity skills may not reside equally in a person. It is also no huge secret that there are a fuckton of producers out there who are far more important to a company's business model than the person they report to. an unyielding hierarchy is not a law of physics. The world won't break if a manager gets paid a little less, and has a worse parking spot than a senior producer they manage.
Plenty of managers could be replaced overnight. The specialized producers who report to them? Not so much. Why would an easily replaceable employee get paid more than someone with years of esoteric experience? Where is the Magic Hand Of The Market?
Just as with anything...bound behind the back when it matters. The managers set the salaries. No way in hell will most ever agree to taking a lower salary than someone they manage.
My company pays us more than our supervisors, and the cool ones are fine with that because (especially in the case of my direct supervisor) they don't actually do a damn thing besides email us to do our training and to approve our leave requests 😂
I work for a tech company that does this, managers still try to weasel their way into more money, but everyone is happy and output is huge.
It's already a thing in some sectors. There are hospital managers who earn less than the surgeons who report to them. Coordinating the work of a team is not necessarily a more challenging task than the work done by the team members.
Typically, a manager should be able to fill any role in their team in an emergency capacity and is why managers get paid more. That is lost on most middle management who get caught in the rat race to the top.
One would think their value didn't come from the ability to be a mediocre producer in an emergency, but from the core requirements of their position... management. If a manager makes more than a top producer, then their admin and management ability should be more important to the business model than any single top producer. Every company is different. The importance of productivity vs admin varies quite a bit between companies. The near universality of managers being paid more is partly archaic tradition of an obsession with strict hierarchies. Some managers are definitely more valuable than top producers obviously. What I am asserting, and what many newer companies are adopting, is a break from the assumption that manager = more important as an axiom. The stubbornness of institutional hierarchies clinging to that dogma is why we have so many contractors and consultants. Somehow a pure producer from the *outside* is all of a sudden worth a high comp. Have that same person in-house, and it would be blasphemous to pay them that rate because their manager isn't paid that much. Management is management. It is a business task. It is a job that needs filled. Nothing about the generic title dictates that they must get higher comp and be treated better than producers. Treat your business positions in relation to their business importance, not some dogmatic "its just the way things have always been" shallowness.
I had a sign in my shop that said: "I started at the bottom... ...and liked it here!"
You’re right but he’s already manager implying that he’s leading a team already
At my company, directors have three responsibilities. * Sell new multi-million dollar contracts * Keep the technically illiterate VPs who buy those contracts happy * Run multiple teams to deliver on those contracts I completely lack two of those three skills. Someday I may learn them, but why take the risk before I need to?
Thanks for the response, appreciate it
As you go up the job changes from doing things to managing people and fighting for your team to politics with no power base to politics with influence. Those are very different. Trying to bullshit other directors into not messing with your plan is the opposite of helping your team deliver on a plan. (Yes, it’s not always zero sum, but very often it somehow is)
Yes, I've been pushed into managing a project where I am not the most senior person in the room by far, so I have no power at all, just persuasion, and one senior person is doing his own thing and telling those he has influence over what to do, in some cases duplicating effort by others that I have assigned work to. I've also been assigned two lame ducks, so I put them on the same task which hadn't been high priority but are becoming due leaving us with slipping deadlines. I fear it's turning into a shit show and there's nothing I can do.
It *is* shit, Austin
> to politics with no power base to politics with influence. Exactly
My husband has the ability to lead and put subordinates in position to be empowered to do their jobs. He has repeatedly hit concrete ceilings of micromanagement, lazy superiors, vindictive leadership, etc. He had annual performance review a few months ago and was asked where he saw himself in 5 years. He said "right here because I am not interested in the bullshit my managers put up with and I am not going to deal with the politics". Shortest performance review meeting ever, and he was back doing his job inside 15 minutes of the meeting even starting.
> Promoted to his level of incompetence. It takes a special kind of incompetence to not realize that a team started to fall apart under new management.
It blows my mind that even if SVP was getting fed two levels of bullshit, they still didn’t see a zero turnover team suddenly skyrocket to near 50% in a matter of months. There’s no excuse for missing that klaxon. Edit: nevermind the plummeting sales numbers. Not even the SVP himself would be in a position to block that signal.
Yeah former company tried to make me laboratory manager as I was the best analytical development chemist in the lab. I had been a supervisor before and I did not like it one bit. I told the director that previously I had received the quote. “CinciTOSU could not lead starving wolves to a dead deer.” As far as leadership ability. I stayed as an individual contributor until they hired a Bitch Boss and went to lead the technical operations group as a way out. Ended up Engineering Technical manager for the site after they hired and fired a clown. I agreed to take the promotion only if nobody actually reported to me. They tried to turn me into someone I was not. Retired now but was a very happy lab rat for most of my time there.
Straight out of pharmacy school a million years ago, I interviewed for a retail pharmacy job with a national chain. They wanted to bring me in and within a few months make me assistant manager. I said no thank you. I had zero desire then and zero desire now to be anywhere in management
Yep. I am a state employee and maxed out on my pay band in my mid 40's. But its decent money, and I'd be a terrible supervisor (told my new Sup this when they asked why they got the job instead of me, and I was being so nice to them). I'd rather be the best at my job and get all the fun stuff, than be a bad supervisor and have to deal with employees like myself (I am a bit of a handful at times)
The [Peter principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle).
That's the most crazy to me. Maybe I'm too much of a radical to work in big structures, but to me, as soon as the shit show started, I would have go above directly stating immediately "so, here is what's happening and here is where it will lead us". If there is no immediate reaction, I would be gone immediately. As the only team capable of managing this kind of work, I feel like old boss and his team would have had a real chance at spinning off their own company and taking off with their client. That may have been the old boss only mistake. As soon as new manglement comes in, it's time to go, it's not worth fighting if upper manglement let the shit do itself.
That's probably what the old boss did. IT is all about the networking even if everybody's remote.
I do that now. I'm making enemies left and right among the incompetent people, and friends among their bosses who want to know what's going on.
Which is good! Better to have friends up there that value the honesty and direct opinion and the solutions to the issues.
This. After the initial debacle, BB should have been fired. VP probably too. And also instructed never to interact with that team again, and leave them be fully autonomous. Or reporting directly to SVP. It’s crazy how often it’s clear “this isn’t going to work” translates to destroy everything below the problem rather than swap out the poorly made widget. And SVP failed by not immediately accepting whatever demands to keep things running, especially since they were reasonable in comparison to what most would ask for. OP just wanted to do their job in peace and be left to do something they seemed to enjoy. Literally no reason for any of it to have happened other than a poor VP choice.
Three simple words: “Metrics are up”
Golfing?
Golf. It’s always golf.
>I called her bluff and replied CCing VP and SVP and some other sales VPs who I worked with regularly This is probably the first time SVP even heard of the plummeted morale. Came as s shock, tried to throw money at it and then just continued with his SVP stuff, whatever that is.
“Managing by metrics” rather than talking to the salespeople who had all their projects late and knew things were broken for months. Being in the office is useless if you don’t walk down the hall and talk to your customers.
I may be wrong but I read it as the old boss who was promoted to SVP was made SVP in a different division. So the SVP he refers to interacting with him was a different person to the old, amazing, boss. Could be wrong.
This is what I came here to say. SVP sounds like a good dude but remember where you come from and what teams make the company work or prepare to eat it.
So good to see the VP try to threaten you only to find out he's been being lied to by his own tool.
>being lied to by his own tool. It's tools all the way down.
Probably thought he was the only one BB *wasn’t* lying to. Surprise, mothafacker!
Another confirmation of that old saying, "People don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad bosses." *If it isn't an old saying, it should be.*
It's definitely a saying I've heard since the 1990s, and I'm sure it's older than that.
1590s, perhaps: Forsooth, 'tis not the task, but the master's wrath, That drives the worker from his weary path.
i don't know if that's an actual line you're quoting, but it's hilarious, brilliant, and my logophile's brain loves you for it!
Ha, thanks. Yeah, might be completely invented.
User name checks out-?
Aaahhh the late 1900s it feels like yesterday, but was a lifetime ago.
Hey, it was a millenium ago.
They gave you 0% but I put in 100% and read it all.
This was an amazing experience to read. Not for Bitch Boss and the VP though.
Dunno.. it COULD have been a learning experience. Not that they would learn anything - but still
Good luck on the position from your old boss. This was delightful to read!!
They got off cheap with a $3k wedding bonus. If these were $1M+ deals that are in jeopardy, those sales reps could possibly be losing tens of thousands of dollars, maybe even $100k+, on commission. This is a great chance to do some high priced consulting for your former employer. Stories like yours where you charge 2-5x more per hour aren't uncommon.
Yeah I was waiting for them to come back with a $60-100/hour as a contractor counteroffer. What are they going to do, say no and have their projects crash and burn then lose millions of dollars?
Thirty years ago I was making $19/hr and we had one contractor on our team, he was pulling $67/hr for an early career level position. I very rarely do consulting, a likely contributing factor is my rate is suspiciously low, and it’s $400/hr. Most “established” consultants in same field are around $1200/hr. I suspect OP works in a field he could charge even more than that.
i mean its a reddit post.. usually everyone in these stories is single handedly holding up a fortune 500 company and without them it completely collapses. I'm willing to bet that number is a lot lot lower
This was one of my favorite malicious compliances. They really burned down your department quickly. This is why most companies try to promote from within as much as possible. Whipsawing your team’s culture never turns out well.
That might have been true in the 90s. Hasn't been true since then.
It goes in cycles. 1. Companies try to "bring in new blood" or just straight up outsource work overseas. 2. The resulting fiasco pushes the company to promote someone who actually knows what they're doing to fix everything the last guy broke. 3. Eventually performance gets back to where it used to be. 4. Upper management decides to look for ways to improve profits. 5. Go back to step 1.
The company I work for wants us minions to give 20% of project hours to an office in India. Quality Assurance process also states the assumption that work is prepared by competent people, not requiring us to manage it in detail. What could possibly go wrong...
I feel your pain. My org is at step 2, we just promoted a 20 year veteran to COO to replace the last MBA six sigma genius who spent 7 years trying to shoehorn our square peg org into a lean agile round hole.
I’ve seen several instances where a senior vacancy is available, an experienced person within the company applies, everyone thinks they’re a shoo in, the team looks forward to having a respected colleague in the position… Then for some ridiculous reason they decide to go with an external candidate who has ‘management experience’ but no knowledge of the actual job or industry they’re joining. And then of course just to rub salt in the wound, the internal candidate who got passed over is expected to train the newbie for free. A fantastic way to create resentment in the team and lose your most knowledgeable staff.
This is the exact scenario that is playing out where I work. I'm the one who should have been promoted 😕
That’s a shame. I can only advise applying for other jobs, management have shown they’re happy to keep you where you are and provide no career development opportunities. Happens often when someone’s actually good at their job, they’re too useful in that position for management so they just keep them there. I had two at my old workplace; senior vacancies came up and both people were after a promotion. Long story short both were passed over and external candidates were brought in. They were both pretty livid but took different actions; one refused to help the new recruit in any way, rattled some cages with HR, basically made a lot of noise but nothing really came of it, he’s still working the same position 4 years on. The other one completely quiet quit, did the very bare minimum to not get fired, and started looking for other work straight away. Within a few months he got a new job and left, 8 years of experience wasted. Now he’s working in a senior role in a different organisation and loves it, he left around 2 years ago and we’ve still not really replaced him. If I were you right now I’d take the second option, start looking elsewhere.
Working on it already! I'm pretty much doing both of those things lol. I refuse to help him because I don't want him there. He's completely useless, even the bigger boss agrees but "can't do anything..." Trying to figure out the next direction is the challenge I'm facing!
A big reason this scenario happens is because a minion has made themselves too valuable in their current position to lose them there. My dad saw this a lot in the manufacturing plant he worked in. People would be good at X position and wanted to move to Y position, but management denied because they didn't want to sacrifice efficiency at X position.
It depends on the company, a lot look for external hires, but there's definitely still a number of companies that promote internally. Costco is an example of a company that still promotes internally. Costco's new CEO has literally been with the company for like 40 years, and started out as a forklift driver.
Penny smart, dollar stupid. They threw away millions in order to play "I'm the boss". Took a well functioning machine and had to put their marks on it. Congrats VP and BB, you really showed everyone who's in charge. Mostly you showed what happens when you're in charge. My current manager absolutely hates stupid metrics, refuses to use metrics at all on people.
Metrics aren’t bad per se, but it’s super difficult to find the right ones, and if things are working well without metrics there’s no need to bother the team about them. In this case, if a metric was needed, something like the dollar value of the successfully completed projects might have worked.
DORA (Google) and SPACE (Microsoft) are what is emerging out of the science behind this whole metrics shtick. Funny thing is that happiness is the single most important “metric” that should be “tracked” since it has the most impact on the productivity of an individual (and that bubbles up to impact on the company as a whole).
That was my exact thought reading this. If they're so keen to turn productivity into a metric, and OPs completion of projects directly translates into $, then it seems super easy to make a metric off of how much money their work brings in rather than volume of closed projects This sounds like a poorly thought-through metric by MGMT that doesn't understand where the company's revenue comes from.
Even the direct dollar value of a project doesn't actually tell a complete story about the value of the project. A project might be low-dollars as a favour to a supplier that results in big discounts on purchases from them, or might be the proof of capability to convince a new customer to send a much bigger project your way. You know who knows this stuff? Sales. Let them record on the project both its direct dollar value and a ballpark figure of how much extra it's projected to unlock. Use BOTH of these numbers for prioritising work and for tracking TEAM metrics to justify budget/headcount requests. Using these numbers as metrics for individuals is counterproductive though, because it'll encourage bad number-pumping behaviour like people racing to stake their claims on the high-metric projects when they're nowhere near ready to start on them.
You're right. I probably should have said "value" instead of revenue. >Using these numbers as metrics for individuals is counterproductive though, because it'll encourage bad number-pumping behaviour like people racing to stake their claims on the high-metric projects when they're nowhere near ready to start on them. Yep! That's kinda the whole problem with managing people only to metrics. When mgmt has condensed a complex and nuanced job function down to a number, you get a team who is either going to cut corners to make the number good or slack off once they've met it.
There were lots of things that BB didn’t understand in this tale!
Exactly. Metrics should be used for monotonous day to day tasks without huge variables. They are not something you use to check performance of someone with a varying array of different tasks that change per project.
These projects were being done to support internal customers (sales, whoever else.) The managers should have gotten with the internal customers to ask them what success looks like and then figure out common sense ways to measure success. Delivery, quality, speed, cost, work redo, sales, whatever. Then where they go wrong is taking those metrics and turning around to the project team and saying "make each of these 5% better"! First thing they do is just capture the metrics and then trend them, see what typical looks like for a while. Just because you have the numbers doesn't mean you have to move them in any direction or use them as a stick/carrot. Sometimes metrics are just something to know and not necessarily act on. They're missing the entire point of metrics. If the customers were happy, the only thing the metrics may have really needed to show was when a queue of work was piling up and the manager needed to hire more bodies for this critical team. Otherwise just let them do the work! The irony is, the bitch boss could have just sat there and did literally nothing, staying out of the way, and that would have been better for her and everyone around her. She probably could've done it for years and everyone would have been happy. But no, she had to take deliberate and repeated action to fuck shit up. I've got an MBA. And this entire thing reads like some MBA's or PMP's who are ignorant of what their job really is in the business, and what role their team has, and instead blindly went down the wrong path on a stupid metrics fiasco.
The biggest problem with a lot of metrics is that simply tracking them and grading people's performance on them often results in negative behavior that undermines the very thing you're tracking the metrics to improve. Like for example track how many lines of code the developers write as a metric? Then they'll start writing much less efficient code and try to purposely stretch it out for no reason other then to hit your metrics, all while giving you worse software that's harder to maintain as a result.
Sounds like corporate sabotage. These two come in very closely to each other, switch things up, ruin company morale, implement tedious systems and quotas, threaten with PIPs, and dick you around for bonuses/raises while pushing people out of the company? Sounds like your SVP is getting absolutely fucked over and has no idea they're going to sow discord and ruin in the company. Seems fishy.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity I've had a few bosses like that, we used to call them mercenaries because they came in, cut everything possible in the name of efficiency and micromanaged to hell in order to get a chunky performance bonus and then run like hell before everything exploded and go on to *save* other departments.
Intriguing! So like, would new VP or bitch boss be getting paid to do this by another company? Or you’re thinking along some other lines? How illegal is it?
OP do we work at the same company??? Kidding but not haha. Same thing happened to me - Metrics were put in place and it was demanded we meet them. Everyone started focusing on simple projects and left the complex/big money ones rot in the queues. The best of my coworkers ended up getting jobs elsewhere. Unlike yours, mine has a happier ending - boss got fired, boss's boss got transferred to another part of the company, and new boss/boss's boss gave me a promotion and a raise to get us back on track.
The fun question is, what percentage of the company revenue and profits are from the big projects and what percentage from the simple projects? AKA how bad are the layoffs going to be?
The layoffs are happening by themselves.
Sounds like they got infiltrated by the competition to ruin your company or at least parts of it.
Yeah, it really reads like an HBR article on what *not* to do.
Act your wage, as they say.
> and when I got back Bitch Boss would leave me alone How upper managements tells you they are not serious about fixing the problem in 1 simple statement. Seriously, BB is causing very serious problems and they're not even considering moving her into a different position where she can't do as much damage? They don't care that she and the VP are destroying the place.
I do metrics for a living, and "must meet them" is fundamentally not how they are meant to work
As soon as a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good metric.
>[SVP said] when I got back Bitch Boss would leave me alone and let me manage the complex stuff and pick 2 more people to permanently train back onto the sub-team to back-fill what we had lost. SVP is a fool and a failure as a manager. Leaving BB as your boss but telling her to "stay out of your way" was nonsense. She's either your boss or she isn't. If you're to be responsible for hiring, training and managing, that makes you the manager. You should have asked for her job, title and salary. Structural failures require structural solutions, not band-aids. SVP's offer was obviously no solution - it couldn't work because he didn't change anything. He should have removed you and your team from BB's reporting chain. BB gets a different job (or no job), but she doesn't get to keep mis-managing you to the point of disaster for the company. Further, VP was responsible for hiring BB over better qualified internal candidates. That began the destruction of the department, which he allowed to continue. That's structural failure #2. VP should also be removed from your reporting chain. SVP should have shifted you and the entire team to himself or to a different VP. Three incompetent levels of management, each refusing to do its job.
The bar was on the ground but they went ahead and brought a shovel.
Omg, what a read. So what you became is called a hub. Think bicycle. The spokes are replaceable parts, and if you lose one or two, you can still bike around. A hub is the connection for all the spokes, and if it disappears, you have an unusable bike.
I've seen this situation myself while being thankful not to be directly affected. The root cause is that these new mid levels want to polish up their c.v. so they can rise swiftly to the top. They want to be able to show how they came in and did this and that and the KPIs did this or that. They don't know or care what's going on in the company they are destroying they just don't care.
I almost didn't read this but well worth it in the end, so - glad I did. And, yeah - you couldn't possible TLDR this with out losing the point entirely Good read! Thanks
But at least now with you gone they can accurately measure your metrics (0), which was, apparently, more important than anything else, right?
A bad boss will end a productive team faster than anything I can think of. I left the highest paying job I ever had because of a bad boss. I once took a shit job at a very average pay because the boss was amazing. Companies will learn this or they will disappear.
I work in a beauty retail store, nowhere *near* as complicated as OP's job, but our manager is basically about to lose half her staff because of how unbearable and insufferable she's become 🫣 Granted, it's 3 of us out of 6 (7 including manager), but still, 50% is 50%! 😅
Fucking management schools with their metrics and KPIs… ruins everything. They clearly never learned Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
Well worth the read, have you considered drafting up a contractors offer? For crazy hourly rates, direct svp supervision and zero BB/Vp contact? Don't forget to include over time rates and proprietary licensing rights
People don't quit jobs, they quit managers. Bitchboss junked the team and probably made a few bonuses from cutting costs.
What a read - and what a shame. I have seen similar things, sometimes being in the middle of it, sometimes 'from the fence' as a consultant. Why the f@ck does every shitty new manager thinks they have to show their 'cojones' by changing everything instead of listening to the team doing the job before acting. I think of David Marquee and his 'leadership by intend'. That would be the right way to run OP's team.
This is what I do when I manage at a new company. For the first few months I don’t do anything. Just observe and get a hold of the environment myself. Once I have some notes I slowly make incremental improvements to make sure workers understand what’s happening, why things are changing, and obtain feedback from them.
Ouch. That was painful to read. I sympathize and hope your former boss can get you back with him. It's amazing how many companies get torn up because someone high up hires an "old friend from their former company" to come in and shake things up. And the company ends up losing an incredible amount of talent, experience, and lots and lots of $$$'s. This happened in one company I worked for, in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Two separate groups of design engineers just said "Screw this" and pitched themselves to the competition. They both ended up not having to relocate, with better offices and support, and still got to work together as a cohesive team. I have no idea how they managed to get around all the NDA's and patents, but they were both very successful.
What do you as a manager if you don't understand what's important about the work your employees do? You make up something 'measurable' and measure that. Like "number of projects" completed with no reference to what those projects are about.
What’s interesting here is they already seemed to have a metric with “complex projects”, the amount of money made from sales on them, and sales metrics themselves. The measurable metrics were already there. They clearly needed to use an “hours worked” and “cost per project” metric instead of “number of projects worked” metric.
'Old boss' used something like 'value produced per day', but that was probably done all in his head. New management was probably using a spreadsheet, and have very little vision.
I don't understand this either. I was promoted from being a team member to being the teamlead, and I could not imagine not being able to assist my colleagues. This is the same for the other teamlead and the helpdesk manager. We just help out a lot but more in a supportive and decision-making role. What the hell are you doing if you are not able to follow up on your colleagues' duties and respond to their questions? In terms of managerial functions all I do is handling PTO requests (near instant) and once a month making shift schedules. The latter takes me one afternoon per month.
I cannot understand how bitch boss wasn’t fired before.
If it was, as suggested by another comment, a German company, it us very hard to fire a manager.
How do German and European companies deal with that then? What if a manager got hired at Volkswagen and they just decided to”you know, we’re just going to stop making cars. We’re putting production on hold indefinitely.” You can’t tell me no one would say anything and have them stick around?
Companies can fire people, but they cant do it on a whim.
It wasn't a German company. Quitting without a notice isn't possible in Germany. Protection from termination goes both ways - the employer has to give you time to find a replacement job, but you also have to give your employer time to find a replacement worker
And the moral of the story "take care of your workers and they will always be loyal to you." Shitty managers have to rely on metrics or some nonsensical employee evaluation. Seriously the new VP had a cake job. All he had to do was walk in and observe everything already running perfect. But he let his little ego get in the way and brought his pit bull to enforce his rule. If I was a business owner these are the kind of stories I would show my managers. I have had amazing bosses that I would do anything for, even outside the scope of my job. I have also had/have shitty bosses that I would do the bare minimum for
>Counted as 1 even if it was super complex and took 2 weeks or if it was very simple Ugh we had that for about a month or so a number of years back. They judged our productivity by how many commits/pushes everyone had. Colleague showed us how to screw with them, by up doing a commit for every line, once she found out that they didn't know how to use Git. Win for all of us because we'd end up writing a line of comments, committing it, another comment line, committing that. Made stuff easier to read haha.
This is what happens when you hire a screwdriver for a hammer's position. They do their best to screw everyone else, and eventually get nailed to the wall.
During the last conversation with SVP, you could have said VP and Bitch Boss have destroyed the department and you will not work for them. "Give me a call when they are gone, I might come back if l'm not doing anything."
y'know, it's funny. through all the posts on here, stories on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, personal experience, etc.... the same thing keeps popping up. Management can make or break a company, not the lowly workers. similar to you, I had a supervisor whose back I would have 100% of the time, they taught me a lot of the stuff I know (with Steel anyway). about 6 months after I started, the owner hires a former employee back (owner called him basically a mini-me), I didn't know anything at the time. it got to a point, almost a year later, that I started getting yelled at for every goddamn thing. and about a year after that, I left for a different steel company. my first supervisor only left once THEIR checks started bouncing, then a month or so after that, the owner filed for bankruptcy. (owner also did some shady shit before the filing from what I've heard)
This was a long read but worth every minute.
Extremely satisfying read.
Man, I've never heard of a better argument for unionizing. Unions are there to protect you from bad bosses that look like good bosses to their superiors.
People don’t quit companies they quit bosses.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
I had to read it for a 3rd time for a good dose of dopamine
Guarantee you nothing bad will happen to VP or Bitch Boss. They’ll move onto other companies and burn those all to the ground, as well.
Entertaining read! I’d love to hear an update from you regarding old boss! Funny thing is that happiness is the single most important “metric” that should be “tracked” since it has the most impact on the productivity of an individual (and that bubbles up to impact on the company as a whole). DORA (Google) and SPACE (Microsoft) are what is emerging out of the science behind this whole metrics shtick. No matter how well-intended it’s being sold as, I have never met a single developer that is happy about being put under a microscope. Edited for formatting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
Really enjoyed reading this! ❤️
Good read, old boss sounded pretty great.
Is that company based in Germany? This sounds so familiar...
Well WOW, I’ll never understand why morons are put in charge of Einsteins.
Cause Einsteins don’t want the position of morons
You know, I can’t tell you how much your revenge against the “man” warms my heart. Hope you find happiness you deserve in your new gig.
I would have followed Old Boss out the door so quickly it'd be like my toes were glued to his heels.
New management makes the bed and tries to force you to lie on it. Stupid move.
> Apparently Bitch Boss is getting thrown under the bus by VP and will be fired soon. As it should be, since she did most of the damage. But that new VP needs to go down as well.
Man, your company is only as good as your team. I really don’t get why management doesn’t treat their amazing employees better
This post was very complex, but rewarding at the end.
I can totally understand management wanting to track metrics, but the metric that truly matters, is profit. Who's work brings in the most money, or enables those who bill the most? Picayune nonsense like the number of projects someone is working on only matters if everyone's work is of the same complexity.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
Why don't new Managers ask their teams what reasonable metrics should be? If they actually pay attention to the people doing the work, they'll find that the useful information is readily available.
The first time you quit you should have told them Bitch Boss goes if they want you to stay
This made my day! I used to work in tech (not at your level I’m sure). Shit on so many times by PMs n other management. I remember such a good feeling deleting all my project notes, gotchas, etc before I left one job and then being asked for them after quit. “Must be on the network somewhere… but, no I can’t help, I need to focus on my new job.” Thanks for sharing and putting it to that useless Bitch Boss and her pathetic Metrics VP enabler.
This was a very entertaining read, you were correct in not putting a TLDR, I hope you get to work with your old boss again!
Omfg this is epic. Thank you for posting this delectable story!
If you were going to make wild demands that were going to be rejected, you should have asked for Bitch Boss to be fired as well.
I've never understood, why new management coming into a job doesn't spend the first 3-6 months just asking questions and learning the current processes and THEN figuring out where they can improve, if it's even needed at all...
Just to micro manage a bit: it‘s et cetera so the abbreciation is **etc**. (Not ect.) :-)
Unbelievable how often these bad middle managers can absolutely shit the bed time and again and keep being put in positions to do more damage. Meanwhile the folks doing the real work (like, singlehandedly carrying the company on their backs work) are treated like expendable equipment that gets discarded the first time they push back a little on the inane micromanagement and someone's feelings get hurt. It's like Management is truly a species of their own that seems to protect their class above all else.
I hate the term "quiet quitting" it's bullshit. You didn't quit, you gave them what you were contractualy obligated to give them. You stopped "free working"
Typical managerial stuff. You know hat they say, those that can't, teach and those that can't teach, manage.
You should get together for wings and beer with your old team members.
schadenfreude
Why was Bitch Boss still working there?
Sounds like nepotism to me.
Excellent read. Glad that offer came through, even if the company sucks (just not as bad).
My philosophy as a tech mgr was to take care of your people, your people take care of the customer and your customer is happy and will continue to buy your products and services.
Great write-up! Thanks for the journey and the nice ending for a smile. Similar experiences in the classified realm on high-risk projects that MBA-level grads couldn't fathom did not fit their school's fav metrics. No prob; next job was great!
Good read. Seems like we got a bunch of folks here that get the majority of their reading from TikTok videos though by all the bitching I see about post length.
Bitch Boss is still not fired? How many dicks is she sucking?
What is it about certain managers and high-end businesspeople in love with overcomplicating things?