Managers Are Monsters
Managers Are MonstersThe following is all true -- I swear!
I decided to sneak into the camp where my company was holding a management retreat. I found the conference room where the managers were holding their meeting. I hid behind a potted plant and watched as the managers came in, all dressed in khakis and polo shirts, showing one another their new PDAs.
The company president came in, closed the door behind him, and stood at the head of the table. All eyes turned to him, the lights dimmed, and fiery torches burst alight all around the room. He then removed his face, revealing a reptillian snout and glowing red eyes. The other managers then removed their faces too. They all laughed diabolically. I was aghast.
"Now, the young one will show us what he has learned, " the president said. One of the junior managers walked up to the front of the table. The other managers murmured and hissed among themselves for several minutes while the young one got his PowerPoint presentation set up.
"See here -- this is a photo of one of my programmers. It was taken at 5:34 AM. Note that he is awake, and has not slept at all during the night, nor will he before coming into work the next morning."
"Well done," the manager said. "Last week, he was only staying awake until 3:00 AM. What did you do to increase his unrest?"
"I told him he had to rewrite the entire system, in COBOL, by next Thursday." The others laughed diabolically. "I relished the terror I smelled within him afterward." The junior programmer smiled. "Last week, he tried to explain the system's functioning to me, using words I did not understand. That's why I selected him for punishment."
"Very good. Have you selected your next victim yet?" the president asked.
"No. No one else has done anything to displease me yet. They have made no mistakes."
The president stood and shouted: "Imbecile! You must force them to make mistakes. Change their schedules, change their budgets, change their requirements. And even if they make no mistakes, one can always make it look as if they have!"
The junior manager just stood there, looking ashamed. The president glared for a moment. Then, suddenly, his pointed tongue shot from his mouth, into the junior manager's chest! It withdrew, and bright green blood spewed from the hole. The young one collapsed with an inhuman shriek, and his body bubbled and then dissolved into the floor. The other managers laughed diabolically.
Then, two humans were brought in and vivisected right there on the table. Apparently, they had offered suggestions after the president started his Open Door policy. There was a lot of diabolical laughter, and taunting of the victims. "Do you still want flex time?" and "Do you still think telecommuting would save money?" they asked.
Some less spectacular business followed, related to plans for turning the world into a vast labor camp. "Remember, we must eliminate all pleasure and hope from their lives," the president said. "We must gather all the humans' money and property for ourselves. We must make their industries inefficient. We must destroy their beautiful environment. We must spread disease and famine. That is the management way."
"Remember, no one can oppose us. We are invincible, and all must obey!"
There was a lot more diabolical laughter, followed by some unspeakable acts during which I made my escape.
Really, this story is absolutely true!
Finally, we know the truth: Managers seek only to cause misery and pain. Managers have no sympathy. Managers will punish you for every action or inaction. Managers are using their positions only to destroy us. Managers are inhuman. Managers are pure evil!
Don't listen to those who may suggest that managers are just regular people, trying their best to do difficult jobs. We must fight the monsters!
But oh, what can be done? We are powerless against them!
See TheyLive
I don't think you need to posit any monstrous or negative intent by managers to explain the dysfunctional organization. To the contrary, most of my managers are likable and would prefer to do a good job. But the system does prevent them and eventually they just give up. DilbertIsNoJoke. You sound as if you really don't understand how dysfunctional organizations can get. Your dismissal of sometimes tragic circumstances is unreasonable.
Please don't take it personally. It is not directed specifically at you; your other posts simply reminded me that I've wanted to write this for a while, and there are lots of people who do need the message.
If everyone in an organization knows it's flawed then why isn't it fixed? Obviously, someone doesn't think it's flawed and few others seem to care. It's not useful to speak about the dysfunctions of organizations as if they were separate from the people in the organization. The AbileneParadox can only explain things so far.
. . . then why isn't it fixed? One answer is that it takes tremendous energy to change things. Many managers (like anyone else) want to go home and have a life. You pick your battles. Often you pick battles you think you can win.
If everyone in an organization knows it's flawed then why isn't it fixed?
Unless you have a genie and some free wishes left, just recognizing a problem doesn't always solve it. Perhaps everyone has tried to fix it with a variety of changes to processes, methodologies, and personnel which don't turn out to solve the problems (but instead add confusion and inconsistency), along with lots of discussions, suggestions, and lengthy meetings, the end result of which is just that everyone agrees that there are still flaws that need to be fixed.
Remember... don't ascribe to malice that which can be ascribed to ignorance.
But to what do you ascribe the ignorance if not malice?
Cute fictional story, but for anyone who might like to read the minutes of an actual meeting of manager monsters, consider this very-sobering web page:
The conclusion is: monster managers do exist, have always existed, and we must never allow them to attain power over us by allowing ourselves to be disarmed - as the Jews of Europe allowed themselves to be. - BillZimmerly
Hyperbole. Monsters exist. The important thing here was the monstrous behaviour, not the managerial.
Monster managers do exist, unfortunately. A few psycho managers can't help it. Some, power-monger managers like it. Some incompetent managers are manipulated into it. Yet, good guys do sometimes win, in spite of the sharks.
I think there are key differences between the way managers and techies view things, and this may cause deep conflicts or resentment. For one, geeks like to try to select options by careful consideration of the merits and a technical debate, but managers are comfortable with the idea of hunches being sufficient. This drives techies bats because they often see the decision as based on superficial issues.
And things get even worst when the manager refuse to admit the decision is based on hunches and try to make up reasons for it. Of course, there won't be any sound reasons, because it is based on hunches. From my experience, if many lengthy arguments could be avoided if managers simply admit that it is a hunch and there is no sound reason for the decision, many techies simply won't argue. (But unfortunately, doing that places a great responsibility on the manager if the hunch proved to be wrong.
But this goes both ways too. Techies also make many design decisions based on hunches, more commonly called "based on experience" or "it feels right". If the manager insisted that the techies give reasons for the decision, similar arguments results.
Most often, at least here in the good old USA, it is that managers are managers because they are useless. That's right, they are ignorant, incompetent, and big stupid idiots, so the company pushes them around until they land in a position where they can't destroy things. Worse yet, it is often a position where they can lie and put blame on others, so they soon fall into the graces of upper management, "...after all, we all know the workers are lazy whiners who always want to do less for more money, right?" So, soon upper management is asking this manager to meet strict guidelines and other things to save money, and if the manager (using any means) is able to meet these guidelines, then this manager becomes gold to the upper-management. You see? Beat down the workers, blame the workers, steal money from the workers, steal time from the workers, now you can afford the condo at the beach and the new little BMW for the mistress... These managers make very bad decisions, and they always blame the outcomes on the workers, and if the outcome is good they always steal the thunder. Most managers are indeed incompetent, ignorant, and even retarded, boobs. In case you are wondering, I have done it all: owner; CEO; manager; worker; etc., and the most happiness can be found as a highly-skilled worker who has made inroads with the brass/boss/owner at the top, thereby obtaining immunity as a highly-trusted and relied upon key-individual in the company.
Nice rant.
Like every profession, there are good and bad managers. Roughly 10% of people in every profession are really good. The rest are average or crap. Unfortunately, when you're subject to the 80% of car mechanics, doctors, accountants, news reporters, plumbers, electricians, and computer programmers who are average, along with the 10% who are truly awful, you often don't know it. Would you know if a bolt inside your car engine was loose, or an electrical wire rubs a pipe behind your wall, or a doctor killed your grandma but chalked it up to old age, or a number is wrong on your tax return? Probably not; at least not for a long time, and then you'll likely attribute failure to something else.
Yet, because management is about managing people in an inherently visible manner, every mistake made by the 80% who are average or the 10% who are crap will stand out, obviously and glaringly, for all in the organisation to see.
Also, management frequently needs to base today's decisions on predictions about the future. Predicting the future is notoriously hard and usually wrong. Therefore, many management decisions turn out to be wrong. With perfect hindsight, we accuse the manager of being an idiot, when in reality he or she made a decision with the best evidence he or she had to hand at the time.
No, "sorry Charlie", but it was not a rant, but rather 50 years experience from all sides/positions of the same coin. Let me put it another way (this is for the readers). Two things that never go well together: Power and low-intelligence. Usually, these same people screw up their marriages/relationships for the same reason, "abuse of power". Powerful people (those that these awful managers are jealous of) rarely use any of the power available to them. The key is "knowing when not to use the power", not as they suppose "simply using the power". Key to this point, is when Wiki was single-handedly destroyed by our little misguided dictator. Just like with a big, red, flashing "nuke button", a whole lot of irreparable mess can come about in a split second, with the misuse of power...
{Surely there must be some exaggerations.}
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