Toxic Employers Discussion

Not a good idea to name people so I suggest we dont't begin -- AndrewCates

Well, I don't know. If the intent is not -spite-, but instead to warn other future employees to stay away from the toxicity, then it might be justified. Partly it has to be things that are taken with a good deal of care and reflection, rather than knee-jerk reactions to a single bad experience.

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but this idea is just asking for a lawsuit from somebody. Be careful.

There's probably a couple of things to consider: Wiki itself is probably not liable for anything its participants post. But the larger question might be... should the threat of a lawsuit (a LegalThreat) dissuade somebody from attempting to make the world a better place? Isn't this the role of activism everywhere?

Once an IT worker reaches 35, the TooOld Syndrome rears its ugly head and more and more workplaces become toxic. There are just TooManyPeople.

why not have a page that does the same thing but is about positive stuff? or do we already have one? You know, like good practices, peoples fond memories, advice of certain stuff whatever, things you saw done well, thing that you saw done really differently - that could be valuable to wiki I suppose :) -- SusannahWilliams?

I kinda like that... a BestPlaceIeverWorked?? page!

Such information (in both directions) can quickly become out of date. It's also possible to get a bad boss in a good company (or vice versa).

How about all of the above plus stuff that was really different and failed miserably, that could be kindda funny. Like nuevo management techniques that were hopelessly doomed from the start yet somehow had to be carried through to the end only to prove it was a really sh*t idea.

I'm thinking of an old boss at a web design company I worked for who was permanently caffeinated and spouting complete bol***ks. He was one of those people you could just tell was jealous of all his other more successful friends IT companies and would every week in the "team meeting", without fail, force us all (about 5 or 6 of us) to listen to his new plan for this website or that new mode of using the net.

Spectacular failures included Miners Reunited - a really unoriginal take on Friends Reunited, but, you guessed it, for ex-miners in the UK. Hmm, let me think, there's probably about 20,000 of them in the UK, trying not to generalize here but I'm guessing using the internet is not one of their core skills having been down the pits for 30 odd years.

Another involved a company belonging to a friend of his who had developed a way of temporary shut down of the systems found in a cable/digital TV box in order to play a Play Station type game accessed through digital TV. His idea - to "expand" this opportunity to enable shopping and access to services and appointment booking etc. He was delighted to see what we came up with in the on-spot brainstorm session. Until we let him in on the fact that you could order pizza from the telly about 10 years ago and had he see the thing called the shopping channel?

Needless to say we had to pursue these inane task for weeks until either his enthusiasm waned or he forgot what he was doing from drinking too much black coffee. -- SusannahWilliams?

He sounds a lot like DavidBrent?? (boss in The Office). Probably didn't play the guitar as well, though, right? -- DougMerritt

yea, he was very like that but didn't smile you know the type, was way to important to make friends with the workers, that would give him 'respect' from his staff... (in a company of 7 people) a complete PointyHairedBoss. His favorite anecdote was about the time he had his company analyzed and all of his (then) staff came out as individuals but his results showed that he possessed work characteristics of each member of staff (yea, coz that won't have been rigged in any way?). But I think the most cowardly thing he used to do was dish out Bol***kings by email and make them so sarcastic and mean that no-one dared speak to him about them. How faceless/gutless -- s