What I learned from My worst Managers
Managers can have a profound impact on your career…even the bad ones
Over the past 15 years, I have seen various leadership styles from managers at different stages of my career. Mentorship is something one needs at every stage of their career. There is a reason why even the top CEOs and Business owners spend hours in leadership sessions. Ask Adam Grant! Now you wouldn’t always land with a great manager or leader. Every once in a while you will work with someone new to the role, someone great at doing things but not getting them done or someone who for unknown reasons is making your life hard. Like every failure is a learning opportunity, so is working with “Difficult People!”. Here’s what I have learned from my worst managers in retrospect.
Story 1: The one who stumbled on a leadership role by chance.
I was referred by a friend for a Software Engineering role at a product company. I joined the company and on the first day, my friend was a bit taken aback upon hearing my manager’s name. “We should talk during the lunch!” were the words that were uttered from his mouth. My friend warned me that he was famous for making life hard for his reports. He got back-to-back promotions when a couple of his colleagues left, by absorbing their teams and was a big boss’s favorite because he got the job done.
He was an “always anxious” guy. He would generally spend 10–12 hours in the office and was proud of it. The worse, however, was that he expected the same from his reports! Some would bend to his will while others would move to a different team. Those who fought back suffered in their career. He would often go on to complain to senior leadership about such a person even for the smallest grievance. He was a “micromanager ”to the core. He was socially awkward and I wasn’t clear about his technical contributions either. More or less he was acting as a telephone for the orders communicated by the senior leaders. He never pushed back on deadlines and never contributed or helped us in our career growth.
But there was something more to it and that came out when I told him that I wasn’t able to code a particular task. I simply didn’t know how to make it work. He sat beside me and started typing. The next 5 minutes were extremely awkward. He couldn’t even write two lines of code. A big red flag for me! I worked with him for 3 long years and it was such due to some amazing peers and the fact that he didn’t hate me the most in the team. It's hard to argue that he ever liked anyone either!
What I learned:
- You will never enjoy working with a manager who has no passion for people leadership and has been forced into the role.
- A lack of technical IQ is bad for a manager, no matter what!
- Don’t work for a manager who doesn’t have a backbone.
- If your 1–1s are filled with awkward silence or just status updates of projects, it's a red flag. You are in for a surprise at the year-end review.
- Working hard for such a manager would only lead to his success and your burnout!
Story 2: A cunning seasoned leader and an indifferent skip-level
Fast forward 10 years. I was a manager myself at a mid-level startup for 3 years. I joined a different team internally. I was told that the new team needed to be formed and it was a great opportunity for me to grow. Sadly, a re-org happened by the time I joined the team and I was left without a team or much support. It took me a month to get a hang of everything and I formulated a plan for hiring and upcoming projects. My skip level was a new VP who was pretty frustrated with the companies' dwindling fortunes in the last few months. A peer of mine wasn’t happy with the leadership and another one was always grumpy. Overall, it was quite a dysfunctional team! I was being careful not to step on anyone’s toes and was hoping to make my way soon.
Then enters a new senior manager. I met him at a company meeting for the first time and it seemed I may have offended him in some way! We had a bad start and it became evident soon after. To say that the next month was one of the hardest for my professional career would not be an understatement. In my first 1–1, I was practically interrogated. It ended with him telling me that I had not done anything in the past 2 months and he expected that if I didn’t have a team, I should have “at least” contributed to other projects by coding or pairing. The fact that he had expectations before even being my manager was beyond me! I was asked why I was “sitting on” a project for a month! I informed him that I had the project plan but the stakeholders weren’t available for a sync due to holidays. While I showed my work and plans, he was unimpressed.
We met a week later when a partner team of the proposed project came back from vacation. The project was signed off and I got a message on Slack after the call, “This is how it's done! It took me a week, not 2 months!” He projected that it was he who did the work and aligned everyone on the project! I felt he was building on top of my work. My skip level couldn't make time for a 1–1 despite multiple reachouts. The final nail was when he said that he wanted to do an unofficial review of my performance as he felt I wasn’t doing enough. I was told I was heading off track but no detailed feedback was shared. So I was in limbo for a bit before I decided to quit the company. I wasn’t given an early release either as I was supposed to hand off the work that according to him I didn’t do! On my last working day when I told him that I was heading to a Big tech, his reaction was “Ohh, You must be thanking me for that!”. Two weeks after I left, most of the team was let go in a mass layoff!
What I learned:
- Early days in a new team/company are critical. Don’t drop the ball on the impact part even when you are new.
- Don’t step on other’s toes but don’t let others climb on you either(even your manager).
- As a manager, you should have a team or look for ways to contribute as an IC.
- Build your rapport with the skip level. Don’t just rely on your manager.
- Be careful in social settings, people may not show their ego but can carry a revengeful attitude. Take time to build trust and openness.
- If there are sudden concerns with your performance despite your efforts, you may already be on the list of layoffs.
I hope these learnings are helpful to you as well. Good Luck :)
