I have worked at a couple of organizations where bullying and internal competition with negative consequences were rampant. It is a very disheartening experience.
The worst was at my first employer. I was naive and several times was publicly eviscerated by folks clearly interested in dumping the blame for project failures and schedule slips onto some other person. I weathered those experiences because I was doing very well on other projects and had support from management and peers on those efforts. Otherwise, I'm sure I would have been one of the endless layoffs that seemed to occur every quarter for "low performers" in that stack-ranked hellscape.
My current employer (longest tenure of my professional career) has many of the same problems, particularly at the staff level between organizations. I am ruthless about strictly defining precisely my prereqs for any work assignment and quietly decline or avoid working with several groups at all. It is really unfortunate because the potential for much more impactful and meaningful work is lost.
"It is really unfortunate because the potential for much more impactful and meaningful work is lost."
I hear you and I'm sorry you're experiencing this as well. Unfortunately sometimes operating within the constraints of your priorities is all that leadership looks at in determining career advancement. You're doing more? That's nice, but if it's not tied to your OKRs, it's not promotion material. This, is the crux of a lot of FANGMA BS.
All bad job stories can be boiled down to someone at a company who was in charge over employees did not want someone at the company anymore.
No amount of emotions or rationalization or any other factor really changes this.
Employees are professionals who provide services while in employ. When your services are no longer wanted, they are no longer paid for and rendered.
You can say someone was a bad person or an asshole or whatever, you might be or they might be and probably will be right or both the employer or employee will both be right, or you will be dealing with a bad employer or employee. It happens. It’s life.
But I think the healthiest way to deal with these things is to remember you are providing a service for a fee. That fee might be a salary, it might be a retainer, it might be a flat rate, or a one time fee.
But you vend and perform services to those who pay for them.
Everything else, every other ceremony and nicety and construct, usually built by employers for employees, though sometimes albeit rarely both ways, is designed to impair this judgement and create a scenario where one party forgets this and their relationship is transformed into something else, usually subservient without a notion of autonomy.
It is why employers use “subordinate”—who are you truly subordinate to? You are not a slave. They are dependent on your labor and you on their patronage. It is mutual.
Or “terminate”—why is such ceremonious negative language used? To make you feel bad that employment has “ended.” Which is what it is an “end,” “termination” is needless.
Or “performance improvement plan,” what improvement needs to be dictated to a professional? A professional knows their limits and places where they can or cannot provide satisfactory service. When a professional fails to deliver, a client or customer simply does not buy. A professional knows they lack because a service or good was not purchased. The ulterior motive here is to punish. That’s why.
My advice—don’t do this. While rarely there might be something interesting to learn from bad employment stories, writing them as someone who is not of notoriety just tarnishes one’s image. The benefit is only, and only rarely, for the reader.
I think this outlook is completely rational. I think the last bit is painfully true if you've ever been in a similar position and want to shout the injustice from the rooftops and future job interviews.
However, I think it's near impossible to actively maintain this clear headed detachment in many working arrangements. Unless your job has a lot of independent autonomous work time, you're stuck most of your waking day in this environment. The mental capacity to keep this grounded outlook while handling the daily job stress is too much IMO. Plus I believe we are somewhat wired from evolution to work in cooperation with others and have some need to feel valued or at least accepted in our work with others.
I agree with you and feel that younger employees lose sight of this more easily as their entire world revolves around their employment and those they work with.
Lack of a 'life' outside of work makes one myopic to the cold nature of employment and changes the dynamic so losing a job is an enormous emotional hit.
Start a family, go to church, cultivate friendships outside of your work. Your life will be better off for it and it will help keep this employee/employer relationship in its proper focus.
Years and years ago I worked at an organisation where I was expected to role play Dungeons and Dragons (polystyrene swords and all). When I refused it got tense.
The tipping point happened when I found a bug in the CTO's database code and it would run out of memory (not closing JDBC ResultSets). Then I started finding coins on the floor, I'd just pick them up and hand them in, I knew what was going on.
I didn't last long, glad I was ejected when I was.
Sure, when the employer provides 3 free squares a day, onsite massages, custom merch, team volleyball and a hiring process that emphasizes culture fit.
I've seen a pattern with some companies where people are afraid to leave, for lack of a better way of putting it, "It's hell but if I leave it will be even more hell for my friends I leave behind." It's often a form of 'trauma-bonding'.
> My advice—don’t do this. While rarely there might be something interesting to learn from bad employment stories, writing them as someone who is not of notoriety just tarnishes one’s image. The benefit is only, and only rarely, for the reader.
Yes, this is very good advice. You have at-will employment and there's little reason to stick around if you're unwanted and / or your interested / skilled in a different area. It just breeds resentment in both directions.
Speaking poorly about your prior employers will make future employers wary. Even if it was anonymous.
Why did this author write this piece in the first place? The author appears to be somewhat of a political activist and interested in the space https://www.wesleyfaulkner.com/
Nothing wrong with that, but it at least makes sense why this particular author is discussing their story.
> Speaking poorly about your prior employers will make future employers wary. Even if it was anonymous.
Perhaps in a previous world, but the power imbalance between employer and employees in the corporate world, and twice so in the tech corporate world is extreme today. The very presence of "quiet quitting" as a thing not immediately being turned around as "don't you mean required overwork?" shows how brainwashed people are today. The attitude of not talking honestly about one's employment treatment continues to perpetuate terrible working environments. Places like Glassdoor.com and if you remember fatbabies.com - they do society a great service.
My experience is that new potential employers don't dig that deep in what you did on social media or blogs, most input they gather comes directly from the employee. They want to know what skills you have and what personality you have, mostly by asking questions orally.
I called my boss out for bullying. They held a "process", which from my POV was inconclusive. He had been shouting at me for joking with colleagues in the office - they were not called out. My colleagues all thought he had been unreasonable; when he yelled at me, a deathly silence fell over the whole room, and nobody spoke until knocking-off time.
I think the problem was that he wasn't a techie; he was a slick salesman (this was a small firm). I think I was undermining him by existing.
I actually liked the guy; my complaint was that he was being unfair.
A couple of weeks later, I told him I was planning to retire, which I did 6 months later.
This is beautifully rational advice. But that makes it only half-complete as a guide for people going through these events. There also needs to be advice on how to handle the emotional and irrational side of being a person.
I don't have the full set of advice to help, but I would say this is a good first step:
"Be kind to yourself."
Nobody can hurt you more than you can. Especially when other folks try and push their faults off on you.
Your discourse makes perfect sense, but thinking more about it... this works when you behave almost like a robot, de-couple emotions from work. Provide service --> get paid. If that works for you and other employees, that's perfectly fine. From experience I know this does not work for me personally. A job has a feedback loop, from which fee or salary is part. For me that is only a small part. The biggest part of the feedback loop is satisfaction I get via social interaction, next to technical satisfaction -- making things that work.
When one gets -- publicly or not -- humiliated or downplayed, bullied, this has a very big impact on one's feelings and hence job satisfaction.
The biggest lesson I learned over the years: there are plenty of employers, each have a unique work culture and types of managers. If things go awry, switch jobs until you enter a culture that fits you well, and you will be happier. Don't dwell about it too much.
What you're saying here seems to be that corporations are inherently sociopathic constructs and one should approach employment with the cold calculating rationality of a machine. There is no reason to expect any empathy or solidarity. Sounds very bleak to be honest.
I agree. I've had employers that were sociopathic, weren't sociopathic but were such a mess that it was like being in a relationship with a heroin addict, and weren't sociopathic and cared (with actions, not just words) about my well-being beyond just my productivity.
Businesses are made of people. Businesses do bad and good things due to the decisions of the people involved.
If my bosses treat me with compassion and fairness, even in the face of hard choices, I'm going to reciprocate. If they don't -- and they treat me like a vending machine, for instance -- I'll also reciprocate (and might strongly consider switching employers, if I can.)
Bleak; but it's the truth. That's how the employer sees it. They may try to cultivate the "we're all like a family" atmosphere, but that's not how they see it. And not all families are lovely.
The power balance between the individual worker and a corporation is completely and utterly unequal, when renders your whole rant moot.
In fact, from my point of view your argument could be summed up as, "Corporations have no human emotions of any sort, particularly loyalty, and so workers need the most stringent and extreme protections against these psychopathic organizations."
My most recent boss, who was DAMN good, got his shit done etc... taught me one very important life lesson.
Stop at the end of the day. Pick a time, or a number of hours you'll work... and stop.
Close the laptop for work use, and that's that.
Pick it up tomorrow. Have a boundary.
Yes, I really like my current company. But that small boundary of stopping my day's work every day. Not carrying my work like a cross... Makes it so when things swing to and fro at work, my head is much more level. Even if you are on a roll and in the flow... consider closing the laptop when you lose your current flow.
Then go do something else! Play a video game, knit a sweater, take a walk, fly a kite, hug someone you love...
That's your time. Use it and enjoy it!
If you feel guilty, remember... Rest is critical to performance. The sooner you realize this, the happier you will be at work, and outside of work.
Source: Engineer of 25+ years, who has seen many things... And many stupid things :)
Unfortunately being on-call 24x7 is the base expectation at big companies, from my experience. And since most people seem to go along with it, standing up to it leads to you being bullied out.
It isn't free, you price it in day 1. There's a reason thsoe firms pay absurdly high.
Also: Boundaries still apply. When on-call, you deal with being on-call.
For a small firm, 24x7x265 on-call happens, but if you are getting called constantly, it is up to you to get the quality issue and toil fixed.
For a large firm, if I'm put on 24x7x365 call, I'd be asking for a LARGE premium.
If it is once every 5+ weeks, that's supporting prod. You do your week in the rotation... But that doesn't mean you are working hard that week. If anything I'd shorten my hours while on-call, so I have the energy to respond to an emergency.
Interesting. I've had the opposite experience. On-call was never expected (for software engineers... for Ops people in the NOC, SREs, etc., it was an explicit job requirement) at the larger places I've been inside of, but it has been an expectation (typically unspoken, typically in-addition-to an on-call rotation) for the smaller places and startups I've worked at.
"Unfortunately being on-call 24x7 is the base expectation at big companies,"
Occasionally is that true, unless you set that precedent early.
If you set boundaries up at the start, in most cases, they stick. It's just critical to assess early and modulate occasionally (exceptions happen) but its better than living to their schedule on your dime.
It feels like everyone could come up with a few 'war stories' of issues and people that they had to deal with during their career. While the story presented certainly makes the reader feel that the author was treated unfairly; we are only getting one side of the story and many relevant details might have been left out.
I could also relate a few stories about how I was not treated well and selectively include only the parts that make me look good and my nemesis look bad; but that would just be self-serving. That is not to say that there are not many examples of bad behavior out there that should be exposed and lessons learned; but I am just trying to figure out what the lesson is in this case.
Even with one side of the story, an engineer being iced out by an SVP to me comes off as completely unprofessional and quite frankly childish on the part of an SVP. If I was the CEO of that org and I had one of my SVP's do this, I'm pretty sure my exact words to them would be: "You're a Senior Vice President, fucking act like it".
By this logic you would never believe what anyone is saying because its always 'one side of the story and many relevant details might have been left out.'
So what must one do, go on living a cynical life where you never take anyone's word for what its worth?
But by your logic you would believe everything everybody else said - which is the EXACT behavior that put the guy in the article in the position he was in, by his own account. Assuming everything he says is true, he wouldn’t been “bullied out” if people had been skeptical of what his boss said.
All hierarchical systems have this fundamental problem: it's not uncommon for people of relatively low competence to get into higher-ranked positions, and then their fear of being replaced by a more competent but lower-ranked person starts dominating their decisions and behavior. In the technical and academic worlds, these tend to be people who are skilled at politics but who have poor grasp of the technical or scientific skills that their position requires.
I think flattening excessively pyramidal hierarchies are the only real solution for this problem, but that's not much comfort for those who find themselves derailed due to this dynamic.
Practically, such people tend to be very concerned about their underlings also being their 'supporters' so if you can stomach it, presenting yourself as a fawning admirer and loyal henchperson is one route forward, although likely damaging to your own mental health and productivity. Jumping ship to another berth as soon as possible is the other option (of course, don't tell anyone this is your plan, as that will spark retaliatory efforts).
>Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
>First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
>Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
>The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
I have my own term that dominates large hierarchies: the Middle Management Machiavelli.
These people don't care about the organization, and they don't care about producing things, or even doing their job. Their full time job is gaining power and climbing the ladder. Everyone is fighting for budget and headcount and appearances. And taking credit for things.
I would say that there are three phases:
1) the creators/doers: the company aligns to being productive and successful with these people focused on whatever does that.
2) as it increases in size, upper management transitions from industry skills to managerial people. Thus Pournelle's second class comes to dominate. Here the company still may grow and managerial tricks like acquisitions and financial cookbooking will continue growth, but nothing revolutionary. The company begins to plateau.
3) with people settling into a more fixed reporting structure, now the machiavellis will begin to fight over internal territory, and since the top managers are just sociopaths themselves, they let it happen. The company becomes a cesspool of battlegrounds, and will begin to slowly rot.
The only thing that saves companies these days is that the US economy is now structured around monopolies and cartels, so companies can obtain direct control and then establish barriers.
But the net effect of all markets being cartel/monopoly dominated is that the lack of competition means companies fall into stage 3 more easily, but can't be displaced. So the entirety of the US is now all these cartel/monopolies weighing down the country as a whole, and it becomes overall more and more corrupt.
Man, it sounds crazy, but that fits what we see with our eyes every day in the tech industry
A handful of motivated startup entrepreneurs will cobble something together in months that would've taken Microsoft or Google dozens of people years to accomplish
And in the current political climate, that startup will just get bought out or crushed by one of the megacorps instead of dethroning them
Doesn't look like a healthy division. Presumably you'll need a healthy organization to achieve the goals. Technicians will do the job, but someone will need to keep the organization in shape, it won't happen by itself.
This rule states that it will happen "by itself", in that if you look at any large organization, the dynamic described happens to be true. Of course, it happened because somebody thought that the organization had to be kept "in shape", in accordance with some "shape" he envisioned. But organizations that don't do this fizzle out and don't exist as such, so you never get to observe them.
Flattening excessive hierarchical structures is the solution, but the devil is in that "excessive" qualification. It's best to eliminate narrow choke-points where a single person can make themselves a problem for the whole organization, and that may mean lopping to top of the pyramid off (a pyramid, unless truncated, narrows to a single point.)
But if you try to flatten all hierarchy entirely, you create a new sort of problem; an informal hierarchy where the only rule is to be popular: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
In well designed democratic systems, there is a rigidly enforced hierarchy, ideally structured and organized to limit the power of any one person. In a structureless system those safeguards don't exist. Things might work for a while, until people make a mistake of electing a dictator who decides to hold onto power. Now you don't have a democracy anymore.
A flatter system actually tends to avoid the key man problem. A team of 20 is almost certain to have someone who can take the lead's job if he leaves. A team of 4, not so much.
I suspect the degree of hidden incompetence in any organisation can be
measured by the number of "imposter syndrome awareness training
initiatives" handed down.
In fact, I've almost never worked with people who are proper
charlatans, winging it and dreading exposure. They are dealt with by
their peers. Most in the rank and file help each other out, confide
and support, since we all suffer the same anxieties about trying to be
good in a world that seldom recognises achievement.
But the higher one ascends, the more often we encounter people
elevated by the Peter Principle to precarious standing, who then
preempt being called-out by weaving an air of victimhood or even
martyrdom around their position.
"Don't you dare question me" is implied in almost everything they do.
These people at the "top" are very, very scared, can't quite
understand how they got there, and imagine it will all unravel at any
moment. They are also quite often frozen by fear, meaning that an
eerie silence surrounds the levers of power which nobody dare touch.
I think "imposter syndrome" is a real thing. But it's much more
complex and significant than we're currently understanding it. There
are real imposters, who deserve to be ousted, and if we're not careful
they will use "imposter syndrome" to entrench further.
This is not a good culture, either for leaders or those they lead.
Peter principle people ascend and keep in place for two reasons:
1) they are loyal and take orders from above
2) they are not a threat to those that are above, or those that are going up the ladder (assuming they can be promoted somewhere else)
Also, people tend to go into management when they have kids/get married. These people are conservative/seek stability. They are liked by management because their family ensures compliance and loyalty.
But kids and life situations and advancing age can sap people of the energy to be good at the job they once did. Plus, people do hard work to get where they want to be, and then lay off when they get there, another way that people may appear incompetent: they stopped trying hard when they reached a level of satisfaction.
Point of fact, the Peter Principle affects any organization that promotes based on merit, it's orthogonal to the considerations you mention.
* People aren't good at everything.
* Jobs at different levels in the org hierarchy require different skills.
* If people are promoted based on skill/merit they eventually arrive at a role for which they are unsuited.
> The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.
> I think flattening excessively pyramidal hierarchies are the only real solution for this problem, but that's not much comfort for those who find themselves derailed due to this dynamic.
although probably unpopular, one way around this is to have mandatory rotation of people between worker/leader roles, that way people get more equal opportunity to get leadership/management experience and politics would potentially be dampened because you'd be out of that role anyways in 6 months...
maybe that wouldn't work for every industry, but its something i've thought about a lot
That kind of rotational system is used in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every role, from teacher to pastor, in a local congregation is done by lay members. Because each person rotates between various roles over the years, there are no political incentives to try to climb the ranks.
It might play out differently in a workplace setting, but a rotational system works well in that religious context.
This is nice if it works, but management and leadership are specific skills that not all people have off the bat.
What is it that management does that would lend itself to transferability and rotations? If leadership’s contribution is primarily to provide updates to others or to schedule meetings, sure that’s easily replaceable. If leadership is about being empathetic and resolving conflicts, everyone brings a different style of handling this to the table and not everyone wants that sort of work. That’s the start of politics. If leadership is about making tough decisions and being held accountable for those decisions and getting teams to buy in and coordinate work around that, then switching people every six months could destroy any accountability and stability entirely.
Politics is what happens when two sides disagree, and what happens next. You aren’t going to avoid it except without groupthink. Most people are reactive to “bad” politics, just like bad sales and bad management. When it is handled well, people don’t notice it or realize it.
I don’t think this is relegated to certain industries or certain team sizes. It’s a question of roles and responsibilities, and if changing a company’s M.O. from one thing to something quite radically something else. If you’ve ever tried to change a company culture (really, a collection of a bunch of individuals’ cultures), then you know this is a huge huge task and it’s often easier/lower cost/more effective to understand your current culture and how to be most effective within that than to come in and try to change everything.
Also, Chesterton’s Fence and the like. We’ve have great social experiments in rotating leadership and in practice, people bring whatever lens they view the world to the leadership table, which is great until it isn’t.
thanks for thoughtful reply, definitely a lot to think about and consider
> Most people are reactive to “bad” politics, just like bad sales and bad management. When it is handled well, people don’t notice it or realize it.
yes, definitely, i guess (at least when i use that word) most people probably mean "bad politics" when they say "politics" and that was what i mean... good to clarify that
> I don’t think this is relegated to certain industries or certain team sizes. It’s a question of roles and responsibilities
good point!
> We’ve have great social experiments in rotating leadership and in practice, people bring whatever lens they view the world to the leadership table, which is great until it isn’t.
yes, that can be an issue for sure. i guess what i was thinking was through the chance of being lead by someone who was previously under them and vice-versa there is more of a chance for managers to re-evaluate that lens and reduce those "bad" politics...
> although probably unpopular, one way around this is to have mandatory rotation of people between worker/leader roles
I think simple elections would go a long way towards worker happiness at least. Making the managers beholden to the people they manage would certainly shift dynamics.
But then, I'd also fear that a democratically ran company would struggle making hard decisions.
This is Sortition, a well known but rarely tried solution to the excessive competiveness of choosing leaders and winners in merit contests. Without it, selection processes devolve into a surd peacocking, competing over tiny differences and irrelevant challenges.
The department in which I got my MS did this with their department heads. Probably two thirds of the tenured professors had been dept. head, it seemed to result in a lot of respect (and sympathy) within the department.
> I think flattening excessively pyramidal hierarchies are the only real solution for this problem, but that's not much comfort for those who find themselves derailed due to this dynamic.
I don't see a problem. The SVP was correct to do what they did. IMO they should have fired this guy, not just threatened them.
This was a junior engineer posting about internal company work on social media. The junior engineer knew they were supposed to reach out to the public relations team (per the article); but the engineer kept posting anyway. The public relations point team was asking the guy to stop and he was refusing until directly threatened with termination.
How would you handle this? Imagine if someone in marketing started committing code and force pushing code to production? That's effectively what this junior engineer was doing with marketing.
The article goes out of its way to tell us that this guy received extensive training in what he was and was not allowed to say on social media from the PR team, and was doing well enough that he was a founding member of that company’s social media team.
I’m not sure where you’re drawing your conclusion from.
I replied in this thread to a different comment, but suffice to say, we're only seeing this engineers view on the topic.
From a company perspective, how do you handle someone who's gained a social media following and is posting about the company and acting as a company spokesman without being approved to do so.
You would collect all the information you can, then tell the guy to knock it off or be fired. That appears to be what happened.
Whatever the specifics of this particular situation, it may be worth observing that this seems to be in the context of rather early social media days. "When Twitter was launched, I was an early adopter."
And a lot of companies were really feeling their way into social media at that point (and by no means were their strategies necessarily broadly agreed to internally). I've seen first hand how many companies did not have well-articulated and specific policies and individuals were sort of on their own to do the "right thing" the interpretation of which was likely to differ depending upon what exec you asked.
It's hard to say what exactly happened in this case but in the mid- to late-2000s, it would have been very easy for an enthusiastic social media user posting about company matters to run afoul of someone used to company communications happening through tightly controlled channels.
From what the engineer explicitly details and according to your own logical rules that you laid out.. nothing was violated.
You're simply saying you believe the engineer is lying and dishonest. This is possible but there's nothing compelling about your assumption unless you provide evidence that supports it. Otherwise it's just sort of a random assumption.
I mean, Yeah sure, for example, I could assume that he also has anger issue problems that he's unaware about, but that's a random assumption... Why would anyone care? In short I'm saying what compelling evidence do you have to make your assumption more relevant?
Well no you wouldn't say "company financials" to escalate it, you would just be generic and say "proprietary information". There was enough suspicious stuff going on (being uninvited from internal group chats) that you can't chalk it up to one-off accidental miscommunications.
Besides, unless I misunderstood, it doesn't seem like the "knock it off" was directly communicated to the employee by the svp at any point, which a good faith manager would probably do, unless they have a severe nonconfrontatiomality issue (some managers do)
If the company was publicly traded and if the author was discussing unreleased products and speaking as a company employee, then yes it could impact the FTC reports (i.e. financials). However, those details weren't shared.
(Speaking of which, if this was AMD -- I likely traded on this guys information lol I made a boat load off employees sharing information they shouldn't have publicly)
> There was enough suspicious stuff going on (being uninvited from internal group chats) that you can't chalk it up to one-off accidental miscommunications.
We have no idea what actually happened, what we can say is that from the author's own statement(s) they continued to post on social media and stopped sending it to the PR team. To me, this reads that the author was given repeated hints / directly told to stop and wasn't listening. My guess is the training was, "hey you're probably not supposed to be posting this, review the training please".
That said, we don't know. I'm not saying this was handled well, but this definitely wasn't being "bullied" out of a job. Their job was engineering, they were pushed out of social media, at best; after not being hired for it.
I believe you, I'm trying to counter the narrative that there is some way you could have misinterpreted otherwise "normal" administrative disciplinary communication
You'd think if he wasn't approved to do so then they would've actually told him to knock it off and not, you know, give him PR training and put him on a social media council.
Imagine the scenario where they did do this. And the employee was intransigent and didn't follow orders. Do you think it's possible this sort of person would also present a skewed account of what happened?
You have no idea if the perspective presented it accurate.
> Do you think it's possible this sort of person would also present a skewed account of what happened?
Sure, but it's pretty hard to skew being included in the very part of an organization that presumably influences how said organization represents itself on social media. Are you insinuating that the author is outright lying about that?
Strong disagreement. If there's any problem (which there usually isn't) you bring them into the loop. I've seen this repeatedly even at huge companies like Microsoft.
This is ridiculous. If you have a problem with what someone is doing you say "I have a problem with what you're doing, for the following reasons." You don't drop oblique threats or do the other nonsense mentioned in the article.
Obviously we don't know the other side of the story but you are making a massive leap from what is presented and ignoring the completely reasonable alternatives to what the SVP is reported to have done.
> I was super excited I was actually getting an opportunity to pursue my engineering dreams. The word "engineer" was even in my job title!
He joined twitter and started sending his content to the PR team for approval:
> In fact, I was so prolific on social media that I got the attention of several industry analysts who asked how my company used social media for brand promotion and marketing. Of course, since I was in engineering, I sent these inquiries over to our PR department. ... I often tweeted about what we were doing, what the company was releasing, and what conferences I would attend. I understood the confidentiality policies at the company and never shared any confidential information. The company even gave me formal PR training so I would know what I could and couldn't say. ... After fielding several of my PR referrals, I eventually got the attention of a senior vice president at the company, let's call him Rick Dickerson. He then asked me if I could teach him how to use Twitter.
The author was clearly stepping out of their role and impacting public relations. The SVP asked them to explain what they were doing and be introduced to those the engineer was working with (in social media). Then they flagged future content and told them to stop.
The SVP was ensuring they had the information they needed to protect the company and then limit any future off-message content being produced. The SVP wanted this engineer out of the social media space and needed him stopped.
> At that moment, it became clear that the SVP didn't just want to get me away from anything social media related in the company; he wanted me out of the company entirely. He was trying to get me fired.
I'm not saying I would have done it this way, but this is what happened via the article.
I don't get it. All I see is an SVP, who has the power to just say "Stop it" apparently jealous of this engineer's popularity and pushing him out to remove the personal threat, not company threat.
That's fascinating, if completely missed that narrative. Obviously I assumed the OP was biased but I had not seen your narrative as an option from the facts, though I do now.
> started sending his content to the PR team for approval:
are you reading something I'm not?
It says other companies were asking HIM how his company used socials for PR.
> I sent these inquiries over to our PR department
He directed these companies over to their PR department for an actual answer, he didn't send his posts over to the PR department.
> After fielding several of my PR referrals, I eventually got the attention of a senior vice president (...) He then asked me if I could teach him how to use Twitter.
This SVP noticed he was basically sending them free marketing and decided it would be great to learn how to use it himself.
Nothing in your quote says he was sending his posts over to PR for approval at all.
He was effectively self-grooming for the position, isn't that what you're supposed to do? He was getting internal training for the role and claims to follow the policies he was taught. You are making claims without evidence.
> He was getting internal training for the role and claims to follow the policies he was taught.
His posts were being flagged by the PR team.
I suspect it's because he was discussing products without going through the PR team (because they would have told him to stop).
All my arguments are from the article itself.
> He was effectively self-grooming for the position, isn't that what you're supposed to do?
If someone from marketing came down and started force pushing code to production, would that be self-grooming? No, you'd expect a PR and some review process, which wasn't occurring here.
> ... I showed Rick the platform's essential functions. Eventually, he created the company's Social Media Council, and I was appointed as one of the founding members.
It seems the SVP was in company representative in charge of PR / social media? If so, he was the party responsible for the team and thus "the team"?
> The SVP backchanneled unfounded complaints to my director in order to get me in trouble.
Seems like the SVP was going through the command chain to direct his complaints / concerns to you. That's the typical way corporate structures work.
If any of that had happened the order of events would have been different.
He would have received warnings that he was violating company policy. The SVP would have addressed him directly and asked him to stop tweeting about the company instead of asking him to be taught. His manager wouldn't have been confused about the complaint.
None of your arguments are from the article. You're going way out of your way to assume the engineer is in the wrong and omitting information in the article.
> Eventually, he acquired the tweets in question, and we were both stunned about why these benign tweets, which were clearly not about the company's financials, were being flagged. Then, he finally confided in me that the person who reported this to him was the SVP I had been working with previously, Rick.
Your seemed to imply above that the SVP got involved because of already-flagged tweets, whereas the part of the story you've quoted happened after the SVP had not only met the author and appointed him to the company's social media council, but after the SVP started ghosting him.
The causality you're implying (if not explying) seems inverted.
If you are taking them at their word, this came directly from SVP and not some PR policy AND it was not related to financials. So are you calling OP a liar or not?
Think of the game theory and organizational evolution in such a flat hierarchy, especially when the flat section is a middle management level.
This flat hierarchy works at the low level. It already does almost everywhere on the border of "production workers" and "low management".
But in the middle management, the incentive is promotion and control. You start out with a flattened hierarchy, and say 20 managers vying for promotion, well, you probably won't get promoted. Then why try hard? Uhoh, now most of your managers will either:
1) leave
2) fight over / jockey over being the "senior level" of the 20 underlings
3) stop trying
4) embezzle
5) gradually conspire to "unflatten" and add more levels, gain control (solid line or dotted line) to the territory of your peers
I saw the most extreme example of low competence bullying. A manager with less than 1 year of experience fired a contractor project manager who was a previous energy company CEO, turn-around CEO, and company board member/advisor. The guy was fixing some of the tangled bureaucratic work flows (which made everyone's lives better) when he got the axe.
You introduced 'low level', and GP said 'contractor', maybe the fees were enormous ('I turned around XYZ Corp as CEO, and I can come in temporarily and do it for you too').
(Also note that what organisations term a 'project' can vary a hell of a lot.)
I'm looking for people with knowledge or researching the dynamics of work groups. I find there's so much inefficiency that there must be a better way. So much human waste due to bad hierarchies.
Sometimes people "badly" promoted don't even seek power, they just end up at that spot, and the heat makes them turn sour, or stiff, because there something in us that makes us want to keep appearances up (and also probably the financial benefits, but I'm not even sure, and some did say so to me, that it's worth the money)
the tyranny of structurelessness is arguably worse because there will always be hierarchies and in a so-called flat org they just become invisible and unaccountable
It is really easy to tell apart people who despise office politics and people who don't. I have a theory that the best way to run an organization is to remove anyone who doesn't actively hate that stuff regardless of competence level.
Cash rules everything around me is the only emotionally healthy attitude to take about your career. Every time I would be told "we're a family" by a potential employer, I added $25k to my minimum salary. If corporations are "family" then that family belongs on Jerry Springer, and receiving group Dialectic Behavioral Therapy.
Punch in, do a good job, punch out, have a life outside of your job. Don't socialize with co-workers, don't spend all of your free time on work projects or talking to other colleagues online. Do anything you can to compartmentalize and separate work from home.
Work is how you pay the bills, it is not who you are.
I held this attitude for the first few years of my career, having read hacker news in school. I have found that, for me, a more balanced approach works better. I have been through layoffs, but I have also gone to the weddings of coworkers and even managers.
Trying to keep that adversarial boundary was actually draining for me, so for any other young person out there reading this: moderation in all things
Exactly this. I've generally loved the small teams I've been on, and keep in touch with co workers from every company I've worked for and left. But that doesn't mean I held any allegiance to the company that we both worked for. I like people not corporations. Yes it sucks to 'leave' your friends behind at a job, but if they're really your friends you'll still keep in touch.
agreed. the overly cynical take is way too negative and draining for something that you spend like 1/3rd of your waking hours doing. Making light friendships and doing the occasional social thing can lead to _shock horror_ actually enjoying some of that work time. hardcore cynicism and clinical detachment leads to misery in its own right.
> Every time I would be told "we're a family" by a potential employer, I added $25k to my minimum salary.
This is also why it's super important to screen for these kinds of signals during the interview process, and why interviewees asking questions is super critical.
I'm in a very very similar position, I got hired to lead a team in a flat style, months later the CEO said to me he will hire someone else to do this role to make me focus on my current project, let's call this GuyA-bigTitleA.
I was ok with it (and it was ok at the beginning) before GuyA-bigTitleA turns into a control maniac who changed the flat into hierarchical, all the way to the point he wanted to sit next to me to tell me what to write in my own ticket, not just I'm a senior and technically miles ahead of him, but I hold several leadership designation and held several titles in the past.
I tried to communicate that with him but with no avail, months forward with all what that accompany including undermining/downplaying/credit taking/etc. in a close coordination with GuyB-bigTitleB, it escalated once to the point he shouted at me, insulted me in the middle of the office, it's when approached who hired me (the CEO) and told him this guy can no longer be my manager or I'm out.
The CEO, being relatively reasonable guy trying all his best to keep the talents in his small business, apologized in his behalf (GuyA-bigTitleA never apologized till now after months of it happening), and promised to make fundamental changes, that was 7 months ago and nothing changed yet, GuyA and GuyB hold the highest rank in our division with access to all resources, communications, team, etc. and work in coordination to either set me up or trying all their best to justify firing me as they cannot do it directly, they even tried to hinder the project progress just to make a point that my skills are not on par (it was successfully delivered among other projects and I’m proud of that with all of what was happening) and I'm still at the bottom of this hierarchy, now they work persistently to “make me replaceable” at all cost.
While I’m usually resilience to stress, It was at some point exhausting in terms of mental health in addition to the stress that come with the work itself (engineering and robotics), and because I love (probably as other mentioned not falling in love is the key) robotics, I'm still kind of waiting for the CEO changes, part of me is saying he is stalling and will never change anything, and other part says otherwise he's just waiting for the "right moment". But I can totally relate to the story as I'm living it right now.
So you gave your CEO an ultimatum (guy can no longer by your manager or you're out), and then when he does nothing to resolve your situation, you backed down from the ultimatum? There are other robotics companies in the world.
That's what I'm debating right now, will the CEO change things or not, in two occasions in the past months he reaffirms that he will, and that what's holding me, it's temporary soon it will be clear whether he will do it or not.
And I agree there are other robotic companies, but the team (beside these two) is great, and I contributed a lot in its growth in the past 2.5 years -I'm now the oldest employee-, so trying my best to give it a chance, maybe at least until the holiday, I don’t want to regret it in the future that I rushed without giving a second chance.
You most likely have a lot of valuable experience that many great robotics teams sorely need. At the very least you could start talking to your network, recruiters, and other companies to see what your worth is. You don't have to commit to anything but you are doing yourself a great disservice by not exploring other options and sticking to a place that doesn't seem to properly appreciate you.
Have an alternative job offer in hand so that you can leave on your own terms. I've been in similar situation in the past, and in hindsight if the top layer is toxic/incompetent, it eventually trickles down.
Wow, this is eerily similar to my previous employer (even down to the industry!). I loved loved loved the product, my role in it's success, and the problems I was tasked with solving. Unfortunately, humans can take all of the fun out of robots.
I too pride my self in stress resilience, but at a certain point I realized the joy in my work was offset by the annoyance of interpersonal issues. Leaving the company was bittersweet. I was still going to work in robotics, but it certainly wasn't as "cool". Now that it's been a few months at my new gig, I realize my QoL is much better as I actually enjoy the people I primarily work with.
Providing ultimatums to upper management may cure your woes, but you have to be willing back up the consequences you promised. So if action isn't taken by the CEO you'll need to fulfill your promise of leaving, or at least get an offer to show you're serious. If things don't change when you show your strongest hand, that's definitely a sign it's time to leave.
7 months and no action... dude they are just milking you for your work ethic. GuyA can put you down and you will stand and deliver, what incentive does he have to not keep pulling the same move, why would CEO care if it gets results?
>GuyA can put you down and you will stand and deliver, what incentive does he have to not keep pulling the same move, why would CEO care if it gets results?
Care to elaborate, please? GuyA can't tell me what to do anymore since that incident, I report directly to the CEO right now.
I've lost multiple jobs because of terrible co-workers and idiot bosses who don't have the faintest clue of the difference between a moral person and an immoral one. They would much rather keep the people the know already, than keep the person that brings the problem to their attention.
This needs to change. My solution may seem a bit extreme to some people, but I think businesses should be shut down for doing that sort of thing. And the respective owners/bosses/management/employees to the situation put through a stint of incarceration.
My reasoning is that they already don't obey the labor laws, so slapping them with fines and minor reprimands is pointless. Gotta go whole hog on these people so they get the point. Their actions (or lack of thereof) are not going to be tolerated.
Luckily, my current employers seem more reasonable, so that's nice. But it's part time work, and when I say part time, I really mean it. It's almost practically a gig job.
But there are no dumb co-workers, because the bosses are the co-workers.
After reading to the end, I was surprised to see race being mentioned as a possible reason to why this person was bullied--it wasn't something I was considering up to that point. The story is one-sided, and I supposed it can only be that way. But it could be that author was naive about something that they did or was doing unintentionally to upset the SVP or someone else close to the SVP. Either way, I think the SVP's behavior was abhorrent as well as the manager's.
Ineffective managers are a real problem, I have first hand experience. There is nothing worse than being in a toxic environment where your manager doesn't support or showcase your work. The only solution to these situations is usually too look for other internal opportunities or resign.
The larger the organization, the more systematic this problem usually tends to be, this is just my experience of course.
It's been the opposite for me. Larger organizations (i'm talking huge, like FAANG), have been much more supportive. The management is usually more seasoned. I've seen really small startups with super inexperienced founders be the biggest culprit of this kind of stuff.
Thankfully I haven't run into very many actual bullies during my career; though I do sometimes wonder if, in fact, I had but I simply was seldom the target (I'm male and white). I only really had one, at a company that's somewhat known for having a higher than average number of bullies. I already had a lot of experience and so was confident and a fairly senior engineer while I was there, so I tried to use that privilege as best I could on behalf of the rest of the team, many of whom were more junior or on visas or otherwise more vulnerable.
I lasted a year before moving on for better pay and less stress (again, a path open to me that's not always open to others). That manager moved on as well, but just to another team at a different location. That didn't do much for my impression of the company.
I don't know what good, if any, I accomplished in my visible and consistent pushing back against this manager. I hope some. If nothing else, I hope it showed my less experienced co-workers who might not know better that the way our manager acted was not ok, and that there are many other companies and ways of working out there.
Thank you Wesley for sharing this story--I know that it will help others feel less alone!
If you've experienced bias, prejudice, bullying, discrimination, harassment, or physical violations--or some bullshit but you're not sure how to categorize it--reach out. Happy to help you tell your story. It can be cathartic, and it can help others too. https://www.justworktogether.com/lets-talk
That was a heartbreaking story of malfeasance. This is why transparency is important -- I'd certainly want to know if one of the directors or senior executives that reported to me were engaging in bad behavior, and I'd want people (especially their reports) to feel safe in reporting that, anonymously or otherwise. Aside from the ethical reasons to protect folks this way, losing someone talented and passionate can be an economic disaster for a company.
If this isn't the biggest failed opportunity to name and shame, I dunno what is. People like this should be eviscerated in the same social media sphere they work in.
My natural state is to become highly emotionally invested in the success of companies I work for. I struggled with this, especially when I was prevented from fixing issues that were really hurting the companies. Everything from going through proper channels to getting the "not your job".
Now I do consulting instead. I still get emotionally invested in the success of my clients but my job is specifically to help them run more effectively. Ended up that the solution for me has just been to find the job that allows me to help in the way most natural for me.
This makes me very sad, because in my 30 years I've seen so many of you burn out. I was like that for the first 15 years of my career until I watched a manager turn into a billionaire by abusing everybody who worked for him. My last 15 years I detached, and found myself much happier. My bipolar disorder became manageable, my addictions went away, my health improved, and my finances improved.
Your job will never love you back. Your employer's interests are diametrically opposed to you having a happy life.
It makes me sad that so many people seem incapable of understanding that you can both enjoy your job and be emotionally invested in the outcomes you produce while still living a healthy lifestyle.
It makes me sad that so many people here and elsewhere are content to just spend a third of their day 5 times a week for something they don't care about and don't get excited over. Is that really "healthier"?
I have a job where the code I write has a direct positive impact on the people the use our software. I enjoy seeing those positive outcomes. I enjoy seeing what my team and I created at the end of a hard sprint. There are certainly things I don't enjoy, as is the case with any job, but for the most part I feel good about how I spent those 8-9 hours at the end of the day.
I think the GP is getting misinterpreted. The devil can be found in how you interpret "emotionally invested".
I try to stay emotionally detached from everything I do for a company. Even recently this helped me through a layoff and transition. I worked for a full year, mostly by my self, to put together a tool the company desperately needed to grow but couldn't afford a full team to build. Some 20,000+ lines of code lovingly put together to do the job exactly as described with full end to end tests and everything.
Then the new guys came in and said the project is scrapped. Stuff is getting shipped overseas, and they're going to instead try to kludge some off the shelf stuff into the role. All my work, a year and thousands of lines of code, gone in an instant. If I was emotionally attached to my work, in the literal sense, I would've been crushed. I wasn't because at the end of the day they paid me to make something that could be destroyed. In this sense, money is the most important thing. I wouldn't work for free even if I was promised what I was doing would save humanity.
I don't get excited by company visions or goals. I don't get excited when the CEO talks a big game, or the engineering VPs tell us how good we are. I don't care about hiring processes, meetings with the PMs, or the exact nature of whatever it is I am building. All I care about is the fundamental act of coding is enjoyable to me - and that's what keep me in the industry. I've been in the industry over a decade now. I realize sprint goals along with everything else a company focuses on is mostly trivia. The people in charge universally lack the ability to understand the nature and motivations of an actually talented engineer.
But it is eye opening that in over a decade I have never had a company say "we need to make this code easier to add to" or "we should make this as flexible as we could need for the future". There's never budget for good engineering. Just getting the product done. So it makes no sense to have any attachment to exactly what you do. But rather the art, so to speak, of doing it. Emotional attachment is how you end up in therapy after getting laid off. Save yourself the trouble.
Aristotle wrote quite a bit on this subject. Check out Nicomachean Ethics for a nice dry read.
I think Aristotle would say that since a job is ultimately not in your control and you can be fired for reasons out of your control, you must compartmentalize your attachment, or detach altogether, if you wish to avoid pain.
It’s also an insight from Buddhism that expectation and attachment are core causes for suffering.
And you can lose a friendship, romantic partner, child, or anything else for reasons out of your control.
Yes, expectation and attachment are core causes for pain/grief/suffering. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have expectations or attachments. It's just that you have to decide if the (potential or actual) grief and suffering is worth it, and under what terms you're willing to continue to have that expectation or attachment. This is where acceptance and boundaries have a huge part to play.
That's sometimes a difficult question. What kind of relationship to have with an emotionally abusive parent? Whether to leave a job that's financially very rewarding but is also extremely stressful and 60-80 hour weeks are common?
Honestly I was tempted to quote the five remembrances from buddhism: “everything you love will come to change.” We put them up on gravestones for Halloween one year.
Buddhism decidedly doesn’t say “ergo, don’t love things.” It’s more “love things (people) as they are, without attachment and in full knowledge that they are ephemeral.”
Avoiding loving anything is surely different than avoiding loving a job.
I think you can get a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction out of a job without losing sight of the fact that it's a business arrangement... one which may stop being mutually beneficial for any number of reasons.
When I was younger I loved all kinds of things, until I grew older and realized many of those things weren’t all that special, and eventually the number of things I truly loved could be counted with one hand. Nowadays, I think I only need one finger.
Loving things is painful. Avoiding loving things is also painful. I'm not sure which is worse. Life is full of pain no matter what you do, so I guess a big part is acceptance, and being able to sit with and accept the pain.
Absolutely. Or to put it another way, loving your job is great, but being jealously, madly in love should be avoided.
I've sometimes wondered if there should be term limits on most jobs? E.g. no more than 8 years in any one company, and maybe no more than 3 years in any one position. Something like that.
had a C-suite exactly like this come in who had a problem with everything i did on day one and squeezed me out with mediocre buddies of his. at a different job, VP shat on an idea I proposed, then implemented it after i left.
extremely common and made me resolve to check out of the rat race because the clear message is that companies are not meritocracies and power speaks a lot more than logic.
Everything about this just reads...weird. The spacing, the conclusion, the cause... all of it.
The author got mouthy on twitter (by their own admission) about company information. I don't think this person got "bullied" out of their job being innocent. Most companies, even the most "inclusive" will target employees who are talking negatively in public about them.
It sounds like the author should've left the company instead of attempting to use weird passive-aggressive tactics to enact change. The conclusion seems to imply that they were racially profiled but the writing suggests that they were, at least in part, someone who instigated the company's response. I'm not convinced the author is making the point they want to make about actual bullying in a corporation.
You're injecting emotion and words that were never in the post. I didn't get "mouthy". I also wasn't "negative". It also wasn't the "company" that targeted me. I wasn't "enacting change". There was never a "company response".
I'm not sure that the issue is necessarily that someone was selected for "bullying," as opposed to the "squeeze employee, and toss out dried husk" thing, that many managers do. It has happened to me, frequently, in my career, as I am open, enthusiastic, and friendly. Cynical bastards take that as "weak, and easily manipulated."
I learned to guard against it, fairly early on, and have refused to become a bastard (easy to do).
I had a friend that had a T-shirt that said "Old age and treachery beat youth and enthusiasm, every time."
Since this was done by an exec, I will bet that was the case, here. The fact that he was a young person, and a black person, probably helped with naïveté, and probably helped make him "more disposable," but I have seen exactly this, many times over, and the recipient of the squeezing is not always a marginalized demographic (like me. I am a white male. Not exactly marginalized).
Many people in C-level roles (or aspirants, thereof) are people that seem (in my opinion), to be downright sociopathic. The people around them; especially those at a lower echelon, are considered "disposable assets."
The guy saw him being an energetic go-getter, and used that to extract his knowledge. The death knell was when he asked to be given the guy's "Rollodex," so to speak ("Introduce me at SXSW"). When I read that, I knew exactly what was coming next.
I do believe that there is real bullying, from insecure jerks (I have seen it, and experienced it), but this sounds more like garden-variety usury by a sociopathic upper manager.
Rick Dickerson sounds like many, many high-level assholes that I have met, during my career. Most were actually assets to their companies. They made the company money, and got the results the shareholders wanted, so their personal proclivities were ignored.
I am glad that the author was able to get past it. I have watched many folks absolutely shattered by this.
In my own case, I dealt with something more like bullying, but not exactly the same, when I slammed into the ageism wall, after leaving my company. Many of the folks I dealt with were jaw-droppingly rude. I can easily see people just throwing in the towel, and walking away. In my case, I'm an ornery cuss. It just made me madder, and more energized. Sounds like the author may also be an ornery cuss.
> I'm not sure that the issue is necessarily that someone was selected for "bullying," as opposed to the "squeeze employee, and toss out dried husk" thing, that many managers do.
> [...]
> I do believe that there is real bullying, from insecure jerks (I have seen it, and experienced it), but this sounds more like garden-variety usury by a sociopathic upper manager.
Same shit, different toilet. Bullying is an alarmingly-common way to Peter Principle yourself into positions of greater power, and bullies loathe anyone who even minutely and accidentally threatens that power. They squeeze subordinates because they are bullies, and it's about time we called 'em like they are.
Fair point. I would say that bullying is something insecure people do to feel better about themselves, though.
Sociopaths are often not insecure, at all. They just act cruel, because it achieves an end. They can also act amazingly empathetic (then switch it around in a second).
People like Adolf Hitler and Idi Amin were known for being incredibly engaging, sympathetic, and entertaining, but would whisper "Kill him," to the guard, on the way out.
> Many people in C-level roles (or aspirants, thereof) are people that seem (in my opinion), to be downright sociopathic. The people around them; especially those at a lower echelon, are considered "disposable assets."
Yeah, this is the underlying problem. The hierarchies and incentives in our society are such that they reward sociopathy, and sociopaths rise to the top.
This jerk SVP sounds like the classic narcissist, using OP and sucking all the knowledge from him so he could prop himself up as a “social media guru” and carve out a higher paying niche for promotion while OP languishes.
Narcissists act like your best friend until they are done using you, learn how to spot them and how to play the game if you are in their crosshairs and they outrank you.
I'm curious what author was working on. What's a home entertainment PC? Surely any PC could be configured and used for whatever entertainment one chooses?
I didn't disclose specifics because it would reveal the company I was talking about, but it was in conjunction with the release of Windows Media Center. Many OEMs launched specific software packages associated with managing media on a PC with a TV tuner card.
I feel old now that no one remembers the media pc fad. We shopped and shopped for one that would fit into our entertainment center and eventually just had to build our own...
Somehow, the world changed so that we all feel entitled to our jobs and yes, businesses.
In any human endeavor in 2022, we have to assume that nothing is going to last forever.
The employee is not entitled to their job.
Because we are all human we cannot assume we are going to be treated fairly as much as we would love to be.
The entrepreneur is not entitled to their business - one mistake and it could go away.
We are going to be bullied at some point and the way how we deal with it will change the trajectory of our thoughts and lives.
Yes this sounds terribly dystopian. It sounds bad.
But it is how the world operates and has always operated.
What’s the difference now? The internet has merely amplified these practices so we can see them better.
Some things have improved and changed for the better.
Other things have gotten worse.
Go ahead and read “Foundation”. Isaac Asimov clearly set things out that the way how large groups of humans operate makes it hard to change certain things.
Employment and business creation in a capitalist society is definitely one of those things that is that 10 million ton oil tanker going at 500 knots on the open waters.
We are not going to be able to shift it. But because we know it’s size and trajectory we can safely know when to take out our paddle boat for fishing and actually have a good life.
First, this is basic human behavior. It appears this SVP had a job to manage social interactions and the author was stepping out of their role. Typical company policies are to manage social media via a point team, i.e. employees don't discuss work publicly. The author even mentioned this:
> In fact, I was so prolific on social media that I got the attention of several industry analysts who asked how my company used social media for brand promotion and marketing. Of course, since I was in engineering, I sent these inquiries over to our PR department.
The SVP was likely feeling the author was impacting company public relations, independent from the point team.
It would be equivalent to someone in marketing force pushing code to production.
Regarding the authors feelings -- again, he's stepping out of his role and not coordinating with the marketing team. Of course leadership would ask him to knock it off or be fired.
> His stern look communicated that he was talking about my career and was clearly not messing around. I felt bullied, threatened, and scared. Because I feared being unfairly scrutinized and I'd just had my job threatened, it was tough for me to feel comfortable saying anything about my work life on Twitter after that.
Shouldn't have been talking about work life on twitter anyway... The way the author discusses "bullying" is literally every interaction in a business. Organizations must be clear and consistent. Leaders need to be as well. Yes, they can fire you; yes, they can tell you what to do. That's life, that's the way human designed structures work.
> There are a few reasons why I think this happened to me. Being a young Black man in the tech field put me in a vulnerable position where different equals disposable. Maybe being privy to Rick's inherent lack of knowledge of the very thing he professed to be an expert on gave me some perceived leverage over him; thus, I was a threat to be eliminated. My lack of seniority and title also put me at a disadvantage. Ultimately, I believe that in true bully fashion, he got his kicks by using his power to affect other people's lives for sport.
Maybe that's true, but in all likelihood the author was stepping out of line. Discussing race in this context seems to detract from that actual events. The author even quit his "dream" job to to work in social media...
> This eventually led me to quit and pursue my passion for social media marketing outside my "dream" company.
Clearly, the author wasn't interested in their engineering job and decided to do something else -- fine, but not what the company hired them for.
I want to address the point that I was "stepping out of line." In my role, I was in constant contact with marketing and PR. We worked very closely together and met every week. I'm still friends with many of them to this day. My manager was also fully supportive of my participation on social media and even wrote it into my goals with time carved out, especially for this task. There was no question about the quality of my work. I was even promoted during this time frame.
I only spoke about information that was already public, and as I stated before, I was PR trained by the company as an encouragement to talk more openly. I was also in promotional material for the company because they felt I was such a good representative of their values. They not only loved what I was doing but repeatedly encouraged me to continue with their full endorsement.
Also, as previously stated, I was a founding member of their social media council. We created policies that determined how and what employees could participate in social media and the associated training. This SVP was not initially in social media management because there was zero established formal presence, to begin with. Back then, companies were not widely on social media like they are today.
I know we might have different ways of approaching work, and I've also changed my views over time, but your read that I was not engaged or passionate about my "main" job is a flawed take. It was actually the exact opposite. I was very good at my job and loved it. I was not neglecting my role but going above and beyond.
First, I appreciate your response. I actual have had similar experiences in terms of doing what I was told and being slapped down by a SVP in a different department due to being an "upstart". So, I fully appreciate where you are coming from and have experience.
That said,
1. Business is cut throat. It's helpful for people in business to be cut throat, it helps them to survive and move up the org structure. They also get budgets and climb the ladder through increasing headcount below them.
2. This SVP didn't have you reporting to them, it sounds like you were putting their role at risk. It appears you didn't coordinate PR campaigns and didn't get approval for every statement (how else were your posts flagged, if you didn't post without prior approval). It could be a lack of policy which created these issues, but IMO I can see why the SVP responded the way they did. You can call it bullying if you'd like, but that's life and the way it works.
3. Even with point 1 and 2, something seems off. No one thought it was weird your posts were being flagged? No one backed you up? This new SVP just moved in and removed you with no comment? Why? People don't act hostile for no reason. Did the SVP just view you as a threat? Seems like something is missing.
Finally, I definitely would have personally handled it by just speaking with you or working through it. I've worked a lot with public relations teams and never would have thought they'd lash out at their public face (seems like a bad policy...).
> Eventually, he acquired the tweets in question, and we were both stunned about why these benign tweets, which were clearly not about the company's financials, were being flagged. Then, he finally confided in me that the person who reported this to him was the SVP I had been working with previously, Rick.
I used the term "flagged" which was described in the article. I assumed it means that "this SVP was sharing them with your boss and saying -- this is bad" or something.
Who was this SVP? Why did he setup the social media council? What was his job function?
I am sorry you went through all that. The SVP sounds like a dick, irrespective of what you tweeted/didn't tweet.
I am curious, do you still do social media just as much on the side, or is it your main job now? And do you look back at your days then and think you were tweeting too hard?
I wasn't tweeting too hard. I still am very active on social media, but I don't let it conflict with my job. Some would say that my visibility on social media aids in my effectiveness in my profession.
This take is wild to me. If we're assuming the authors side of the story is correct, some of those interactions are _extremely_ weird, rude, and definitely not just regular work interactions.
Both can be true: that the SVP was pursuing a course they thought would protect the company, but that they did so in a cold, dismissive, bullying manner.
I donno! This turned into a ramble and it's already all typed up so ill just post it:
Some people view the world through a pinhole. Like an animal, only reacting to stimulus and stroking their ID and seeking to consume and control. These people are called 'sociopaths' and are pretty rare. It is unlikely this person's boss was a sociopath, they actually tend to have a lot of trouble in modern society because they act like assholes and fail to imitate important social cures, making them seem 'off.'
In the past I have had multiple people who I befriended, only later to be stalked and harassed by them because it turns out I was the last person who was tolerating their insane bullshit.
In effect, they were abusers. And often victims of abuse themselves, to be fair. They were merely repeating the patterns they had learned in the past. I am a victim of abuse, I think that is likely why my tolerance for such people is so high.
However, I do not abdicate my responsibility in enabling abusers. My mother would always say to my little sister: "If you give a mouse a cookie..." This is very true. Giving someone attention who is mean and does not deserve it makes you an asset to them: Abusers realize they can redirect their pain into you, and use you as a smoke screen to cover up their own bad behaviour. This is well documented. Check out DARVO[0] if you are curious.
Recently, I made another friend. But this time was different: I have been through this before. I sensed what kind of person this dude was, and even though it was painful to abandon someone, I told them I'm not interested in being their friend anymore. A few months later he went into a mental institution and I now see him going on insane screeds on LinkedIn, still insistent he is the victim and he has done nothing wrong. He is either oblivious or in denial about his own responsibilities in maintaining his life.
I had another bad experience with a boss who was trying to drive me out of a company because he wanted to hire his friend and we were out of head count. He did everything he could to bully me. We were once at one of my co-workers house for dinner and drinks and the trash can lid slammed shut and it made a bang.[1] He yelled at me like he was yelling at a dog. And fired me later in the month.
But, I'm not really haunted by these things. To this day, I pity these people. Why would you do what this person's boss does, Harm a friend out of some misplaced jealousy? Why would you bully me, a 24 year old kid fresh out of college just trying his best? Why would someone rape me as a child?
i was once riding home with my cousin's grandfather ( I was on his way into Chicago ), and he told me he was in Hitler Youth. I asked... what was that like? He paused for a long time, and then responded: "Some men will kill for fun."
These types of people are the same ones you see living on the streets. More of them are headed that way than you realize.
They are missing a piece of themselves. And that missing piece causes them pain and makes it hard to function in society. So they try to inflict the pain on other people ( make them feel socially rejected and inadequate ), or fill that void with drugs, or fuck up badly enough the only way they can move forward is to stab another person in the back.
Are these abusive people happy at this point? I highly doubt it.
Am I? Absolutely. I have a ton of friends, fulfilling hobbies, a great career, I'm good at my job, a wonderful partner, a fuzzy little cat, and I walk through this world with a light heart, full of light, because despite everything I've been through, I still strive to treat others with kindness and respect and have largely been successful at this.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is: Learn to identify these types of people, and do not share your light with them. Abandon fake friends. Abandon abusers. They are not worth it and it isn't your responsibility to fix them.
sorry about that. if you send me screenshots it will help me fix it. looked ok when i published. but just work is really just one person this point, so qa...hello@justworktogether.com
My takeaway from this is that they got caught up in Twitter drama. The article screams “I was/am way too online”. Even threw in a racism claim for good measure.
It reminds me of the Susan Fowler drama (the woman who got the CEO of Uber fired with a blog post) - she posted a long story about the frustrations that every developer has, but concluded that they only happened to her because she was a woman.
Susan Fowler's blog post definitely wasn't just everyday things that every developer experiences from my perspective, and this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express that view.
IIRC, Fowler's boss began talking to her about his sex life and subtly propositioning her for sex in her first week. Nothing like that has ever happened to me.
If you're working someplace where that's an everyday occurrence, I think you work in a very unusual environment.
> There are a few reasons why I think this happened to me. Being a young Black man in the tech field put me in a vulnerable position where different equals disposable. Maybe being privy to Rick's inherent lack of knowledge of the very thing he professed to be an expert on gave me some perceived leverage over him; thus, I was a threat to be eliminated.
He could have started with this. Such victim mentality.
How so? What I read here is "A possible explanation for this otherwise almost inexplicable behavior is the fact that I am a member of a group that has historically had widespread experiences exactly like this one"
Every "successful" black person I know has experiences similar to this one. They are over performing along some axis at some point in their career, yet some senior inexplicably seems to dislike them. And I am not exaggerating when I say "every".
The worst was at my first employer. I was naive and several times was publicly eviscerated by folks clearly interested in dumping the blame for project failures and schedule slips onto some other person. I weathered those experiences because I was doing very well on other projects and had support from management and peers on those efforts. Otherwise, I'm sure I would have been one of the endless layoffs that seemed to occur every quarter for "low performers" in that stack-ranked hellscape.
My current employer (longest tenure of my professional career) has many of the same problems, particularly at the staff level between organizations. I am ruthless about strictly defining precisely my prereqs for any work assignment and quietly decline or avoid working with several groups at all. It is really unfortunate because the potential for much more impactful and meaningful work is lost.