just curious about how you guys handle office politics when logic and data completely fail. I once had a manager who refused to cancel a failing $50k software contract just because he personally picked the vendor. showing him spreadsheets of our lost productivity just made him angry, and he kept blaming the team for “not adapting to the learning curve.” I eventually had to manipulate the situation and convince him that cancelling the tool would make him look like a “bold leader” who protects the team’s agility. I basically had to stroke his ego just to get a logical business decision made. It worked, but honestly it felt exhausting. what’s your best/worst story of dealing with irrational corporate logic? did you find a psychological trick to bypass their ego, or did you just give up and quit?
Only time I’ve ever been written up in my career, I told the CEO – very politely – that “cybersecurity is the boards responsibility, whether they want it to be or not.” He did not like hearing that.
If there’s a problem, they can count on me to tell them about it. Always in writing. If they don’t want to act, that’s on them.
Bosses swinger flinger wanted me to sign a write up for changing clothes before end of shift. It was actually a write up because I made safety complaints about the mold growing in our changing room walls. Extra funny because her position at the company (when not riding the owner) was technically safety officer, so calling out obvious safety issues made her and the boss look bad.
Called in my union rep who explained donning and doffing time (especially in industries requiring PPE) and how time to change was legally required. Owner just couldn’t accept being wrong and changed it to a write up for insubordination because I didnt do what I was told and the rep told me to just sign it, so I did. Later, I was fired for “insubordination” in making another safety complaint to the safety officer (about the safety officer) calling out a lack of PPE in an active work zone. She responded by threatening me in front of witnesses and the company is now stuck in arbitration with my union about it. Very fun but also incredibly boring
The boss in my place brought in some guy as head of marketing who he picked himself and thinks is the bee’s knees. We have a closed customer base who, once they purchase our products, will buy spares for the next 30 to 40 years. We don’t really need marketing at all.
He does nice graphs and charts (that we don’t need), chats in constant gibberish business-speak, and makes things look fancy. That’s it.
He has recently been moved into an overarching position in control of technical and engineering teams he knows nothing about and can’t manage properly, and the shit will hit the fan real soon.
I can’t wait.
We had an IT director for a few years who decided we were spending too much time defining requirements, testing, and writing things down because “There is always something that has to be fixed in Production”. He could not acknowledge that doing things right resulted in far fewer problems in Production or that it saved time in the long run. Instead he praised the people who spent most of their time pushing out shit code and fixing it constsntly because it was more noticeable than something that went out and just worked.
There was no solution, had to wait for him to leave.
repaint all the forklifts solely so she could berate us every time a new scuff appeared
“If you leave now you’ll be fired.” -so many dead bosses in the WTC.
