[vinbreau]

Just last week I received an email from a manager saying "Never do (this), especially with US customers."

Three days after that email I ran into (this) situation and emailed him asking what I am to do. He said frustratingly that I should do (this) since it wasn't a US customer.

I emailed him both his quotes, the ones that said never do (this) and the one that said, of course, you should do (this). I pointed out that was confusing. He said it was my fault for being confused and to email him when I am.

Middle management is often desperately trying to justify their job by creating purposeful confusion. I swear he's trying to trip me up looking for reasons to put marks on my record.

[reb]

> Middle management is often desperately trying to justify their job by creating purposeful confusion. I swear he's trying to trip me up looking for reasons to put marks on my record.

Or he, like most of us, is primarily self-interested and is mostly concerned with not looking like a self-contradictory idiot (and keeping marks off his own record).

Never ascribe to malice, etc.

[ozim]

Never ascribe to malice for people you don't know and for things it is easy to explain with incompetence.

If someone is your manager for some time and you can reasonably expect competence, that is different thing. If someone is self interested and his actions say so, this is malice, not just incompetence.

[jdc]

I don't think he's saying it's malice - just very one-sided self-interest.

[anon44]

That is malice.

[wjnc]

I'll be honest. I could be that guy giving seemingly contradictory advice. The first one is a general rule. To be applied in most cases. The second one is an advice in a specific situation. The situation might dictate going against the general rule. In that case I can even relate to him asking you to contact him in any case you might want to not apply the general rule. It makes sense for him to keep tabs on the exceptions. If the number of exceptions grows large even (this) might change.

If I read you correctly, I can relate to your side as well. Don't stipulate general rules if their not general. But that would mainly mean the prescription of what to do when (this) becomes not a simple rule, but a handbook. I fear the workplace with handbooks for (this) and (that).

It's a matter of leadership style and personality as well. I like clear rules. I over-generalise for speed. I like team members who give me hell for anything they don't agree with, up and until the moment we decide what to do. After that I want buy-in. Quite some people don't work that way and it's up to me to notice that and relate differently.

My final tip for keeping sane in an office environment is to never attribute to malice etc. Most environments aren't toxic so don't expect toxicity when you've not yet encountered it. If most people would act that way, the world would be a better place. Act strategically only after someone has proven to act with bad intent AND you've taken the time to try and talk the situation over and have not resolved it.

[kurthr]

If you feel that he's trying to put marks on your record, and you can't discuss it with him, I'd look for a new boss or a new job. Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean he's not out to get you.

[kylecordes]

A charitable and maybe helpful way to look at it:

Lots of other people are just making this up as they go along too. Trying to figure things out in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity. When you get confusing instructions from above, try to help. Not help by demanding they clarify, rather acknowledge they are trying to describe how to make a complex and subtle trade-off that isn’t easily quantified with hard rules. Offer to be their apprentice, to learn from them how to make the same trade-off decision they would make.

[unityByFreedom]

> Middle management is often desperately trying to justify their job by creating purposeful confusion. I swear he's trying to trip me up looking for reasons to put marks on my record.

Could be, esp. now you've called him out on something and he didn't own up to it.

My advice is to do this kind of thing in person. It's emotional - you calling someone out, and the other person accepting the mistake or not - and should be conveyed face to face. Email is a terrible medium for emotion.

[repolfx]

Middle management is often desperately trying to justify their job by creating purposeful confusion. I swear he's trying to trip me up looking for reasons to put marks on my record.

No conspiracy needed. Many people simply do not think about things in sufficient depth to achieve even basic levels of rationality or consistency. They literally just say whatever springs to mind, all the time, acting on something close to instinct. These people end up being wrong about things continuously, but it doesn't matter because the people around them are the same and often don't even notice.

People like that react very badly to anyone pointing out that they've made an unambiguous mistake. They aren't used to it and tend to get upset, they may claim it's offensive, get territorial, or try to turn the blame around as you saw there.

A very modern defence is to claim that the person who pointed out the mistake is "on the spectrum" i.e. has severe social skills deficiencies. No actual evidence of medical problems is required.

We can see this in the article text itself.

People with Asperger’s syndrome, the term still commonly used for one of the most well-known forms of autism spectrum disorder, bring serious advantages to the financial markets: extreme focus, a facility with numbers, a willingness to consider unpopular opinions, a strong sense of logic, and an intense belief in fairness and justice.

This is a key paragraph because all the qualities cited here are usually understood to be desirable and strongly linked with success. Although this person is describing market traders, you could simply replace "the financial markets" with "tech firms" and it'd still be consistent.

It took me quite a few years to really understand this, but huge numbers of people in the workplace (especially outside the tech industry) cannot focus, are afraid of numbers, conflate having an unpopular opinion with being wrong, aren't interested in / don't value logic and don't care at all about fairness or justice in the sense meant here i.e. treating people consistently.

And what happens?

But, like other autistic employees, they often feel alienated from their managers, colleagues, and clients. Sometimes they simply get fired.

Well yeah. That's not a mental disorder. That's how anyone focused, logical and consistent feels when surrounded by people who aren't!

The tech world tends to attract a lot of accusations of people being weird/anti-social etc (first time I heard of it in relation to finance). But as the years go by I become more and more convinced it's not really a problem with people in tech. It's really the expected outcome of combining extreme demand for very concrete skills (so the rare people who are genuinely weird behaviour are worth tolerating) with programming machines that require correctness, to the extent that everyone routinely peer reviews each other's work. Go look at how many industries have equivalents to rigorous code review culture, and you'll see it's not many. Even in science it's anonymous strangers reviewing your paper, not your own reports.

[vageli]

> Just last week I received an email from a manager saying "Never do (this), especially with US customers."

> Three days after that email I ran into (this) situation and emailed him asking what I am to do. He said frustratingly that I should do (this) since it wasn't a US customer.

> I emailed him both his quotes, the ones that said never do (this) and the one that said, of course, you should do (this). I pointed out that was confusing. He said it was my fault for being confused and to email him when I am.

> Middle management is often desperately trying to justify their job by creating purposeful confusion. I swear he's trying to trip me up looking for reasons to put marks on my record.

I would respond and cc their manager.

[dpark]

That’s a great idea. Actively create a hostile environment with this person for no clear benefit. I mean, yeah, you’ll like like an asshole and in no way will this likely help you, but they’ll look wrong, so totally worth it.

[vageli]

The fact that the response was outright hostile requires escalation either to HR or to this person's manager.

> He said it was my fault for being confused and to email him when I am.

That is definitely something I'd want on HR's radar if my manager said that to me. If you've ever worked in a large organization, this is how things tend to play out.

[dpark]

HR isn’t there to help you out. They’re there to protect the company. This scenario is not one that HR is likely to get involved in and it’s more likely to put you on HR’s radar as a “troublemaker” than anything.

If you want to discuss it with the manager’s manager, CC on an email is the wrong way. Talk to them privately. They may or may not be sympathetic but this is more likely to work than an obvious attempt to shame your manager in front of their boss.