Ask HN: Have you ever worked under an abusive boss?

[Peach_blue]

By abusive I mean somebody who intentionally sets impossible deadlines, denigrates you or possibly insults you personally. Also choleric temperament types count and when a lot of employee behavior is fear driven.

Regardless of the answer, I'd also be interested in how prevalent you think the issue is in tech compared to other industries.

I know its hard to gauge and unscientific, but I think you can make tentative statements sometimes. For example, I would say head chefs are generally more abusive than head engineers.

I'd be interested in your experiences.

[LinuxBender]

I won't share my own experiences but I will share my mitigating controls that I have used and taught to many others and has been quite effective for most people. I assume that someone in your group has already escalated to their leader and failed. In the cases that you can see the chain of command is compromised, meaning their leaders will try to ignore the problem or redirect the problem onto you:

- Document everything, their actions, what they said, what they made you do, what they are doing. Dates, times, all without any emotion.

- Document feedback from other employees without their names unless they want their named documented. Same details.

- Have coworkers do the same.

- Do not use monitored corporate systems to collaborate on this data.

I must stress that all of this has to be done entirely without emotion. Just the facts and only the facts. These facts should especially include things that person is doing that could put the company at legal risk. The focus should be on risk to the company, not to the employees. HR protect companies, not employees.

After some time and when everyone is on the same page go as a group to HR. Tell them you want the toxic person present as well.

Risk: If the company lacks integrity they may choose to sweep things under the carpet and in the process off-board everyone that complained. This is not a bad thing. Just be ready to move to another company.

[terran57]

Excellent advice!

[ev1]

So far my managers in engineering have been pretty good. I am what you would probably call a typical gen z "job hop for TC increase" bay area stereotype; I have had something like a dozen+ bosses so far and none were particularly terrible. The ones asking for impossible deadlines knew what they were asking for (and apologised for it, saying it came from higher up and was obviously dumb), I've written complete things then "oh we've changed direction", but nothing that would actually be insulting or anger management. This is just IC level though so I'm sure I'm missing out on some clown parties way higher up.

When I worked retail, almost every manager was an abomination. None would ever be willing to fight for you in any situation, most were abusive, and any time you told a customer some well documented policy and they screamed about it, your manager would be first in line to override policy and tell them how they were going to fire you for not putting the customer first. I had two supervisors punch holes through walls and one throw merchandise at employees. We were kids, but there was a sense of solidarity amongst the non-management that I don't think I frequently see in tech.

[kingkongjaffa]

Yes I was a young project manager and assigned impossible project deliverables that even the people 3-4 levels up the org-chart could not get done with their political capital within the business.

In a matrix organisation with different programs trying to get other departments to work on your program and fight competing programs, it was a death sentence.

This was then used against me in performance reviews.

If I had any advice it would be to raise the issue with the wider business to make it clear that it’s not your fault that impossible thing x did not get done and complain loudly to hr and higher ups about bullying.

It was rats on a sinking ship and people trying to deflect blame on the lower rungs.

[tacostakohashi]

For a lot of people in (senior) management, their primary skill is bullying other people to do their job for them, get things done their way, get it done faster, etc. It's not some unfortunate personality issue that they could stop doing, it's a core part of how they operate.

Of course, explicit bullying and abuse are not acceptable, so these people are also experts in plausible deniability, implying things but not writing them down explicitly, going right up to the line but not over it, talking about work-life balance while setting the impossible deadlines, etc.

Unfortunately it's not an accident, so you have to learn to deal with it, and to some extent reciprocate, it's never going to go away.

[catchnear4321]

“You have to learn to deal with it.”

Society would be so much better if this suggestion were recognized to be as problematic as the behaviors and situations it is suggested for.

Yes, you have to decide how you will handle these situations and individuals.

No, you do not just have to learn to deal with it.

No, you do not need to learn to reciprocate.

Both of these actions reward the bad behavior. You even point out that perceptible bullying isn’t ok, so the bullies have evolved. They got sneakier. So why is it that sneaky bullying is ok? No, it won’t go away, not if we decide it is to be tolerated.

These are choices that lead to outcomes. And that advice sounds no better than the advice to “just toughen up” or “stop whining” that I’m sure many remember hearing (or delivering) in their youths.

If time is money, so is mental health, and you would not believe the conversion rate on that one.

As for the first two paragraphs? I agree.

[andreilys]

When you have to handle someone with kid gloves that requires more time & effort than someone has.

There’s a reason most execs write curt emails, b/c they have 1001 things to handle and your feelings rank low.

Toughening up is about acknowledging that your emotional well being is not everyone’s #1 priority. You are responsible for that, and nobody else.

[catchnear4321]

The exec may have 1001 different, arguably more important things to do. That has nothing to do with how the exec acts. Hell, maybe I have 1002 today. I’m too busy to count, and why are we measuring?

Why exactly is it that shit rolls down hill? Because we are told that’s how it works. And to toughen up and get over it.

That is one option. Not the only one.

The exec doesn’t deserve kid gloves either. So that doesn’t seem relevant. Nobody deserves kid gloves. Decent behavior is not kid gloves.

It isn’t toughening up to allow others to act like children. But again, the language is used deliberately. The problem is conveniently your not toughening up - not someone else being an ass.

[water8]

Everyone is human and everyone has bad days. In “learn to deal with it” what you’re really learning to deal with is the fact that humans are imperfect and every time you erupt when someone else is erupting is a recipe for disaster. Sometimes you have to deal with problems or inconveniences in order to not cause bigger problems

[catchnear4321]

At face value, I agree.

The moment a system begins to expect individuals to bear that burden unevenly, it starts to rot. The moment a system is deliberately set to do this in such a way that it “rolls downhill,” the system is a failure.

Whether you are the CEO or the janitor, you are human. Oddly the CEOs seem to forget that more often than the janitors. Aren’t we all just shocked.

[superchroma]

I currently do. One of my managers complains bitterly about meetings, management decisions and people he dislikes to a usual group of people he feels he trusts (which I am sadly in, and he will trash members of that group whilst talking other members also), he generally exhibits little empathy and frequently declares work he organizes to be easy, discourages dissent in estimates in sprint planning and then needles people when they struggle with it whilst never leaning in to help, and is broadly disrespectful to people he perceives as moving slower than his pace or that think different. I've had a falling out with him before, but have ended up reporting to him again due to unfortunate events.

Generally, he refuses to work with people to build trust and advance his views, fails to control his temper and also refuses to try and identify deeper issues behind things he gets annoyed about in terms of process or the organization, which means a lot of his behavior is meaningless and he functionally does very little.

Frustratingly, I feel like I've become a more impatient and less supporting person whilst working under him as it's easy to get caught up in impotent anger, and I'm having to carefully reexamine how I work with people to try and find a better normal. I've previously had a very good manager before that, so this has been very hard for me.

[Peach_blue]

That sounds awful. Especially noticing it changes you as a person.

I hope you find a way to deal with it that is acceptable.

[vgeek]

I've worked with a CEO of a 3rd generation family business who would denigrate employees at any opportunity, thought he was a genius who solely built the company, "no raises in the budget" after frivolous $x,xxx,xxx company purchases statements and other unsavory behavior.

It could have been a great opportunity for my own goals, combining both marketing and development responsibilities, but it wasn't worth the constant second guessing and putdowns (e.g. you only increased revenue from -10% to +30% in 3 months, why not 50% type comments without jest), so I just found something else.

It is hard to spot in interviews, because the only people you are allowed to speak to are those who are complicit. Once you start working and people open up, you hear all types of red flags. Glassdoor used to be good for gleaning insights, but now it is probably curated for companies willing to pay.

[bravetraveler]

There have been a couple in my history. They never lasted.

The organizations usually worked them out, but I've also just straight walked off the job before as well. There's a really fine point where I go from mitigation to abandoning it

I'm thinking about leaving my current job. Almost five years in and I've had just as many leadership changes. Not really abusive, they just play favorites and are a little short-sighted.

[whoomp12342]

Yes, get out as soon as you can( with a new gig in hand). Its not worth it.

[gwnywg]

Long time ago I worked in a startup where CEO hired a manager who aspired to become CxO. This guy was talking bad things behind people backs and constantly undermining everyone when nobody except CEO was in the room (I witnessed this a few times because inutially I was on very good terms with CEO but later my name was trashed too). This guy was collecting whatever information he could and then was actively exploiting it to prove people are not competent. He created such toxic environment that in the end CEO trusted nobody, and when CEO realised what was going on it was too late. That guy was already badmouthing CEO in front of investors so CEO was removed. I took a lesson from this, that talking behind people's backs is serious red flag.

[yellowapple]

I've faced such bosses multiple times in my career. Once upon a time I put up with it and rationalized it as some necessary evil. More recently I've left jobs because of it.

Nowadays, I recognize it as an inherent consequence of capitalism; with few exceptions, workers lack the bargaining power to resist abuse, be it from the ownership class or from fellow workers appointed as "managers" and given the bare minimum scraps of power over the rest of us for them to feel like honorary members of the ownership class. The rational play is to accept that no corporation is your friend; your boss will drop you in the blink of an eye, and it's in your best interests to maximize your ability and willingness to reciprocate.

[water8]

Depends what your level of abuse is that justifies the effort of changing jobs.

[abc_lisper]

Yes, I did. I wish I didn't. If it wasn't financially constraining, I would have left that job sooner. The emotional damage lasts, though its dependent on the person. Run before it hurts your pride and confidence.

[rapjr9]

I had one boss who would ask me to write up ideas for the future direction of our department, then reformat them using a text editor meant for customer documentation, and present them at annual meetings as her own plan after she added a few sentences. I was doing her job and my own. She had seniority in the company (had been there at the founding) so unless she chose to quit her job was guaranteed, blocking any route for my own advancement. I should have left soon after this started but it was a huge inconvenience since I was in a rural area and would have had to move to another area. Eventually the company lost millions due to poor management and had to lay off half the company. I was the most costly employee in her department (after herself and she was not going to fire herself) and I had just trained an assistant to do much of what I did. Getting fired was one of the best things that happened to me, my life improved dramatically after that. I was prepared for it also since I saw it coming.

Had another boss who would make fun of my ideas and insist on doing anything but what I had suggested. I'd propose buying equipment to try out ideas and he'd approve the purchases, but then he'd also assign me enough work that I had no time to investigate any of it. It was someone else's grant money so he didn't care about wasting it. I left after four years, after which he started doing all the projects I'd suggested and he'd ridiculed. He must have kept a list.

In my last job I gave notice a year before leaving so there was time to train a replacement. We hired someone and he was coming up to speed and then quit a few months before my retirement. I got assigned all his work, doubling my work load (or more since I had to come up to speed on projects I hadn't been part of), even though I was leaving in a few months. Then more new tasks were added! I prioritized it and did what I could. Then I left. They then tried to get me to do all that extra work for free "to finish up the projects". I politely refused, I had better things to do.

Those were the worst of my bosses. There were many that I had much better experiences with. It's very difficult to judge a bad boss when being hired. They'll fake it and say all the right things, and they'll continue saying the right things, but their actions will belie their words. Once you figure it out, start planning to leave.

[_8j50]

I assumed the insult and abuse was intentional to get me to react so I did the opposite. When publicly abused I was very nice in an obvious way and made sure my peers saw my hardwork. The abuser looks even worse that way, especially when you don't fight back at all. I had to endure a lot from superiors for too long though but in the end it always turned out well for me.

[bearjaws]

Intentionally set impossible deadlines? I've had one boss, but it was the classic 'set hard deadlines so we move fast, but don't communicate those deadlines outside until we know the real date'.

The rest of your description? I would leave immediately, I don't need to wait for unemployment or waste my time in such a toxic environment.

[codingdave]

I have. Twice, actually. Both times when I reported directly to the CEO. But the rest of my career has been better. I've learned not to try to be too high on the org chart, and decided that even if you are the #1 tech dude in a small company, you really need a buffer between yourself and the CEO.

[terran57]

In my 2nd job out of college I found myself taking a position with a startup to shepherd along a neglected project while the core team worked furiously to deliver their signature project. That project team was led by what can only be described as a sociopathic madman. He'd throw items around in his office and scream profane insults whenever a problem came up (QA finding bugs app crash/bug/missed graphics/etc.). He'd dress-down he responsible party with no pity in front of others. The team feared him - but nobody quit because there was a significant bonus promised to them on delivery.

The management team tolerated his exploits as they desperately needed the project delivered as there were substantial performance bonuses for early delivery, and significant penalties for late delivery. The team was cajoled into a "death-march" in the last few weeks with unlimited drinks/snacks and free meals for staying late and classical psychological manipulation for attempting to leave "early" (anything before a 12hr day). (I can still hear him saying to people "we're a team - how can you let your teammates down, you p** of sh*t")

In the end, the project was delivered on-time, but as the company had bet on an early delivery and so, had spared no expense in throwing resources towards that project, there were no bonuses. Instead, the team's extraordinary work was rewarded with layoffs...

I'm optimistic that that in today's environment (assuming you work in a free and open society) such behavior is no longer widely tolerated. First, I think that society has evolved and with the emphasis on work/life balance, people will refrain from subjecting themselves to a boss like the one described above. With high attrition, companies will remove people like that from oversight positions. Also, companies themselves can face consequences if they don't address such behavior immediately. Nothing like a surreptitiously recorded video or audio recording appearing on the internet to bring a public shaming.

[nim_chimpsky]

I am aware of situations like this. An employee I know was given a completely false performance evaluations despite having been one of the most productive people in her team. Members of her team and other teams had previously praised her for her contributions towards helping them and their organization. One day out of the blue one day she was told she was under-performing. Then she was given a "test task" to "improve her performance". The task given was extremely challenging with very short timescales and after she delivered it in time, she was told it was not good enough for nitpicky reasons.

I do not find this situation unusual at all. I am even aware of cases that led to suicides. Issues like this are prevalent in every organization, private or governmental that I have any knowledge of. Even the UN is not free of such issues : https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018ljw

There is an opportunity here for a sociologist to do some good research to explain why this is such a common problem and what can be done about. However at the root of the problem is the fact that laws pertaining to work place bullying are almost non-existent in most countries. There are some laws pertaining to "harassment" which is like bullying but only when applied to protected categories. This is another opportunity for a political scientist to investigate why do almost all countries not have well developed laws against workplace bullying. It doesn't take a genius to propose hypothesis regarding both these questions. It may take a genius to provide incontrovertible scientific evidence substantiating any such hypothesis.

If any such scholarly work is made available and widely circulate, it could be used to raise public awareness and apply political pressure for better legislation. Which family has not had to deal with stress due to work ? Which family has not felt strained by these experiences ?

There is also an opportunity for some bold and enterprising technical person to start a social platform that allows sharing of information with legal protection. Information that would allow prospective job applicants to get authentic and potentially verifiable information about organizations and individuals. If such a platform can be created, protected and made self sustaining it would make a big difference.

Finally these is an opportunity for artists to create moving works of art and literature that raise social consciousness and change attitudes so that the "bosses" get the social experience they deserve out side their offices where they pretend to be "normal people" (who don't drive others to suicide and don't feel guilty about anything).

As much as I would like to hope for a better future, progress in these matters in the near future seems unlikely to me, for reasons explained very clearly in this sources

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE

[tawaytheunlucky]

Yes, so many times since I am a abusing manager magnet :( (For obvious reasons, I'm writing this from a throwaway account even though I've been on HN for years)

At my first job, I got physically attacked by the company owner, because I told him I wanted to relocate abroad - after my legal notice period- and he told me I can't, because many things was depending on me (I was working 15+ hours a day, sometimes sleeping in the office and sometimes in his house, managing dozens of customer systems with hundreds of computers just by myself). The only witnesses to the physical beating (punching, kicking for minutes) was his sister and a family friend, both worked there and ofc wouldn't testify against him. After the assault I went to police then to the hospital to document this, but they pressured me and my family not to press any charges. I was young and I took the bait. He was also verbally and psychologically abusing to most other people in the same office. What's worse is, few years later I needed money so much and couldn't find anything else, I had to work with him again. After a while I realized how screwed up it was, so I took half of the project money and left, knowing that he'd never pursue it bc he owes me way more than that.

In another company, our manager was always giving me tasks with impossible deadlines, was very aggressive and micromanaging. I still worked hard and finished all the work he's given me. He thought I was cheating so he required me to write every single thing I did in a day (like a diary) and he would review these later. I wrote down everything quite detailed. He was so surprised how I managed to do that many tasks, so he demoted my position from IT deputy manager to laptop repair technician. Luckily our CTO left, found his own company and invited me there. Thanks to that traumatizing experience, I was always scared that I continued keeping a worklog for every day ever since, for over 15 years, so I'd be blamed of not working enough

In one other company, a really big one (with tens of thousands of customers) I was a tech mid-manager, and was reporting directly to the CEO. Then one day, one of the board members hired his daughter with no experience to the same company, positioning her between me and the CEO. She started asking me to do her tasks, which I refused. At the end, she filed a complaint about me to the board. In the hearing, I told all the truth with details and proof, which board told me that I was right. Regardless, next day, I was called by the head of HR who told me that my position no longer exists and I may either quit on my own or work as a customer call support (3 levels below my position). Ofc I quit. What's comforting is, I was the only one with all the technical knowledge (I was in the middle of training junior managers and leads reporting to me), so first whole project collapsed, costing few million $s, then the board was fired by the higher board (it was a holding company) then that company was sold, all happening like a domino effect.

In another one where I was leading 15 devs, we had a really abusive CTO. On average our team had to work minimum 60+ hours a week and many times we were given a task after 7pm (we used to work between 9-10am to 8pm) to be completed until next morning. CTO was calling us names and derogatory things like fools and stupid. Eventually all the other leads left with receiving some compensation. That increased the pressure on me more, so much that I had to work 70-80+ hours a week average (all documented in git and door key cards), sometimes sleeping in the never-used massage room of the office. I asked for a raise or leaving with compensation and wasn't given any, then I quit and apparently chose a really bad lawyer, who screwed the case up so I didn't get anything at all. The CTO is still in that company. I also reported all these incidents to the HR and CEO and nothing happened, because all of them were friends with each other.

In another company, one of the developers, who is also a friend of the CEO, was constantly bullying me, mainly because he didn't know what he was talking about and I was correcting him unintentionally, which he thought made him look bad. After a while he didn't want me to attend the meetings and started threatening me with physical assault and even death (half jokingly). I thought I was smarter this time, so I wrote down everything happened, got some witnesses, and emailed all these concerns to the managers. Then the CEO became unresponsive for many weeks and other managers looked the other way (I also had other problems like getting paid less than my employment contract). I finally went to a lawyer's. Initially they told me I had enough proof and a solid case and deserve to receive more than 10k euros. But after months of filibuster and paying them over 5000 euros, I was told to sign an NDA and did not get anything in return, because they changed their idea and said there are no any proofs. Even at the end, I found out that the person who's supposed to be looking at my case wasn't even a lawyer, but a tax consultant. Besides from all the legal fees, this cost me depression lasting many months which ended my marriage and made everything even worse. My best guess is that my ex-company paid lots of money to those lawyers to settle behind my back. Since then I don't trust any lawyers or legal system at all.

And lastly, in a company I worked at recently, our PM became the CEO by pure luck, even though he lacked most skills and was incompetent. He started constantly lying to the customers in front of us developers, stealing us developer's ideas half-baked only to make false promises to the customers, he disregarded work laws, he was setting his own deadlines (which is ~5-10x shorter than it should be) and pressuring us to finish those on time. He even once told me that I am a loser in my whole life because I never finished anything and I never will (he was talking about my college degree which took me 'a bit' more than usual) - ofc he was mostly wrong but hearing that from my manager really scarred me and even after many years I still think about it every day. Eventually 10+ developers left the company within the same year. O

Why did I write all these? Because sometimes it's too hard not to tell anyone and carry all the weight, sorry.

[drakonka]

I would not say this was an outright _abusive_ boss, but a weird boss that did some things I thought were inappropriate. This was in my first game dev job many years ago and while at the time I did not think much of it, in retrospect it was a pretty uncomfortable management style.

He would sometimes set tasks intended to just teach me a lesson. That was cool, I learn best by doing. But his feedback on said task would then take the form of someone condescendingly teaching a child.

Boss: "Document how we will do Thing X."

Me: "Great. I've done some looking and I can see that there are three different industry standard general approaches to take here that I can expand on. Do you have a preference for one already or should I just pick what I think is best?"

Boss: "Just pick."

I do more research and pick Approach B. Put together entire proposal, as he was the kind that did not want to be disturbed to look at WIP. Present it to him, have him say: "This is wrong, I wanted to use Approach A."

This would be said in a dismissive "You should have known my preference" tone. None of the three approaches were _clearly_ superior here. There was no rule I found that "In Situation X, Use Approach Y". When I asked him his preference, he had none. But after I'd put in the work, it turned out he had a preference all along. I was not sure what the point was of this exercise considering he also chose not to expand on any reasons of why he preferred Approach A to B or C after the fact. I got the impression that because he had more experience in the industry than me, maybe it was meant to be some kind of lesson? I guess I just did not think he was a very good teacher.

Another instance that stands out as a bit strange was vacation. I asked for time off to go away for a Birthday, a few days. He was fine with this. As the time came, my plans ended up changing and I was no longer planning to go away but just do something local. When I casually mentioned this off-hand, he got somewhat offended, saying he gave me time off to go out of town and now I wasn't going out of town. I just asked how it is relevant to him what I end up doing with my days off. It's all just part of my annual leave, right? He dropped it after that, but was visibly sour about it.

I later learned he talked about how bad my boyfriend at the time and I were for each other behind my back, and tried to find ways to inject himself in my personal life in a way that I thought was just friendly at the time, but really was something else.

I suspect he's grown a lot since those times. I now realize that he was actually very junior despite being a manager himself, and did not really know what he was doing as much as I thought he did.

Since that one experience almost 15 years ago, all of my managers and TDs have been great (knocking all the wood).