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Leadership is bottom up - a leader inspires the workforce before facing the top brass. When they put a guy above you for the sake of it, and that dude is visibly unworthy, he is not a leader. He is a bureaucrat.
Been there several times. Especially when some rich-AF asshole thinks that because he bought a software company he is better at making decisions about the products than anyone there. Money is the product of money, asshole. Not of skill.
Now, you can simply ask to be moved out of his leadership. The brass won't really move you (where?), the whole point is let them aware that this is the reason why you left. But leave. It's a Dev's market out there, and no one you like will die if you leave. -
Who hired that moron?
"At my old place we used to do it like this."
I can't stand it when people say crap like that. Like... ok, so what? At another place they probably do it differently too. Who gives a crap?
If you're saying "hey, have we thought about doing it like this, because this could (be objectively better in a bunch of specific ways)" then fair enough - that's the basis for an interesting, and possibly fruitful discussion. But guys that think there's only 1 way of doing anything, and that way is how they did it in their old company? Screw that.
Also, how on earth did the guy get hired to manage you lot if he's never managed *actual* engineers before?! -
@molaram
Well, they can still bully him into leaving... -
@AlmondSauce bro fr it is absolutely demoralizing. In one meeting (zoom) he said something about how it was back at his old place. And I made the sign for number 1. He just glazed over me and didn't take much notice. Next time he did it I put up 2. And then he kind of got caught of what I was doing and sort of stopped. This was a meeting with the rest of I.T and everyone smiled when I did it because they knew what I was referring to.
To be honest, this seems to be a very prevalent idea with project managers or directors without a software background "just buy anything!" then don't have a dedicated development team, then just have project managers paying someone else to do the installation of software and keep track of the payments etc. I really don't get the point of "buy everything", sure I can see them purchasing certain things, I am definitely not capacitated to code an entire cisco frame, nor to develop the networking software for switches etc, buy those, but wtf everything else? -
@molaram we are in the process of doing something like that, but in a "kind" way. We can all detect that he is not a bad person, just someone that does not know what to do, we are trying to give him a break but by Ritchie this is just too hard man
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@Oktokolo I am Mexican and Texan, I have to drink too much, it is in my blood. In my heritage.
But moving on, I love my workplace and the I.T department is very close, something I did not get in other places, plus, my users man I care too much for them to let them be at the hands of someone else. Previously, I left for a different department, but because the ex manager and I wrote the specs for the manager and the other software developers, I was asked to be part of the interview comittee, everyone that applied was sleezy as fuck, and I could not leave my team in the hands of some dickhead that was not going to take care of them, thus, when no suitable candidate came up and the execs asked me to step up to the position I decided to do so. and it has been working good thus far. It is just a matter of us dealing with a bunch of morons. -
@AleCx04 Yeah, you often see those people get sucked into the "buy, don't build" mantra just because they get conned by all the sales guys telling them that. They then go on to preach it themselves and get laughed at by anyone with a vague clue.
We have a similar person at my place now, nice enough guy but clueless and tends to get in the way more than he helps. It's damn frustrating.
I have got a new director at work. My previous director had to retire already, the man was already feeling it and he had been on the institution for more than 35 years....I am 30, so this tells you how much the man has been there.
This new dude.....has the presence of a Caterprie (Pokemon) or an Oompa Loompa. In contrast, the previous director felt like a 4 star General (never been in the presence of a 5 star since those occurrences are world war rare) but I had respected that man so much and loved working with him. I really did loved my boss, he was stern and professional, but kind and friendly to his staff, fiercely protective, no one took advantage of I.T while he was there, he would literally fight for us and took our word before anything else. The man was, well, a true man. A true leader.
He took a chance in putting me as the head of my department, but he had faith in me, and coached me and trained me as much as he could. Had the requirement for his position not been a masters he himself told me that he would have loved to make me his successor, even when I would constantly tell him that I was scared shitless of the work he did and the amount of things he did for the institution, to me this is a very laaaaaaaaarge cowboy hat to fill (this is Texas, he wore a hat, the saying is normally "shoes to fill", but fuck it)
This new guys looks away when the other managers are speaking to him. He constantly interrupts us. He constantly tells us about how the other institution in which he was (rival might I add) does X or Y, its fucking annoying to the point that me and the other managers have a drinking game, for every time he references his old institution we drink one beer over the weekend. It is Saturday night and I am 36 in in total (this is my favorite part of it tho) and it is just annoying.
His train of thought makes no sense to me:
"This application, where did you buy it? we tried purchasing one on Y when I was still there but found none"
Me: "Well, since it was a new government mandate and had nowhere to go we had to develop it in house"
Him: "We had tried to purchase what you guys had but found no place that sold it, so why didn't you try purchasing it?"
Me:.....well, because it was brand new, purchase it from where? We also don't like dealing with vendors that manage these sorts of things because every new requirement takes them weeks to produce on very high budgets, historically, my department has only had maintenance fees for the software that we have and even those applications crap themselves all the time and they take weeks to answer back to us.
Him: So you decided to develop it in house instead? we would never do that! back at y we purchased everything our engineers never really developed anything!
Me: Well then, what is the purpose of having engineers if they are not going to actually develop an application?
Him: IF there is something out there that is better then why should you reinvent the wheel?
Me: For this one I did not reinvent the wheel, I am not talking about creating a programming language from scratch, but how does custom solutions that specifically feed the needs of the institution to be produced otherwise? The department has developers for a reason, because they have very specific needs in here that can only come from a team of developers that are in house satisfying those needs.
Him: Well our engineers never had to do that. Sure projects sometimes had to put on holds because the vendor was busy, but such is the nature of development
Me: No it is not, the nature of development is to create things, it is one thing for my team to go through bugs and software considerations, it is another for me to not provide a service because some random company is taking two weeks on a $300 dllr an hour contract to put a simple checkbox on a form. If a project fails the board is not going to care that some vendor is not doing their job, they are just going to blame me, if that is the case then I would much rather the blame be actually mine than some sucky third party "developer" also, your engineers where not even engineers, they were people with a degree that purchased things, that's it, please do not compare them to my guys or refer them as engineers in front of me, they are not.
Him: Well, maybe.
MAYBE?!! motherfucker I did not kill myself learning the ins and outs of architecture and software engineering on my own time after my fucking bachelors in C.S for your codeless background ass to tell me MAYBE. My word IS the fucking WORD here, not yours. Fuck me I really dislike this dude's management practices.
The shitty part? He is not a bad person, he is not a bad dude that is out to get us, just a simple minded moron with no place as a leader.
I know leaders, I know what a leader is, this is not one.
rant
fml