Quote:
Originally posted by NatureBoy
Our CTO is an opinionated, misinformed, unpleasant man who is a very poor people manager, even though he is capable of seeing the 'big picture' when it comes to IT at our company.
Unfortunately, his mannerisms have driven away two of our senior tech people already (one of which has been heard to say he'll never work IT again due to the trauma he experienced working under our CTO). One of those senior techs happened to be my boss, which now leaves me with the great pleasure of reporting directly to the CTO.
I have no desire to harm him and only a minimal desire to expose his substantial ineptitude and forward-thinking-ness to the CEO.
What sort of things do you do to deal with supervisors like this? What sort of things has your supervisor done to you? What can you do to combat this sort of egotistical idiocy?
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Alright, let's see, quite a bit here.
First off, he got to where he is for some reason (whether it's good or bad) and whoever made the decision to put him there will not be happy if that decision is made to look idiotic in front of others. Second, going over his head as suggested by phred could do you a ton of damage (especially if there is a close relationship between the CEO and your CTO).
You can look at his faults as either opportunites or barriers. It's your choice. If you really don't think you can get along with him then make sure you're polishing the resume and looking for something new. If you can get along with him, you'll probably get a few opportunities to move up into those higher level positions that keep going vacated. Reporting directly to him could work out very well for you.
While working for a Fortune 200 firm, my boss was fired about three months after I started. The department was only me and my boss, so this left me in a difficult situation. Suddenly I found myself reporting directly to the President of a couple of $ billion company. This President had a BAD reputation. He held grudges like no one I've ever seen but was a really amazing businessman.
My ability to get along with him kept me from losing my job and enabled me to be extremely productive in everything I did at the company. People knew I was one of the few that held his trust and there were almost no barriers when it came to getting stuff done across departments or divisions (which was typically a MAJOR hurdle as no one wanted to be outdone by anyone). He brought me into some extremely high level planning sessions which gave me several opportunities to inject my thoughts around the direction of the business.
This even resulted in giving me a smile a couple of weeks ago as I was driving down the highway. I left that company almost 3 years ago but coming upon a construction area I saw a product with the company logo on it. This was a product which I had done the due diligence on, contacted the corporation that built them, and helped to set up the deal which brought them into the family, so to speak.
On the other side of things, there are relationships that can not be continued. I again find myself working for a boss who is less than ideal. Many people don't get along with him as he's pretty arrogant and wants everything his own way. The problem is he's heading up a department that's critical to our business and there is no rush to achieve anything. He's had 5 months to get the department up and running and there's little evidence that it will be functional before the end of the year at the earliest. There is no vision beyond a software application he is developing and I don't feel there is much to learn here. In this case I may just have to cut and run. If there's no reward in putting out the extra effort, then I'll be damned if I spend my waking hours dreading going to work.
Just my .02.