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Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

> the manager is the agent and is assumed to have the firm's best interests in mind, but in reality …

> the manager is the agent and is assumed to have the firm's best interests in mind, but in reality doesn't. Every manager I had at every major multinational company only had the interest of their own career progression in mind, not the company's, not their team's. You as an employee under them were just a means to their goal, nothing more. I naively assumed that making them look good and doing the overtime when needed to achieve their idiotic deadlines would also guarantee my ascension later, but boy was I gullible and wrong. Going the extra mile for your boss might work out for you when everything goes smooth in the org in times of economic prosperity when there's room for everyone to move up, but when the org or economy went tits up, and things were being put on chopping block, those managers didn't hesitate to grab the only parachute for themselves and let their team sink or throw them under the bus to save themselves at the tune of "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" , so I learned the valuable lesson to not go the extra mile for any boss unless I have written guarantees of a …

Original discussionBayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’475 source comments · at import
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7T

It's called "empire building" and is also part of the principal-agent problem where the manager is the agent and is assumed to have the firm's best interests in mind, but in reality doesn't. As a result, the principal (for example an owner) has to come up with methods to keep their management honest (example... tying most compensation to stock price - although I think this just makes management short sighted). I was once in a meeting where an IT manager was told his group would have to handle the install for a piece of software that like 2 engineers used. The guy asked for 3 additional head count and my jaw dropped. If someone has ever seen the Avatar Airbender show, I was like Prince Zuko speaking up at his father's meeting. You see I was there as a courtesy and tried to point out that even one headcount seemed like a lot for something that should take less than a week of work for a sin…

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PY

I’ve been fortunate to have some very good managers. That’s why I find this idea so horrible. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I had to “self-organize.”

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DA

I dream of a graduation speech where someone says all of this stuff, or even a proper uni course “avoiding corporate bullshit in a narcissistic world and how to sue your landlord” … except the donors wont like this!

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WI

>unless I have written guarantees of a reward. I'm sorry, this seems almost impossible unless you're a contractor with that explicitly stated in your contract.

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