Category: Corporate Job

How much do you respect your boss? Him/her as a worker, as a human being?

Promotion By Race Privilege

The rule on my previous job was management position decided by race. I worked for a company abroad and HQ will send a bunch of young guys promised with express way to the top. The top management position is reserved for those guys and locals were barred.

The result is I ended up with unique situation. Dude whom I taught about how things work last year now become my boss and orders me around. Some of them have good head on their shoulders, others got drunk of power. Some were competent and realize they need to learn, others not so much.

I don’t blame them for it. You seize the opportunity given to you. If you’re a broke 24 years old and your opportunity is getting flown 18 hours to other country with promise of management position, it’s understandable that you take it.

I can maintain minimum respect at the recognition that they’re technically my boss. Beyond that? Not so much.

Promotion By Merit

My new job however, has given me a stark different experience. The boss was not lifted by privilege or race, but by pure performance. He started from the bottom and brought good business to the company then got promoted.

Talking with him has different vibe. As someone who made it himself, he didn’t come as patronizing or arrogant (which ironically I found in some people lifted by privilege). His way in problem solving is unique, often push boundaries to get the job done. This is different from those who sit on the top who stuck in by-the-book solution because they were never in the position of doing the actual grunt work themselves.

In any case, this one deserves my respect, so far. Let’s see how it goes in the future

I’m working in a big company and over the years I’ve been approached multiple times in linkedin by competitors. Since I have low interest in just changing masters mostly I ignored them but I did entertain 1 or 2 out of curiousity.

The theme is quite similar: they expect me to bring ‘book of clients’, basically ‘stealing’ client database from my current company and bring it to them. The term is ‘bring in business’. Nothing about my years of experiences in the industry or how I can help growing the company based on those. All they want is ‘business’ AKA instant client.

When this expectation pop up I instantly reject them, the reason are simple:

• I don’t want my worth decided simply by data I ‘stole’ from my old company. It seems like a very shaky ground. You’re not appreciated as a skilled professional, just as some kind of a corporate spy
• If they expect the data would bring them instant clients, they’re in for a big disappointment. There’s a reason why my current company is big and if they won’t improve themselves, nothing in those data will help
• I can see easily that the reason they expect me to ‘bring business’ instead of asking for my feedback about growing business is because they don’t want to change a thing. They want to stay the same but expect client base to grow, and I’m for sure don’t want to be at the end of that expectation.

Working with middle managements is truly bring out mixed feeling. In one side I pity them for being pressed from above, having no real power, and having to face backlash from below. On the other hand they’re also paid well (naturally) and from time to time pull some stupid shits that no one asked for.

They’re under pressure to always think up some ways to increase the company efficiency or sales even by the tiniest percentage, this I can understand. The problem is when the team gets bigger and you have more middle management guys, this is when you start getting BS ideas. They’re so over-reaching for that tiniest improvement that it becomes whatever-we-can-get.

This means after getting shot down by the guys above for big changes ideas, they will settle for smaller (stupider) ideas that in the end will only add more hassles to our work in the bottom. For example adding unnecessary reports, adding a completely irrelevant department whose job is only to annoy everyone and poking on task that already being working on, proposing things that no one care of and sell it as the biggest idea ever, and so on.

But hey, that’s okay because apparently other companies are doing it too! This is the most idiotic excuse I ever heard to justify such nonsense existence and I’m sure it won’t be the end of it.

Because (again) apparently small changes that don’t matter is better than (seemingly) has no change/improvement at all. Unless for those who get the short end of the stick of course.