MegaloSchrek

By Daniel Chenault
October 7, 2001

I'd worked for MegaloSchrek for about 6 1/2 years when my team (started two years previous and I was a founding member) got a new manager. Prior to him our manager was one of the team; he always said we all had a job in the team and his was seeing to it we had the tools we needed and someone to run interference against upper management's stupidity.

This new manager starts off his first meeting by talking about our team as "revolutionary." The team's concept had already passed the revolutionary part; we were moving into evolving as our revolution had been successful.

I had just come off a long assignment in another part of the team and was ready to move back to my specialty on the team (server-side infrastructure design, deployment, planning and in-depth troubleshooting, down to source code, which is what I had done practically my whole time at the company).

Note that everyone on this team had a specialty and that we required a minimum of two years experience in that specialty before we'd even talk to a new-hire (internal or external). New manager says our single client-support guy needs some help until a second client guy can join the team (already hired, six weeks away from joining). Sure, I say, I'm not trained in it but I can take the easier stuff and let him concentrate on the harder stuff in his specialty.

It was a struggle but I pulled through, sort of. Comes close to time for the new guy and I ask the manager about moving back to my specialty. No, he says, you're going to stay on client support. We've sold contracts specifying a certain level of client-side support and I need you there.

So hire a client guy, I said. Oh, THAT went over well! How dare I tell this former restaurant manager how to successfully run a team of highly-specialized, experienced technical engineers!

What followed was months of wrangling with this guy. The result was predictable; he covered his assets with business justifications and whenever I made the objection that I wasn't trained in the area and simply could not deliver the level of service our customers were paying for and expected, I was told "you're a smart guy. Make it happen; that's your job."

Since when is it sound management to take a long-term, experienced, highly-trained person and put them in an area they've never worked in, never trained in and pass him off to customers as an expert in the area?

My review after four months doing that job was predictable; piss-poor. Near the end of that meeting he stops me from opening his door and says, "When will you learn that you are not the manager, I am, and it is your job to do what I tell you to do?" I responded, "When will you learn that this is not a team of busboys and waiters who can be moved around in specialties like toy blocks just to make your spreadsheet balance?" It's been a bit over a year he's been manager of this team; the numbers look great, morale across the team sucks. Lots of sick days, personal days, gotta-leave-early-to-do-something excuses, all signs of a team that is crumbling (I'm not the only one he's treating like a mule in harness).

THAT went over well too.

To add insult to injury, I've gotten firm confirmation through the grapevine (hey, you don't spend seven-and-a-half years in a company in a single location without making low friends in high places ;) that he's talked to other managers about what a piss-poor employee I am and that the company would be better off with me gone. So he's trying to sabotage any efforts I make to get off his team; he wants me gone.

I've had lots of managers over the years at MegaloSchrek; I think I know good, effective management when I see it. This guy is nothing but a rung-climber or what I've seen described as a seagull manager (fly in, make a lot of noise, shit on everything, go away). It's one thing to be a poor manager, another thing entirely to be an active jerk while being a poor manager.