Never Outshine The Master? 4

[gwillr]

I have been in my current position for just over a year now, and it is my first position in a larger corporation. I am seeing for the first time in my carreer how crazy interoffice and corporate politics can be. I would appreciate any advice or stories relating to what follows:


I have read many times, and for the most part, agree with the little piece of workplace wisdom: "Never Outshine The Master"

In plain english: Don't make your boss look bad, don't make them feel like you are gunning for their job, or show him/her up.

There will be times however, when a suggestion, project, accomplishment or something else that you will do might make your manager feel like you are gunning for their job or something higher in the chain than them.

My question is how can one effectively show their superiors what they have accomplished, or initiative that they have taken (in order to get adequate recognition) without making the manager feel like this.

Again, any stories or advice on this, or other ways to avoid or deal with office politics wwill be appreciated.

Gary

 

[SQLSister]

DoubleD - I'm glad you haven't run into the kind of management I have, but believe me there are managers out there whose breadth of incompetence is simply amazing (maybe appalling is the better word).

I'm a generally positive person, but I am simply not good enough at acting to praise the person who actively and deliberately sabotaged the project into order to look good by rescuing it from the "incompetents" at the last minute or the project manager whose idea of a requirements definition is to tell use to create some complicated feature with no guidance as to exactly what it could do or even look like, who then proceedes to tell the CEO it should only take a couple of weeks when it will take 6 months or more, who never monitors progress and won't look at any version of what we are doing until it is finished and we are several days away from the promised rollout, when she then rips apart whatever we have done and tells us that any person would have known to make it do something we never even heard of before that moment. Who will tell you what features she wants based on the last person she talked to at a trade show even when the new feature she wants will actively conflict with the last new feature she had us implement. Who thinks that we should be able to search the database based on what the user wants not what input he actually gave us (How am I supposed to know that Norkl is supposed to mean Norfolk, for instance? She thinks we should be able to tell and that the solution shouldn;t slow the system any and it shouldn't give a list of possibilities to choose from, it's obvious which of thousands (maybe millions) of possibilities is the correct one.)

(Yeah I know there are a bunch of run-on sentences in that, but I'm too tired to fix them.)

Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[DoubleD]

SQLSister,
Think of this as a challenge. Your manager is obviously incompetent, how can you help that person be more competent and work as a team player. They obviously don't understand the difficulty of programming. I'm not suggesting by any means that it is easy, I've worked with people who were "aptitude challenged". I'm just saying I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume they don't realize how difficult they are making my life.

I am what I am based on the decisions I have made.

DoubleD

 

[SQLSister]

She has no need to be a team player; she is the CEOs girlfriend. She in fact won't even say hello to the development team members when she sees us. She sees no need to improve her performance as she told one of my co-workers that she self rated herself at all 5's (the highest rating in our system).

This is why I'm looking for another job.

Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[DoubleD]

Definitely not an ideal situation. Good luck!

I am what I am based on the decisions I have made.

DoubleD

 

[Tarwn]

I know I have made jokes in the past about [well, maybe not about...bad wording] your situation SQLSister, but I do feel your pain and know I wouldn't be making any of them if I were in your shoes.

Todays bright idea:
Start spreading rumors that the CEO's girlfriend is sleeping with his secretary...or better yet the owners [son|daughter|grandmother|.*], in a secret bid to take the CEO's job
Works even better if said random person is female. Course when I say better, I mean more humorously, this wasn't exactly intended to be effective
[The humor not being the sexuality, but rather the desperation/determination shown in trying to screw CEO/boyfriend out of job]

Of course in the real world this woudn't work and if I were in your shoes I would denounce ever having considered thinking about saying such a thing, but that whats great about not being in your shoes...course I tend to make fun of my bad work situation too, maybe it's just a desperate attemt to not turn permanently red with anger...

 

[SQLSister]

Well that tactic might not work so well here. He has no children, his other relatives live out of town and he has no secretary (that used to be her job before she got promoted, yuo don't think she'd allow any one else to have a job that close to him do you?). So it doesn't even make a good fantasy. But I did name my punching bag that I practice kickboxing on after her. Good stress reliever.

Sure wish the job market around here would pick up.

Tarwyn the jokes are more than welcome about all we can do at this point is make fun of the situation.

Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[rosieb]

Suggest she's sleeping with the security guard?

Seriously, I do sympathise, an ex-boss of mine was sleeping with his sercretary, and she became "office manager" , after a minor disagreement with her (I disagreed with her idea of all staff coughing up a significant sum towards his birthday present), I found myself made redundant.

It was a favour in the end. I found a much better job, eventually.

Rosie
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think" (Niels Bohr)

 

[gwillr]

your situation caused me to ask an important question....is it not against your company's human rights/resources policy to date someone in the company who is below you in the chain of command? especially since she probably "reports" directly to him.

Is there a way to secretly communicate this to the board of directors, or whatever entity your CEO reports to?

just a thought

Gary

 

[SQLSister]

CEO owns the company and we have no HR people.

Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[DoubleD]

Well,
There's always the option of seducing the CEO so he dumps her, then she'd get fired for incompetence and you could have her job! Or if you're married, have a single friend seduce the CEO.

hehehehe This post is so wrong! hehehehe

I am what I am based on the decisions I have made.

DoubleD

 

[SQLSister]

E

http://wwwwwwww!

I would have both moral problems and health concerns doing that! Any way she isn't his only girlfriend. And I'm 13 or 14 years older than he is.

So back to the topic at hand. In a normal organization, it is good to make the boss look good, but for your own career's sake you need to make sure you get credit for your contributions too. I rememeber once when I did such a good job of convincing my boss to implement my suggestions, he honestly believed thaey had been his ideas. This was not good for me, but seemed to be good for him.

My usual way of dealing now that I'm no longer young and naive is to make sure everyone hears about my accomplishments, but to tell pepole about how much help it was to work for my boss because he/she did thus and so to aid the project. Here, I can't honestly compliment management, but they do know what my personal accomplishments are - that could be why in the last three years my pay has gone up 45%.

In a bad situation like mine, the best you can do sometimes is not to say anything about management, but still make sure your contributions are clearly known. Hey your bad manager will get the credit too anyway, so best to protect yourself. And not bad talking your supervisor within the company (you guys don't have any idea what company I work for, so I can do it here) will be noted as a positive or at least will be neutral. "course if you no longer care what anyone thinks, feel free to bad talk your manager, you might be leaving sooner than you planned that way.

Questions about posting. See faq183-874