Do you have a reasonable Boss?

[Smokey]

I'm just curious how many of you think you have a reasonable boss.  By that I mean things like:

1) You can tell your boss that they are wrong about something without fear of being fired or yelled at.
2) They actually listen to you and your ideas.
3) They don't make crazy decisions which effect everyone without any input from the team.
4) They understand when you say you need more resources (time, money, equipment) to get some job done and do what they can to support you.

Stuff like that.  Just curious.

::EDIT-2015::
Edit to clarify.  My boss is reasonably reasonable
::EDIT-2023::
He must have been looking over my shoulder when I wrote that in 2015.  That dude was a crazy person, and I bailed on that company a while ago when he officially lost his mind

[T3sl4co1l]

Yes, but as a contractor / self employed, I'm a rather biased person to ask..   The people connected to my current jobs are pretty reasonable, but a prior job had its share of problems.

If you're in a shitty situation and wondering if it's unusual, no, it's not.  There are above and below average managers throughout the world, and sooner or later you'll get stuck behind one or the other.  Them's the breaks...

Tim

[Howardlong]

I have a great boss, we always agree and understand why deicsions are made.

It's called working for yourself, I can recommend it!

I did witness some really shitty things back when I did consulting and contracting though, made me question why people put up with it. The worst bosses were those who "managed up", made me sick just watching them, they were generally incompetent work-wise, but said the right things to the right people.

[Mechanical Menace]

I worked for a uni for quite a while and I'd say yes to all of them in that case.

I work for myself and not always, my boss can be a c£$t lol.

[EEVblog]

I have a great boss, we always agree and understand why deicsions are made.
It's called working for yourself, I can recommend it!
I did witness some really shitty things back when I did consulting and contracting though, made me question why people put up with it.

And FYI for those who think consulting and contracting is "working for yourself" - it ain't!

[Mechanical Menace]

And FYI for those who think consulting and contracting is "working for yourself" - it ain't!

At the end of the day you're always working for the customer

[HighVoltage]

I am self employed too and right now I have two projects with two different companies

The boss of one company is just perfect, understands all problems and ways of finding solutions and support me in any way possible.
The other one is the total opposite and I wish for the day to come soon that this project is over.
So, you never know, it can go in all direction.

[Phaedrus]

No.

[Seekonk]

I had a boss once that I asked if I could take this time period off for vacation.  He wanted to know why I was bothering him with it.  You can take any time off you want as long as the work gets done.

[CatalinaWOW]

Over a long career I found that it was easy to be too quick to judgement.  Some of my worst bosses later turned out to be my preferred employers.  And some of the ones I liked best moved into my bosses dustbin.  I also found that you can work with anyone, and even enjoy it if you have control over your own emotions.

[KM4FER]

A long long time ago I was on-call 24X7.  There was one Operator who would call me at least twice a week in the middle of the night because he had tried something and it didn't work and he needed help bailing himself out.  After a couple of years of this I finally convinced my boss to hire this kid as a sysadmin, over his objection that he was "a loose cannon".  Once he was on the day shift I was able to push and pull him in the right directions and he created some great tools for our Operations staff.

A few years later the BIG Bosses made a fatal decision (it didn't work out for them) to spend $100 million to replace our system and we were told that we would be phased out within 3 years.  Not wanting to see the Kid have a dead-end job on his resume I pushed him to find a different job with a future, which he did.

Another couple of years go by and after I had taken a year off to regroup I called the Kid to see if he knew of any job openings around.  He talked to his boss and they called me in for an interview and I got a job working with him again.

About two months later the Boss retired and the Kid was promoted to Boss.  So now the kid who I had trained was now my boss and if I didn't like one of his decisions we would have a little "chat".

All in all the Kid and I worked together almost 30 years.  The first half I was kind of his boss and the last half he was kind of my boss.

[SL4P]

Different business structures beget different behaviours from all levels of staff...!

I've been lucky, but I know people in perfectly 'normal' occupations that have unreasonable expectations on them, their bosses and their departments - just because 'that's the way it is'...   yet others in much higher pressure roles have a calmer, more organised way of dealing with peaks and troughs in the performance of those daily activities and problems.

It comes down to how interested the business owners are in the business  - or is it just a money machine for their holidays and lifestyle.  They may NEVER be involved in any aspect of the operations - just read the financial report each quarter -- or they may be more engaged.

That's where the difference lays.  "Follow the money"

[kingofkya]

1) yep
2) kinda (often forgets for months)
3) yep
4) yep

Honestly, I think this question breaks down to does you boss trust you if he/she does then all the above happens. In my limited experience in IT at least.

[Stonent]

Not to sound like Peter from office space, but I have 3 bosses. All are pretty decent. My direct supervisor is in charge of Manufacturing IT, we have another supervisor in charge of Office IT and there's the IT manager who is their boss. My shift varies sometimes so I may get tasks from any one of them... Less so the IT manager, but his tasks are more along the line of generate a report of all people with admin rights to their computer and who's had a virus in the last month. Sometimes he'll have me update the digital signage with new media etc.

I can usually get time off when I need it. Work a split shift if I have a school obligation etc. I guess since the company is partly paying for my degree I can't complain. 

[RJFreeman]

Direct supervisor/boss
1) yep
2) yep
3) yep
4) yep

above him, his boss
1) Nope, gets insulting and snarky if his 'genius' is questioned
2) Nope, he knows better.
3) Always makes stupid decisions, classic case of Dunning and Kruger effect
4) Completely clueless but thinks he knows everything (see also Dunning and Kruger effect)

Before you ask yes I am looking for a new job....

[n45048]

I won't get started in the (mis)management of Government organisations, however I will give those in a managerial position one piece of advice: Remember the accomplishments and strengths of your staff but don't dwell on the issues when someone was last in trouble.

This is something I live by. Everyone makes mistakes and fucks up. The most common flaw I've seen in some bosses (particularly middle management) is that they forever harp on about the latest issue even though it's been addressed and dealt with. They allow the negatives to cloud their judgement about someone and are quick to forget the positives and strengths. Which leads to stupid decisions like "Oh no, we can't let x do y because they made that mistake 2 years ago!"

This just leads to inefficiency within an organisation and staff not being used to their full potential.

I work in a paramilitary organisation with a clearly defined chain of command. One of the best bosses I ever had once slapped me on the back of the head and told me not to do something ever again, but then asked me if I was alright and wanted a lift home as if nothing had happened. I still have the utmost respect for that person. On the other hand, I now have a boss who micro-manages everything and listens only when it suits their agenda; needless to say, that person has lost sight of the bigger picture which is poison to the organisation.

[babysitter]

Yes.

My boss: Physicist, has kids, has been thru commerical and personal bankrupcy (single customer triggered it), control period reduced due to good succes.

My benefits:

- worktime: I can leave when my wife asks for assistance with the kids on agreement. No shouting in case I am late at work. Its all on a "If there is work to do, it must be done well, just the deadline counts." basis. Can work at home, too.
- whatever money the customer gives, he doesn't hold back if I explain why I want to shop for something.
- physicists understanding of electronics. Has a clue, needs some explanations of the workings. Good support on the math front.
- myself gaining very good insight in fields outside electronics from him. I like to apply electronics as models for other physical phenomena, as in thermal design as a simple example that many elec guys usw.
- "authority" behaviour very, very rare.

[RJFreeman]

Everyone makes mistakes and fucks up.

well actually, only people who are actually doing things fuck up, useless pricks who might pontificate at length, but never actually have to make stuff work usually don't stuff up.....
 

[n45048]

Everyone makes mistakes and fucks up.

well actually, only people who are actually doing things fuck up, useless pricks who might pontificate at length, but never actually have to make stuff work usually don't stuff up.....
 

Not doing your job is included in the definition of "fucking up" :-)

[hamdi.tn]

i use to work for a shitty one , his problem was
- give contradictory decisions (some time in the same damn day)
- project are rarely a client request as much as his one imaginary interest (designed so many things end up in trash cause no one asked for )
- project material needs where never what we should use but what he think we should use ( he once asked for a led spot mounted in a washbasin sink, with standard led, he made client laugh so hard)
- never listen to clients needs as much he imagine what the clients need
- use clients resources to finance his own project ( not my problem, but this is too damn immoral )
- if any thing go wrong, it's always finger pointing situation ( my college never got a complete salary cause he pay the bill when he do something wrong, i got fired for refusing that)

am running my own business now , and as Dave said , you not really working for yourself , and for that it's easy to work with people within the Electronic industry who understand the design process and most of the time write a nice requirement documentation for their projects. more hard to ask any other industrial for the same thing , most of them doesn't even know what he need.
 

[Ice-Tea]

The boss is me.

So yeah: awesome!

[Howardlong]

When I was contracting, the worst boss I ever had was the one who used to take a register of when people turned up in the morning. Same guy would bugger off to the pub at lunchtime, never to be found later on. My contract renewals were done in a strip bar of his choosing. I hated it, looking back on it how could he possibly have thought that was appropriate? He had the audacity once to berate me for escalating a production problem to his boss when we couldn't contact him in the pub. It's the closest I ever came to walking out on the job, and I'd been doing it for about ten years at that point. Looking back on it I should have done, but we are all naive.

The best boss? A newly minted physicist/philosophy post grad. He was 20 years my junior, I was doing some bits and pieces at ESA integrating a satellite. We worked all hours God sent, and if we could have slept, eaten et al in the clean room we would've. I ended up debugging other people's payloads without schematics, but we had a deadline measured in hours to ship the satellite to Russia for launch.

He trusted my experience, but as he was project manager, I went to him for direction, after giving him options and suggestions, and opening up to his own ideas. The satellite launched and worked a few weeks later. It was the second biggest PR success at the time for ESA. (There were other problems later, but that's a whole other story!)

[tszaboo]

Yes, absolutely. So far the best I can ask for. But here is the thing: Everyone above and around him is from crazytown. Unreasonable, shouting moronic a-holes. The amount of screwup generated by this are phenomenal. When he comes back from a meeting and tells me the decisions they made I usually keep my bag of facepalms very close.

[Neilm]

Well, I'm waiting for Seppys comments.

[T3sl4co1l]

Well, I'm waiting for Seppys comments.

[REDACTED]