Fingering bosses and clients to avoid

[Origisaurus]

Warning: bloatware!

5 Ways To Spot A Bad Boss In An Interview

Not just bad bosses, but clients to avoid.  Crooks, scumbags, losers, etc.

Looking for your examples.

[TRexx]

Most of the managers I've interviewed with have been pretty good. The real losers are in HR. They're the ones who love to play the mind games.   

Of course there was the client made it clear that all we had to do to get his business was lease him a new Lexus for the duration of the project.   And another one who insisted we take him for lunch at a local hotel, then suggested I leave while he took our sales rep to a room he happened to have booked.

[The Gorn]

Not a bad overview and this is a good first order hit list of symptoms.

But that's all it is, first order symptoms.

I've had horrible clients that pass all of these tests with flying colors. I have found that badness is rarely that explicit. A lot of badness can't be detected until work-time pressures cause it to bubble up.

With small business people and especially self made business owners whose hardships have warped them, the main tendency that I have experienced that is a prime spoiler of the relationship tends to be extreme "controlling" tendencies.

Sort of like "2. Concern with your hobbies" but more in the realm of aggressive exploration of your motivations to find weaknesses to be exploited or called out.

In the IT world it's virtually impossible to maintain a wall of professionalism with the client. If you do IT technical work, every client in this business is up your ass about what you had for breakfast or who you are voting for.

[Carrie Cobol]

I've had a few bad bosses and they never gave me any warning signs in the job interview.  In fact, quite the opposite.  there was the guy who in the job interview, when he saw on my resume that I knew C programming on VMS, asked me about it.  He commented that he could never figure out how to do the file I/O, and I responded (truthfully) that I could do that.  It sounded like something he was interested in and wanted for some project.  But several months into the job, I couldn't get him to show any interest in my C programming skills (it was a Cobol shop).  I assumed he was just too busy, so I wrote a quick demo program and told him where he could find it so that he could check it out at his leisure.  He never did.  In fact, after that, I distinctly got the feeling that he was jealous, like I'd shown him up.  It's not like I even showed it to anybody, didn't embarrass him in public or anything.  Just that I could do something he couldn't.

Then a few times I've been hired for one job description only to find that few of the items in the list really applied to the job.  That's really annoying, since you have to pretty much match the job description in order to get interviewed.  Then to find out "oh, we don't really do that here" after you're hired.  Grr.

[ilconsiglliere]

I have had more than a few bad bosses and there were always warning signs that I usually ignored. Later it bit me.

*When I was at B*fA, the boss was an Ivy League Harvard douche of the worst kind. At the interview he was incredibly arrogant and nasty at the interview. I remember thinking at the interview this guy is a douche. They made the offer and I was supposed to work for the other guy I interviewed but they reorged and I ended up with the Harvard prize. He was a bastard to me the entire time I worked there.

*At NY L*fe, I had multiple rounds of interviews. One was with this Russian guy who screamed and cursed at me at the interview, another was with the CFO who was to be my boss. She made me stand outside her office for 15 minutes while she "tidied up". At the interview she was totally distracted - looking at her PC, her landline, her cell phone and generally couldnt put 2 sentences together. She was pretty freaking mean the entire time I worked there. If she called you in on something even if you were right, you were wrong. You had to totally keep your attitude in check and do the hat in hand thing.

*My last round at Ma B*ll had quite a few warning signs. The first interview she never showed up. They rescheduled and she only spoke to me for like 15 minutes and than handed me off to her staff. When she did speak to me it was like listening to sound bites. Constantly distracted and not paying attention. Everything was fast paced and hyper. Like an idiot I took the job.

I have a lot more...

[I D Shukhov]

I didn't read the article because the title is all I needed to read: 5 Ways To Spot A Bad Boss In An Interview.   The words "boss" and "interview" mean that the work will likely lead to dysfunction no matter how good or bad the boss or interviewee are.  The way the relationship is structured is wrong and somebody, the boss and/or the worker, is probably going to be disappointed.

I believe, in the future, successful organizations will be self-organized networks.   

Individual workers will need to make themselves attractive by getting skilled up on their own with an autodidact learning plan.  They will need to publicize their capabilities not with resumes, but with works, and have their bylines attached to these works.   

Then, like an elementary school sports team, a team will be started by a single player and the team will grow by consensus as the team chooses new players based on the candidate's demonstrated skills as I described above.

Once the organization is formed there will be no bosses.  Like the elementary school sports teams we're all familiar with there will be leaders and people with varying amounts and types of skills, but no managers or bosses.

[David Randolph]

Once the organization is formed there will be no bosses.  Like the elementary school sports teams we're all familiar with there will be leaders and people with varying amounts and types of skills, but no managers or bosses.

Dream on. Freedom demands constant vigilance, and battles, and bloodshed, and loss of saved up wealth. When we have people believing that there won't be any more bosses, we get Napoleon, Stalin, and Mao. They let down their guard and the megalomaniacs take over.

Back to the issue of fingering bad bosses or bad clients. My first line of defense is to ask clients to put some "skin in the game". I submit that the article is describing how to see when a boss does not do that. The next line of defense is that of respect. I have had clients who treated my team as if they were incompetent. That is a huge sign for future interactions. Avoid anyone who can not respect other people.

[The Gorn]

Once the organization is formed there will be no bosses.  Like the elementary school sports teams we're all familiar with there will be leaders and people with varying amounts and types of skills, but no managers or bosses.

Dream on. Freedom demands constant vigilance, and battles, and bloodshed, and loss of saved up wealth. When we have people believing that there won't be any more bosses, we get Napoleon, Stalin, and Mao. They let down their guard and the megalomaniacs take over.

I agree with I D when he starts:

The words "boss" and "interview" mean that the work will likely lead to dysfunction no matter how good or bad the boss or interviewee are.  The way the relationship is structured is wrong and somebody, the boss and/or the worker, is probably going to be disappointed.

The master-slave paradigm (that's really what jobs are in essence) is dysfunctional and contains the seeds of its own destruction. But if you tell most companies "well, I'm interviewing you while you interview me" they will laugh their asses off. Who has the power? He with the money!

I agree with you, David - "managing authority" in a work setting is never, ever going away. I want to agree with I D. But realistically, co-ops are always going to be a mere sliver of economic activity.

That is a huge sign for future interactions. Avoid anyone who can not respect other people.

Disrespect can take awhile to show up and often it can be muddled with rushing/hurriedness, sloppy manners, and absent mindedness.

But clearly evident disrespect indicates a shitty client or boss.

[I D Shukhov]

Once the organization is formed there will be no bosses.  Like the elementary school sports teams we're all familiar with there will be leaders and people with varying amounts and types of skills, but no managers or bosses.

Dream on. Freedom demands constant vigilance, and battles, and bloodshed, and loss of saved up wealth. When we have people believing that there won't be any more bosses, we get Napoleon, Stalin, and Mao. They let down their guard and the megalomaniacs take over.

I don't have any answers for the scale of a nation.   I think democracy is about as good as it gets -- as Churchill stated with other words. 

For small organizations I believe a cooperative structure is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for freedom.  It's not sufficient because our minds are not free.   Everyone I'm close to has fairly severe psychological problems and by extrapolation I think most people whom I don't know well are likely also damaged. 

So if dysfunctional people, and that's most of us, are thrown together in a cooperative there's likely to be problems.  As bad as traditional boss-worker hierarchies are, they have rules and you either keep a lid on problems and obey or you get thrown out.   Of course we behave according to how we've been conditioned and the acceptable bounds are referred to as "office politics" which sounds better than "nature red in tooth and claw."

The second requirement of a successful cooperative is the psychological maturity of its members.   The cooperative environment itself may be able to help with open communication.
 

[David Randolph]

So if dysfunctional people, and that's most of us, are thrown together in a cooperative there's likely to be problems. 

The second requirement of a successful cooperative is the psychological maturity of its members.   The cooperative environment itself may be able to help with open communication.

The only alternative is that the organization has ways to help people become more psychologically mature. That means that the organization is willing to sacrifice profit in order to help the people in the organization. Thus, AA groups function, but are almost always running out of money.