How did they instill fear?
- Reduce flexibility over time
- Every expense needs to be justified a hundred times
- delaying approval of vacation days to the point that you take a vacation, and it is still not approved
- Adding unnecessary process where none is required
- Adding compromised people to the team (limited contract, needs the job desperately, needs a raise for kid's education etc)
- Strict butts-on-seats policy
- Constantly saying that we are going to remove technology <x>, where <x> is what you are hired for. Company will still need <x> for the foreseeable future.
And there are more, but I don't want to re-live dark moments. I hope no one actually tries to implement this stuff, because it shows that your manager is a control-freak, and you need to run for the hills.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/10/14/the-gervais-principle-...
Sociopath: Adam Neumann
Clueless: middle management types who fully bought in to WeWork’s “vision”
Losers: Everyday employees just trying to make a living and go about their lives. End up just as hosed as the clueless, but at least they’re not surprised.
I've lived that a few times, now I know the warning signs and bail as soon as possible.
However, I wouldn't call these "scare tactics". In fact, there globally weren't any scare tactics for developers in any company I've worked for: they're simply too difficult to find, good ones especially.
Scare tactics is when you are a single mom afraid of losing your minimum wage job and knowing unemployment won't cover your expenses because your deadbeat ex isn't paying alimony on your 2 kids. That's when your boss starts touching you...
I've had a VPE who did this but much more subtly.
- VPE arrives & inherits a prototype written in <x> and a team heavily experienced and passionate about <x>
- VPE says that passion for technology <x> is a hiring red flag. "We want people to join due to passion for domain <y> not technology <x>". VPE is frequently the sole thumbs-down resulting in a rejection of many capable <x> engineers.
- <x> team is understaffed but has a near-term milestone defined (but not owned) by the VPE
- Simultaneously, VPE is hiring new members in another office with no experience in or interest in learning technology <x>
- Milestone is cut in scope multiple times because initial goal was never reasonable. However, the milestone is delivered and is ready to be iterated on with all the new engineers hired.
- VPE suggests moving away from technology <x> entirely and standardizing on alternative <z> because the engineers he hired are more interested in <z> and we are lacking in experts in <x>
- End result is a wholesale rewrite of the <x> project using <z>. A year of my time and years of others' gone to waste. Not to mention the project itself is in a high-profile and competitive space.
Clearly a bad actor but also adept at maintaining plausible deniability thanks to everyone's deference to the VPE's authority. Not to mention a variety of other shitty leadership behaviors employed.
Really goes to show that the Amazon leadership principle "Leaders are always right" can be perverted by way of authoritarian self-fulfilling prophecy.
Per this post, once this VPE forced out my direct manager who I actually liked (making VPE my new manager)...I peaced out :)
I instituted a strict butts-on-seats policy, planned to remove technology <x>, forced process to ensure source control, code review and deployment by other team members, etc.
Being a manager isn’t all glamour. There are many people who are trying to scheme, lie and cheat their way to fortune at your company’s expense, and if the manager lets them.... bad news for the manager.
We are talking about just normal people, who want freedom and flexibility and haven't done anything wrong.
I understand that you had to do what you had to.