Years ago I joined a company and after a couple of weeks, I was requested to fill up some paperwork, it took me a couple of days to get everything and sent it.

Couple of weeks later, I received a whatsapp call at 10:30 PM, I answered because I didn’t know the number and it had a code that I didn’t know. It was my manager or project lead or solution delivery, the same guy who requested the papers, he told me that one of the papers I signed it was wrong and that I need it to do it again ASAP. I told him yes and he told me to do it at the moment.

I checked the papers and the big problem was that the format was on english and not spanish, guess who passed me the format? yeah the same guy who called me, guess who didn’t apologize for passing me the wrong documentation?

I printed like 15 pages again, scan them and send it by whatsapp, since he requested and follow up on whatsapp; it was already 11 PM, I delivered outside my business hours for a late paperwork that it wasn’t my fault, guess what I received on return? “Please send it by email”, I didn’t open the whatsapp just saw the notification and went to sleep, it wasn’t the ways or tha manner to ask for such things. Next day I sent the papers by email, at business hours.

A Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Years ago, I joined a new job and finally got a call with my remote leader, he was a nice guy in the overall and I don’t blame him for any mistake he might have done but at the end of the call I knew that wasn’t the place for me.

I will enumerate each of the things I didn’t like:

1. First call in 3 months since I joined.
   1. There is no excuse for this, the first manager I had was pretty bad but he cleared his schedule to have a long call with each of the new joins.
2. He couldn’t call me before because the team was overloaded.
   1. Not in any way the way to set up expectations
3. He became a manager the day I joined.
   1. I was already a seasoned employees, why should I put my career future on a brand new manager?
4. For the past 3 months he has been working 14 hours from Monday-Friday
   1. I was hired to work 8 hours per day dude, not 75% more than that.
5. For the past 3 months he has been working 8 hours on Saturdays and 8 hours on Sundays
   1. In MX is illegal to work more than 6 days in a row.
   2. You cannot work more than 60  hours a week.
   3. He didn’t even mention overtime pay
6. He didn’t know what my skillset is.
   1. So why was I hired?
7. He was so excited (maybe even jealous, idk) from the place I used to work, he even said that he has been trying to move there.
   1. It was a a bigger company with a better branding, asking why I moved was OK, saying you want to work there, not so much.
   2. I even joked about referring him to my previous position.

That day I started job-hunting, again.

Normalmente las empresas evitan que las redes sociales se usen en su horario laboral, aunque normalmente las de IT no son asi y si son asi, no suelen ser de las buenas.

En las empresas donde si se permite usar las redes sociales, normalmente se tiende a separar las redes oficiales de las no oficiales, como separar slack y el correo del trabajo de whatsapp o facebook; las cosas que importan estan en el oficial, no en las cosas personales.

En un trabajo que tuve, me agregaron a un grupo de whatsapp a mi telefono personal y esperaban que lo respondiera como si ellos me estuvieran pagando el celular.

Aqui un pequeño extracto

[12:10 P1]  Alguien que pueda decirle a *P3* que me contacte por favor.
[12:20 P1] Estimados,
Agradeceré que tengamos la amabilidad de “dar por enterado” (acknowledge) las solicitudes que su servidor hace en este chat, al igual que todas, y que se de seguimiento a lo solicitado.
Gracias!
[12:23 P2] Ack
[12:26 P1] Gracias  muy amable de tu parte.
[12:26 P1] Pero hay 15 personas en este chat….

Aqui se puede ver el bad management en varios sitios:

1. Esta usando un medio de comunicacion personal para algo oficial.
2. Solo han pasado 10 minutos y ya esta enojado
3. 3 minutos despues que el escribe q es muy amable, alguien le responde y 3 minutos despues se queja que nadie de los otros miembros le respondio(como si necesitara mas ACK)

When a manager gives you instructions, he shouldn’t be reminding you about those, you should be following them and letting her/him know if you hit any roadblock, thats what it is expected of you.

I think the same for a manager, if somebody on your org ask you to do something for him, the other shouldn’t be reminding you or asking for updates after missing datelines, that just show poor interest on your success.

One of the reasons I studied an MBA was to help me identify a good manager once I have it.

As an IT person, against all the other careers we can actually grow ($$$) without having to become manager, so I decided if my future growth depends on another person is not me, I should be able to identify them.

To quote my first manager “perception is truth”, whatever everybody person perceives as truth is their truth,

In the same line of thought, I knew he wasn’t such a great manager, I got moved to an Indian manager who was great but some months later my first manager was going to become my mid-level manager, so I had to move.

Bad management or bad manager can destroy your career, your job or at least stagnate your professional growth, each of those is something every person cannot risk.