I know it's hard and it took me until my 30s with a long career behind me but I really wish people would be more vocal about their issues to their managers, even if it's about their management style or them burning people out, etc. There is a huge chance that you're not the only one with those feelings and there might be people newer to the team or career that are afraid of speaking up for things that they really truly disagree with, or just the people who get anxious with confrontation.
When you’re young, and especially if you come from a lower income background (where authority is treated as an absolute, and abuse of authority is generally more common and accepted), it can seem very risky and feel very unacceptable to give this kind of feedback to your manager.
It’s easy for me to agree with you now, but there are very different feelings about this across different backgrounds and cultures, and there are plenty of managers who would react harshly to this.
There's a huge chance that, if you are actually working in a toxic environment, complaining about it will result in blowback directly targeted at you.
As a manager, it's on ME to setup the environment for candid feedback. It's something I have to emphasize over and over again and demonstrate very clearly and publicly to everyone that it's ok and it's what I expect.
If the boss isn't creating that environment, then it's a risky, uphill battle for any subordinate to create change. Not impossible, but it's difficult to recommend it.
This technique is called mirroring.
It's a tacit reminder to the other person that what they're saying is outside the boundary of your immediate comprehension - forcing them to be more conscious of their behavior.
If you live in a city you can probably get an interview the day after you get fired. Sooner if you're willing to use a recruiter.
And now that I think about it, one trait that I’ve witnessed in CEOs and successful entrepreneurs again and again is an almost inhuman ease with initiating and engaging in uncomfortable conversations. They don’t hesitate with them either.
I always assumed it was just something they all naturally develop as a consequence of being bombarded and put upon constantly, but maybe there’s more to it than that.
You are voluntarily & temporarily handing over that power to someone else in exchange for money.
The moment you renounce your desire for money from that company, you get back that power you handed over.
And that was, is, and will, always be your decision. Thus, the power never left your hands.
The thing you're missing is that money is required to live. If I "voluntarily" decide to stop earning it, or if I end up in a job where I earn substantially less, a state employee with a gun will eventually show up to my house and evict me from it. If I am hungry and take some food from a store, a state employee with a gun will put me in a cage. The idea that there's no power dynamic at play here is absurd.
There is always a power dynamic as long as you have desires.
Even the state employee with a gun has someone else he needs to answer to, or that someone else with a bigger gun will show up at his house.
To the saint/monk/yogi who needs nothing but a fruit a day from a nearby tree, no power on earth has a "power-dynamic" over him.
All well and good if you can afford it. If you can not, then the existential wisdom is a lot less useful than, say, worker's rights.
There might be some truth in that in a purely psychological sense, but it also is a massive legal issue. Do you really have agency as an employee, and what are those limits?
Say a manager gets into a relationship with a subordinate. Yes, it's a bad idea, of course, but both of your emotions get away from you and you say you love each other. If things go south, could the subordinate say he or she didn't feel like they had a choice?
Heidi Matthews is a Canadian law professor who asked this in relation to the metoo movement and Monica Lewinsky. During the 90s, the debate was over Clinton lying, but no one ever challenged that Lewinsky consented. But today, people retroactively look back at that time and ask if she had the ability to consent.
Maybe if US unemployment was setup like other countries where you could leave a job and still get on the dole, there's less of a dynamic because you could "just leave" (even though it makes it more difficult to get hired later).
I dunno; there are a whole lot of deep factors here. Life is about learning from doing things that are uncomfortable and asserting agency when you feel like you have none.
Also, many people would be terrible managers and avoid that career path, so it's kind of weird to expect them to "manage up".
I suspect the manager would interpret that sort of feedback as #2 as well
X was referring to a technical implementation detail that he had zero understanding of. He read something in a blog post I guess.
My reaction was to act like it was a fun joke or something. But inside, I absolutely loathed him every second of every day until I quit, and now I take great satisfaction knowing that I’ve surpassed him and would never do a thing to help his stagnating career. (In other words, I’m holding an extremely petty and lasting grudge.)
But my point is, he probably thought I was fine with all his joking. I always laughed.
To expand on the article’s point, I think the biggest thing young managers don’t understand is that people are going to be insincere to you as a basic showing of respect and a basic desire for career preservation. They’re going to smile and appear to enjoy you and laugh at your jokes and seem ok with everything, much moreso than they otherwise would. So don’t make the mistake of using their reactions to define your boundaries of what’s acceptable or what’s funny, because it’s not a typical relationship, and you will invariably believe that you are funnier than you are and that a wider range of unacceptable behaviors are acceptable.