Caught In Middle Management Hell

Saw this article and was pretty disappointed with it but read it anyway if you feel stuck.  http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/midhell_2.html

Seems the article is about a bunch of people with good jobs, kind of, but can't move up because their geezer bosses won't keel over and get out of the way.  It appears that industry got all concerned about the 'brain drain' of aging boomers thinking about checking out that a HR campaign got started to keep them around.  Here is how they explain it because it makes no sense to me.

And that, oddly enough, is exactly what employers had in mind when they helped build the Gray Ceiling during the late '90s. Though at that time your 19-year-old neighbor was a dot-com entrepreneur and anyone over 35 was considered a dinosaur, forward-looking companies were starting to panic about the "brain drain" that could result if the boomers retired en masse.

So began the campaign to keep older workers kicking around. The Society for Human Resource Management reports that more than half (55%) of big U.S. companies are "giving managers the tools to increase retention of baby-boomers," including flexible or reduced schedules and retention bonuses.

Other factors are coming into play too. Thanks to federal and state laws against age discrimination enacted during the past 20 years, mandatory retirement has all but disappeared (airline pilots and CEOs are about the only employees who can still be compelled to stop working).

Then there's the financial squeeze: The age at which seniors can receive full Social Security is inching north (it's now 66) at the same time that employer retirement benefits are heading south.

Finally - as the squash-playing, real-teeth-possessing sixty-something down the hall can attest - having six or seven decades under your belt doesn't always seem that old.

But can't you just wait it out? After all, boomers have to retire eventually, right? Right?

HR strikes again. 

Actually, I do not think that having an old boss that won't get out of the way is the main reason people hate their jobs.  If an old boss is the real problem than you have a better deal than I had.  When I started out my boss was two years older than me, his boss was four years older and the VP was seven years older.  The only way to get rid of these guys was a well coordinated plane crash. 

And the guy I worked for was a jerk.  A beautiful guy outside of the office and smart, really smart, but a jerk.  An arrogant, condescending, brilliant jerk.  And I worked for him, on and off, for the better part of seven years.  So how do you survive and even prosper?

First, if you work for a jerk the other people in the company will know it.  Don't undercut your boss but make the most of your misery.  Turn your disadvantage into an advantage.  I found people coming to me to figure out how to get this idiot to approve something.  I soon had a cottage industry going in the approval business.  And those people owed me and I eventually collected.

The jerk will eventually get it.  Mine did but here is a story about another guy.  A friend of mine, a prince of a guy, got transferred to a plant run by a dictator.  But nobody at corporate knew the guy was a nut case until my friend, who had a lot of friends at corporate, started dropping a few hints.  Since some of the stuff was border line illegal the rumors ran like wild fire and the top guys eventually got wind of it and the guy was gone.  Overnight?  No, but eventually so try and tough it out. 

Yean, but how?  You can't change jobs every time you run into an issue so admit you got a problem.  And it's not you, it's the other guy, so develop a strategy for survival.

Network.  I hate that term but do it.  You may have to get another job so start meeting people and getting your name out there.  I didn't do enough and should have.

Get a project.  I was at a conference at Nestle in Switzerland and the CEO got up and said the company was not there for our personal well being.  No rot about passion or empowerment.  We worked and they paid us.  If you want to find a cure for cancer, do it in your spare time.  Only a Swiss could get away with saying that.  But he was right.  When I was working for that maniac, we bought a 100 year old house that needed a total redo.  I would get home and dive into that thing.  Sledge hammers smashed walls and my mind wandered.  It paid off, too, when we sold it for a 400% profit.  My brother-in-law got a punching bag and put it in his basement.  I prefer projects that have a postive payback.

Start your own company.  Nothing like planning for the future.  Everybody wants their own company but few do anything about it.  Look into it and start small.  With today's technology you can do just about anything except make cars from your computer.

Do something creative.  A great way to rise above a nut boss is to rise above it.  Write a story, a screenplay, research an article. 

Exercise.  It works to get exhausted.  Run, walk, swim, pump iron.  A side benefit is that you will be in such great shape that your boss will be scared of you.

Get an MBA.  Enough of that already.

The take away is do something.  Doing drugs or alcohol is doing something but I don't recommend that.  Do something positive is a much better strategy than waiting for your boss to drop dead.

Saw this article and was pretty disappointed with it but read it anyway if you feel stuck.  http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/midhell_2.html

Seems the article is about a bunch of people with good jobs, kind of, but can't move up because their geezer bosses won't keel over and get out of the way.  It appears that industry got all concerned about the 'brain drain' of aging boomers thinking about checking out that a HR campaign got started to keep them around.  Here is how they explain it because it makes no sense to me.

And that, oddly enough, is exactly what employers had in mind when they helped build the Gray Ceiling during the late '90s. Though at that time your 19-year-old neighbor was a dot-com entrepreneur and anyone over 35 was considered a dinosaur, forward-looking companies were starting to panic about the "brain drain" that could result if the boomers retired en masse.

So began the campaign to keep older workers kicking around. The Society for Human Resource Management reports that more than half (55%) of big U.S. companies are "giving managers the tools to increase retention of baby-boomers," including flexible or reduced schedules and retention bonuses.

Other factors are coming into play too. Thanks to federal and state laws against age discrimination enacted during the past 20 years, mandatory retirement has all but disappeared (airline pilots and CEOs are about the only employees who can still be compelled to stop working).

Then there's the financial squeeze: The age at which seniors can receive full Social Security is inching north (it's now 66) at the same time that employer retirement benefits are heading south.

Finally - as the squash-playing, real-teeth-possessing sixty-something down the hall can attest - having six or seven decades under your belt doesn't always seem that old.

But can't you just wait it out? After all, boomers have to retire eventually, right? Right?

HR strikes again. 

Actually, I do not think that having an old boss that won't get out of the way is the main reason people hate their jobs.  If an old boss is the real problem than you have a better deal than I had.  When I started out my boss was two years older than me, his boss was four years older and the VP was seven years older.  The only way to get rid of these guys was a well coordinated plane crash. 

And the guy I worked for was a jerk.  A beautiful guy outside of the office and smart, really smart, but a jerk.  An arrogant, condescending, brilliant jerk.  And I worked for him, on and off, for the better part of seven years.  So how do you survive and even prosper?

First, if you work for a jerk the other people in the company will know it.  Don't undercut your boss but make the most of your misery.  Turn your disadvantage into an advantage.  I found people coming to me to figure out how to get this idiot to approve something.  I soon had a cottage industry going in the approval business.  And those people owed me and I eventually collected.

The jerk will eventually get it.  Mine did but here is a story about another guy.  A friend of mine, a prince of a guy, got transferred to a plant run by a dictator.  But nobody at corporate knew the guy was a nut case until my friend, who had a lot of friends at corporate, started dropping a few hints.  Since some of the stuff was border line illegal the rumors ran like wild fire and the top guys eventually got wind of it and the guy was gone.  Overnight?  No, but eventually so try and tough it out. 

Yean, but how?  You can't change jobs every time you run into an issue so admit you got a problem.  And it's not you, it's the other guy, so develop a strategy for survival.

Network.  I hate that term but do it.  You may have to get another job so start meeting people and getting your name out there.  I didn't do enough and should have.

Get a project.  I was at a conference at Nestle in Switzerland and the CEO got up and said the company was not there for our personal well being.  No rot about passion or empowerment.  We worked and they paid us.  If you want to find a cure for cancer, do it in your spare time.  Only a Swiss could get away with saying that.  But he was right.  When I was working for that maniac, we bought a 100 year old house that needed a total redo.  I would get home and dive into that thing.  Sledge hammers smashed walls and my mind wandered.  It paid off, too, when we sold it for a 400% profit.  My brother-in-law got a punching bag and put it in his basement.  I prefer projects that have a postive payback.

Start your own company.  Nothing like planning for the future.  Everybody wants their own company but few do anything about it.  Look into it and start small.  With today's technology you can do just about anything except make cars from your computer.

Do something creative.  A great way to rise above a nut boss is to rise above it.  Write a story, a screenplay, research an article. 

Exercise.  It works to get exhausted.  Run, walk, swim, pump iron.  A side benefit is that you will be in such great shape that your boss will be scared of you.

Get an MBA.  Enough of that already.

The take away is do something.  Doing drugs or alcohol is doing something but I don't recommend that.  Do something positive is a much better strategy than waiting for your boss to drop dead.

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