Idiots in senior management

[onetimeonlyy]

I work in London in the tech industry. I use LinkedIn a lot for work and every week I see people I can only describe as morons get ever more senior positions.

Today's offering was a guy who spent 7 months going to conferences around the world and delivering nothing, has just got a senior position at Google. Spend 5 mins talking to him and you realise he is useless.

It's so demoralising when you work hard but see all of these people around you who haven't excelled at their jobs and they must be on bonkers money.

How do they do so well? And how can they honestly think they are going a good job?

Isn’t the theory that they get promoted to a position of incompetence?

I feel your pain. I have a senior manager at work who literally has 2 secretaries to do the crucial parts of his role and does nothing else.

Doing a good job * silly aurocorrect

Hard work rarely gets people into senior jobs.

Gift of the gab, thinking on one's feet, and a willingness to make decisions is what gets you into senior positions. You don't even need to make good decisions - just any decision, with a well presented rationale, and the ability to brazen it out.

In fact, if your personal brand is "hard worker", you're really unlikely to progress because senior management will want to keep you in that position... so that you can do the hard graft while they are doing their thing.

Source: I work with senior mgt a lot.

I once worked for a place where people got promoted just to go to meetings about meetings.

Strangely though when the company was taken over they weren't the first to go, but they were the ones that chose who would be the first to go.

What a depressing state of affairs. And they probably earn 10x the average wage 🙄

I always wonder why they put themselves in that position, you spend so long at work it's got to be stressful if you're not good at what you do.
They can't be completely in the dark about their own incompetence?

I do see lots of these characters move every 8 months or so. It's as if they suddenly had to deliver on promises and they jumped ship. It's so shit that they can just walk into another role.

You fuck up on minimum wage you get the sack. You fuck up in a senior position and you get a few hundred thousand pay off.

They are often in the dark I’d say. It’s important to believe your own hype so other people will too- at least long enough for you to get the job. Arrogance is essential.

I had this revelation at about 1.30 am this morning and googled my current assistant director who in a previous job in a land far far away was only a couple of pay grades above me.

Turns out she has exactly the same qualifications as me but about about 8 years more experience. She currently earns about 100k more.

I'm convinced that for women it's a case of if you dare to aim high you might just surprise yourself how high you can get, it's all about self belief, something men often have in spades and women spend a lifetime trying to hide for fear of being called bossy.

I decided at around 1.45am that I can hack bring called bossy if it gets me £100k more a year. Bring it on.

I worked in London in the tech industry. I saw people who would have found it easy to get ahead if they weren't so negative and therefore miserable to be around.

Truly, being the voice of gloom almost certainly cost them something like 30-50k a year in lost seniority. The rights and wrongs of that aside, a different outlook would have resulted in more £.

At my last job we had one of these, operations manager, came in bragging about how much money he was going to make for the company, quadrupling sales targets and his only contribution to how we were actually going to achieve them was basically “aim high”. It was obvious he didn’t even understand the products the company sold but the owner was a sucker for positivity and loved this guys predicted sales figures.

He took credit for my work and as soon as he heard me getting to the point of ordering with a high value client he’d take the file off me and claim it as his own. Obviously I left, and told the owner he was the reason I was leaving.

I found out some months later that once I’d left they realised he wasn’t actually doing any work and was just looking busy all the time. When they sacked him he said he was surprised it took them that long to realise he’d not actually been doing any work (or words to that effect).

I worked in London in the tech industry. I saw people who would have found it easy to get ahead if they weren't so negative and therefore miserable to be around.

I understand what you're saying about positive mindset and attitude but sometimes it's left to the people who understand how thw product works to say something isn't possible whereas senior managers who don't understand can promise everything

I understand what you're saying about positive mindset and attitude but sometimes it's left to the people who understand how thw product works to say something isn't possible whereas senior managers who don't understand can promise everything

There's a way to deliver bad news though... I have noticed that there are more junior folk who think of themselves as "just being honest" or "technical experts", who don't seem to get that what is wanted is a positive delivery, and to offer solutions rather than criticisms.

And it's not that it's "left to the people who understand the product" - it's that there are technical skill sets and there are soft skill sets - both those skill sets are needed to make a sale and keep a customer. No one is "left" to it. It's just that different strengths have to work together... that takes a positive attitude on both sides.

I agree with the pp who stated that often it's a positive attitude that means an extra 50k a year for that person... I am well known for being a "fixer" who keeps it light, breezy and positive... this means that senior mgt feel they want me on their side, I don't make them feel shit or try to show them up, I just help them. That goes a long way.

I am well known for being a "fixer" who keeps it light, breezy and positive... this means that senior mgt feel they want me on their side, I don't make them feel shit or try to show them up, I just help them

Ah, so brown-nosing rather than being honest, that's how to progress. Yup. Think I knew that.

Lol, I guess you could put it that way.

I suppose I think of it as, why bother rubbing people's noses in it, just get on with it, make the money, and don't take anything personally.

Typically though, if you want to "progress" (I don't, I just want money), yes, brown nosing will work better than making people feel bad - if the choice is binary.

I am well known for being a "fixer" who keeps it light, breezy and positive... this means that senior mgt feel they want me on their side, I don't make them feel shit or try to show them up, I just help them

I don't understand how this relates to my original post. I'm talking about Senior managers who bop around from amazing company to amazing company delivering nothing of value. Sometimes it's not hard to show them up when they don't have a clue!

It wasn’t supposed to relate to your post OP it was meant to make us understand that we are negative plebs and if only we tried harder to fix things we too could get ahead 😂😂😂

It's about being prepared to take responsibilty and be the public face. I don't work harder than anyone else in my team, many of them have more technical ability but when the shit hits the fan it's down to me and I'll be the one on TV dealing with Paxman types. And fwiw I always have their back, even if they've dropped me right in it!

Aha. Got it. 🙄🙈

Totally get this. Different industry but those high up in the company I work for are... clueless. They can talk the talk and dress things up but all, and i literally do mean all, of their ideas/concepts never work in real life. Unfortunately up there it's a huge circle jerk of everyone telling each other how amazing they are, with everyone else beneath them working themselves to death to try and get somewhat close to the ridiculous targets they've just set. And if you do the impossible and get there... they'll just give you something impossible the following year. It's exhausting. Everyone leaves. I've been off on maternity leave and since I've been off 3/4 of my team have left the company.

They'll never get sacked or replaced. They'll continue to jump from director role to director role. Us, though? In a heartbeat. It's miserable.

Gift of the gab, thinking on one's feet, and a willingness to make decisions is what gets you into senior positions. You don't even need to make good decisions - just any decision, with a well presented rationale, and the ability to brazen it out.

This with bells on.

In life some folk are just destined to be the donkey, unappreciated and overworked, never given the credit they deserve or even time to shine. Maybe you are best to look elsewhere for a job that you won't feel that you are inferior.

Sorry OP but my experience is that white, middle class with a penis -and a bit of charm - will push you up the hierarchy faster than you can say misogyny.

In these more woke days, being gay doesn’t seem to be an issue and some of the firms I have been at like a bit of ethnic diversity but ovaries will weigh you down and make it way harder to climb the ladder.

I know one "Director" where I work who just hasn't got a clue, doesn't really get what we actually do and over promises to hell. It actually got to the stage where in the end all I could do was laugh when he "solved a problem" and it all went to shit. I'd tell him it would go to shit, but he was always surprised when it did. The only time I didn't smile is when he tried to blame me for it going to shit. Fortunately I had it all in writing saying "don't do this!!".

I've done a sideways move into a different section now and have decent managers, who get it.