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?

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

And that's how we ended up with Boris Johnson as PM!!

To get to the top despite talent and aptitude in your field, you have to be good at politics, that includes knowing how to talk crap but in such a way that you convince others. You have to show an interest in organisation politics and enjoy devising policies on change management.

I do agree that there are a lot of parasites up there, but at the same time, there are many people who think they would like to get there but actually hate the job, because it's a lot of pretence, pretending to be passionate about the organisation and what it aims to achieve, and trying to convince those below of the same.

Ultimately, you can be crap at being a manager, but good at being a leader, and vice versa.

I work in a very niche area of a fairly niche industry. Our senior manager was hired as he had no previous experience of said niche area and so he would ask questions no one thought of asking and challenge the status quo. Couple years in he still doesn’t understand how we do our jobs, asks questions that are plain stupid, comes up with suggestions that are not practical, is a complete hinderance and makes our lives hell He surrounds himself with people whose roles he understands so we had a mushrooming of various managers and analysts who crunch data they don’t understand and implement more processes that don’t work. This team then spends a lot of time analysing why is engagement so low

Yes!
I work in a technical area. I have an amazing team, my direct boss is fabulous. But our senior management are just stunningly incompetent. The latest was the newly recruited director of all the technical teams is not technically qualified. Ok, I thought, maybe he's a great manager and that'll make up for it. But, nah, he's both technically ignorant and managerial incompetent. The worst possible combination! Oh, and sexist too and keeps expressing surprise when there is a woman in a technical role ("She does that? I thought she did comms...", "she has x qualification? She looks like shes just out of school" kind of thing)

Yanbu at all op, some bloke I used to work with who is absolutely fucking useless at everything apart from corporate bullshit has just landed another highly paid role. He only ever stays 2 years anywhere 😂😂😡

And to the smug I'm always positive one.... one manager's problem fixer will be another's troublemaker.

Just to add that it goes both ways and that however much some senior managers have no clue what workers below do, workers often don't have a clue what goes on higher up and assume that because they don't understand it, it is all a waste of time and energy.

I've been in both roles and have felt both frustrations. Frustrations that managers don't understand our business and expect us to do things that make no sense and won't listen to why things have to be done one way. I have also felt frustrated trying to explain to workers why we had to make changes to align to new strategies (to save the business) or policies (governmental) and been faced by stubborn staff who refused to understand that continuing as we were was not an option and just huffed and puffed however hard you tried to do things in a way to have as little influence on their day to day work.

I know a few people who have managed to get promoted doing very little other than chatting to the right people.
I also know of people in schools who have senior leadership positions despite being widely known to be average to less than average teachers but then get paid lots of money to tell better teachers how to teach.

There's also people who get promoted because they're yes people who wont ask too many questions, will do as they're told and be a "safe pair of hands" which often translates as "won't rock the boat or challenge our decisions".

He only ever stays 2 years anywhere

I bet if you compared a significant number of CVs the common factor is that the maximum they stay in a role is 2 years +/- a couple of months.

6 months to get into the role.

1 year to shake things up so it looks like they've "done something" - meanwhile they're already looking around for their next move.

3-6 months serving their notice, so taking their foot off the gas, keeping their nose clean, ready for their next role.

It's interesting because I see lots of women get promoted at the start of their career... Loads of "head of" in late 20s early 30s then when you look at the director level this just plummets. Maybe a marketing director and an HR director.... That's it. When so many women take time off to have children it feels like these men push on then it's hard to dislodge them once they have reached a certain level.

Just to add that it goes both ways and that however much some senior managers have no clue what workers below do, workers often don't have a clue what goes on higher up and assume that because they don't understand it, it is all a waste of time and energy.

That in itself is a sign of really really shit management.

Another classic one is someone senior being in the business for a long time and they get given the CMO or client success director role despite not having any marketing qualifications and never having led a marketing organisation before. They don't know what to do with this person so they just say Oh I'm sure he can do that!

I’ve seen this everywhere i’ve worked. It all comes down to mindset. An over-inflated sense of self-capability, a great sense of arrogance and entitlement, and a lack of self-awareness so that they are unembarrassed when they fail. These types never resign when they inevitably fuck up, they just move elsewhere, hence the movement you see on LinkedIn. On the plus side, they are prepared to take risks and do the cheerleading.

Quite why nobody in senior management anywhere cottons onto this and tries to alter the hiring process to weed out candidates with genuine high ability, is anybody’s guess. Probably it’s because they are all cut from the same cloth and either don’t recognise it, or don’t want to mess things up for themselves.

@Tolleshunt absolutely spot on👏

I think a lot of it is the people interviewing for these higher level roles don't actually know what they're looking for technically, so they just take someone who seems to know what they're talking about/seems positive/seems like they'll get shit done.

Then they arrive in the role, and can't do any of these things, and the people below, who need the job, do just get shit done.

Then eventually the really high ups realise that this person isn't doing much (unless they're clever and communicate a lot as if they are) and they get rid of the person, but without a decent reason to get rid of them, they just pay them off, and on that idiot goes to the next role, with an excellent reference, and the confidence a few hundred grand in their pocket gives them to ask for even more money to do a rubbish job next time.

This is why I like to have some of the competent techs interview higher-ups if possible (character of people needs to be right to get away with having them interview their boss) - get their opinion too.

Quite why nobody in senior management anywhere cottons onto this and tries to alter the hiring process to weed out candidates with genuine high ability, is anybody’s guess.

I would argue that the bloke I know is high ability but really lazy. To bullshit like he does you need to be quite clever I think. If he ever put a bit of effort into working out the job he would probably be great but he just cba fundamentally 🤦🏻‍♀️

I totally see where you're coming from OP. It's frustrating as hell, although my incompetent boss has been found out in recent months and as a result he's apparently "very stressed" because he's having to actually do his job now.

But of course he can't actually do what's expected of him because he's been getting by as he's male, a good talker and white.

It comes to bite most of them in the end.

Having the ability to talk, present clear rationales, think on your feet and make decisions only works once you're already in a good position - it's positively looked down on when you're towards the bottom of the food chain.

What do you want for YOUR career?

You can’t control most things, eg what others, eg the colleagues you don’t respect or people hiring, do.

You have choices about how you perform your role, what jobs you apply for and stuff like that.

I worked somewhere where I didn’t respect senior managers and felt undervalued, I came across a team with senior managers I thought seemed miles better, networked and when a vacancy came up applied for and got it.

Interesting. I've met a few aswell. One in particular recently. They talk total shite, utter bollocks, but do it in such a way, that they are very successful.

It's the little man doing all the work, that gets left with the mess they leave behind when they eventually do move on.

I've been saying this for years about my industry. White, middle class men, sometimes but not always with a certain kind of accent, go so far with absolutely no genuine skills. They are in equal numbers to women at junior levels but get 95% of senior roles.

When I look on LinkedIn at some of the men I have worked with over the years who were entirely incompetent or at best mediocre I am astonished and depressed at how many are in the most senior industry roles now. I can only think of one of the many women who I admired and felt were exceptional who has reached that level.

I think one of the key aspects of these sorts is that they feel no shame. When they fuck up, it does not cause any sense of embarrassment in them. They don’t go through any painful process of reassessing their perception of their capabilities. Their self-belief remains untarnished, and very high. Whereas others beat themselves us for failures and then limit themselves in what they go for thereafter.

Nick Clegg, failed politician to VP of Global Affairs and Comms at Facebook. And he's doing an awful job of it too.

Politicians are excellent examples MrsMaisel. See also David Cameron - plunges country into chaos and dictions I order to save the Tories from losing ground to UKIP, yet goes on to write w book defending his decision and take a fat wedge from speaking engagements.

Many others leave politics and go on to become NEDs and ‘advisors’, taking vast sums for very little. Geoff Hoon and the like...

Rvby, i get what you are saying. i don't think it is brown-nosing at all, to me that is something different.

being easygoing and positive (can-do attitude), means people like you on their side.

But being easygoing and positive doesn't always get the necessary work done.

My boss is very positive and easygoing but that doesn't mean he does his job properly!