Advice for Young Scientists Series #4
My Boss and My Job

I Hate My Boss! Well, not now. In fact, my cur­rent boss is prob­a­bly the best I have ever had. Should be, I played at least a part in get­ting my cur­rent boss selected to be my boss. Nice if you can pull it off. But I have had a cou­ple that were real stinkers.

Before I started in a real job I worked the typ­i­cal odd jobs of a student —  

• an assis­tant in an emer­gency room,
• pro­jec­tion­ist in a cam­pus bar (great job – found Still Here Too),
• a test tech­ni­cian in a meat pack­ing plant (that was an expe­ri­ence wor­thy of its own blog, includ­ing the morn­ing the guy showed up with the sawed-off shot­gun – yes, loaded – and fired – both barrels),
• a tech­ni­cian in a agri­cul­tural research laboratory,
• the grad­u­ate stu­dent stuff (not sure I can really call get­ting paid to do what I had to do to get my degree a job – but I got paid!),

Then I started what would be called career jobs in aca­d­e­mics and indus­try where I have had twelve direct bosses. There have been three, the cur­rent included, for whom I hold total respect and admi­ra­tion. These are peo­ple I would seek to work for. I had seven bosses that were OK, had most traits that were pretty good but a few rather weak points. And then there were the other two. One, well to this day I still can­not under­stand why he was ever hired. Per­son­ally, there were times I ques­tioned his basic intel­li­gence. But hir­ing him was not my choice. I just had to endure the period until his incom­pe­tence became so clear to his bosses that they finally made a change (in large cor­po­ra­tions, there is always a higher boss, no mat­ter how high you rise). The other, oh boy, the other. Very intel­li­gent, given the job when our busi­ness unit was in a tremen­dously strong posi­tion. Actu­ally entrusted me with a lot of con­fi­dence. And yet, this was an indi­vid­ual that one could never be com­fort­able around. With­out divulging any details, let us just say that per­sonal greed and a lack of inter­nal moral guid­ance is a very dan­ger­ous com­bi­na­tion when added to a posi­tion of power. We see the con­se­quences of this in the press every day.

Dur­ing the course of my career, I have had var­i­ous sizes of orga­ni­za­tions report­ing to me. A few, to a few hun­dred employ­ees. One thing I learned that should tem­per the assess­ment of my bosses. Quite a num­ber of the employ­ees assigned to work under my man­age­ment actu­ally sought to work under me. Unfor­tu­nately, there were a few that thought being assigned to work under me was the worst job expe­ri­ence they ever had. And then some thought I wasn’t too bad, but would have liked to change some­thing about how I did the job. But they did not all agree on what they would have changed. So, some of my peers might have dis­agreed on the seven OK bosses. There was no one who spoke up in defense of the two we would all rather for­get. No boss is likely to be per­fect for every employee.

So what advice do I have to offer? First of all, bosses come and bosses go. The really hard choice you have to make when stuck with a boss that is really a bad fit for you. Quite hon­estly, you really need to assess the sit­u­a­tion even if you have a boss that is the great­est boss you have ever had. You have two basic choices.

1. Look for another job that offers a bet­ter work­ing sit­u­a­tion, or
2. Stay in place and wait for the world to change around you.

Either may be the right choice. But whether you have the right boss is only a small part of the equa­tion in decid­ing which is right. What is really impor­tant is the total envi­ron­ment. One per­son, even the boss, does not make a work envi­ron­ment. Remem­ber that the boss has bosses. What are your boss’s bosses like? Do they appear to be peo­ple you respect? If so, would you expect them to try to mod­ify your boss’s behav­ior or even change your boss’s assign­ment? The boss has peers. You should judge what they are like. If they are peo­ple to respect and your direct boss is behav­ing improp­erly, it is likely that they are apply­ing pres­sure to change the sit­u­a­tion. Just how much do you enjoy work­ing with your co-workers? You should not under­es­ti­mate the value of a team you enjoy work­ing with. Is the busi­ness envi­ron­ment of the com­pany you are cur­rently employed by solid?

When I was faced with my two really hor­ri­ble bosses, the company’s busi­ness out­look was very encour­ag­ing. I could answer most of the ques­tions rel­a­tively pos­i­tive man­ner. I chose to stay. Although in one case I did look out­side as I explain below. And the world changed around me. It was not guar­an­teed to change for the bet­ter. But I think the odds were strongly in favor that it would. And both times, it did.

Even if you have a boss that you like work­ing for, it is wise to con­sider these ques­tions from time to time. If you con­sider the same ques­tions and many of the answers are neg­a­tive, espe­cially the strength of the company’s busi­ness out­look, you owe it to your­self to at least con­sider a job or career move.

I have either made or seri­ously con­sid­ered a change of jobs three times in my pro­fes­sional career. I have been lucky in that in none of the cases was I dri­ven to con­sider the change because of a dire busi­ness sit­u­a­tion. While in aca­d­e­mics I was never faced with a loss of fund­ing that would have in any way threat­ened my posi­tion. In indus­try, I have always been in a posi­tion of rel­a­tive secu­rity, even when a par­tial down­turn was a possibility.

One of the times was when I decided to leave aca­d­e­mics. In this case it was not because of a boss, because of co-workers, because of the stu­dents, or really because of the work. I totally enjoyed the research but wished to apply myself to some­thing of broader applic­a­bil­ity in the world (it was a fairly obscure sub­ject that I worked on). Some of the bureau­cratic non­sense did drive me a lit­tle nuts, but a large cor­po­ra­tion can be just as bad as a uni­ver­sity, some­times worse.

The other two times I was con­sid­er­ing a move in order to improve my work­ing con­di­tions. Both new posi­tions would have been some­what sig­nif­i­cant advance­ments. I was well qual­i­fied for both posi­tions and the com­pa­nies actively pur­sued me for the posi­tions. I must tell you that I was some­what cau­tious in the nego­ti­a­tions in both cases. And in both cases, this turned out to be a very smart move. To make two very long sto­ries short. One of the nego­ti­a­tions fell apart when the com­pany I was nego­ti­at­ing with was sud­denly sold by its par­ent com­pany. From what I know of the com­pany that bought the firm I was think­ing of hir­ing on with, I dodged a very big bul­let! The sec­ond com­pany ran into legal trou­ble with the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment not long after I started talk­ing to them. Need­less to say, I wanted noth­ing to do with them after that. They would have been worse than the sit­u­a­tion I was try­ing to get away from. Some­time the grass has only been painted green!

The rest of my career, I have stayed in place and watched many, many changes hap­pen around me. Many have been for the bet­ter, some have had to be fixed soon after they have been put in place, some have been unmit­i­gated dis­as­ters. There will be more changes in the future. I just hope I con­tinue to have bosses like the one I have now. It makes work a lot more fun. But it is every­thing else about the job that makes it worth staying.

Is Still Here