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Top 5 Lamebrain Things Managers Say

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by larryglange

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"Just make it happen." "I don't pay you to think." Or "You need to work smarter, not harder." These are just a couple of the dumb and cliched statements managers are oft-times fond of relaying to their staff. Anybody care to add their own? What ridiculous remark has a manager used on you lately - name one that's irritated - or even insulted your intelligence?

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by lumberjack

1) "I have an opportunity for you" was one of my ex managers favourites! It always meant that you were to get a job no-one else dared to volunteer for!
2) "I say this as a friend not as your manager"
yea right!
3) "I have a job for your diplomatic skills" managers botched it and you are to go and placate the user!
4) "I want to try something new" --- oh crap!
5) "have you tried updating the BIOS" this was stock answer to tech problem... No! - for goodness sake - the printer's ran ouit of ink!

To those two managers out there - you know who you are!

by mmbarreca

Does this type of thread make you wonder how some people not only become managers but somehow keep a job? Here's a few that I cringe at everytime I hear them:

1) "We need to have a meeting to discuss a client". This means the client is pissed and now I have to tell the account manager and the manager how to calm them down.

2) "We need to come up with a letter on issue X and send it via mail/e-mail to a/some/all client(s)". This also means that I need to write a letter because they've spent 2 days and can't come up with anything.

3) "Why is it taking so long?" Um......if you have a better way of doing it, I'm all ears but when I asked how to do it, you told me you didn't know. D'oh!

4) "I don't care if other people are having problems. We need to get this one client happy." A client has called and complained about some minor detail and instead of handling it correctly, I now have to put off conversions because one PC in a network of 20 can't see the Internet.

I'm sure there's more!

by maecuff

My former boss (I now have his job) once told me that his boss needed a new report and that he needed it in 4 days. My boss told me I had until the following morning to complete the project because delivering it early would make him look good. "I don't care if you have to sit at that desk until tomorrow morning, it WILL be finished."

by thechas

I remember many a project that switched from 'normal' to rush mode.

The managers always asked how many people would we need to jut the time required from 9 months to 1 month.

Most of the time, this kind of compression just is not possible. Even if qualified staff is available, they would spend more time getting the task done just from the time lost in meetings to keep everyone on the same page.

My response to this kind of impossible crunches is:
Even if you get 9 women pregnant, you can't get a baby in 1 month.

Chas

by cindy - extraordinary brat

I have one that says "What does it take to get YOU PEOPLE to listen?" Which immediately implies that we are below him or his standards, not only as techs but as people. He seriously spells teamwork with an I.

by danielj

This is the sort of gobbledegook I have to listen to.
At one company, the president (who was formerly VP Marketing at Apple
Computer) gave us T-shirts with "5280+1" printed on the front, and "Go the
extra mile" on the back. I pointed out that 5280 was the number of feet in a
mile, so really he's saying "Go the extra foot". He said, "Hey, what do you
want? I'm from Marketing! We can't do math!".

"Assumptions identify things that we are considering and not taking into consideration."
- From a Year 2000 Contingency Planning document

I overheard one manager bragging to another in the hall at Lucent Technologies: "With a team of four programmers, in just six months I reengineered a new software paradigm. Now everybody is using it". I always wondered why some people memorized buzzwords.

How to take the wind right out of your developers' sails: "Write up a proposal before you do anything".

by finmedmgr

Excellent comment. Someone told me one time that the world was run by temps. The older I get, the more this becomes a reality. Everyone thinks that temps and consultants take 5 minutes and know your business.

by finmedmgr

I am a Manager who reports to an inactive Manager because he says he does not know my business, I have had a one on one with him about 2 times in the last year, all others were cancelled. He reports to an active Administrator who does know my business. The Administrator says "If you ever think of leaving, come talk to me first and praises me for an excellent job done. The inactive Manager says "Leave".....He needs to be moved off the org chart.

by pittsburgh

The best was the president of a company going down the tubes fast. Everyone believed she had no leadership skills. She proved at one company meeting when she said, "It's not my responsibility if this company fails."

by dc_guy

"Work smarter, not harder" only becomes stupid if the sentence ends with, "starting tonight." The essence of working smarter is to recognize the limits of human beings to perform "knowledge work" accurately. The forty hour week became a standard at the dawn of the assembly line era for a reason. Altertness and coordination fall off markedly after forty hours. Most of us can stay late one night or work one Saturday and accomplish something extra. But if we do it routinely, we're doing more harm than good. How many of us have had the experience of coming to work the next morning after working late, and discovering that everything we did after 5:00 was wrong and needed to be backed out? There are a few exceptional people on this planet who can work long hours indefinitely with no ill effects. And every manager on this planet believes that all of those people will be assigned to his project.

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