eBoss Watch

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a former manager of mine, introducing me to an opportunity at a company where he has been consulting for the last few years. I was very happy to hear from W, and jumped at the chance to work with him again.

W is someone who ranks high in my pantheon of good bosses.

I'm sure that he would not be everyone's cup of tea, but I have had few managers who were as hands-off and trusting as he is. He's also the person I've worked for who is least likely to call a firedrill. Thus, when there really was something that had to be done in a drop-everything-do-it-now-hurry, you were always willing to do it because you knew it was important.

Finally, he was someone who I never saw throw anyone in his group under the bus when the flames were licking close to him - other people might conceivably get thrown under, but never those who worked under him.

I worked for W in two different companies, and he can be a controversial figure, that's for sure. I've certainly seen him piss loads of people off - mostly because he has a forceful personality which he uses to advance his strongly held positions.

But when it comes to working for and with him, W is right up there in my book.

With a few exceptions, I have been pretty fortunate when it comes to the managers I've worked for throughout my professional career. (My factory working-waitressing-office temping-and other non-professional gigs are another story. Any number of dreadful bosses there.) For most of my business career bosses, the good and decent attributes have outweighed the bad and assholish ones.  When I have had bosses I couldn't stand and just plain hated working with, it seldom lasted. Once I'd given "can't we just get along" a reasonable shot, I would figure out how to get out from under - either intra-murally or by leaving the company.

Of the several really terrible managers, I must note that there were, with only one exception I can think of, people who actually liked working for them. Chalk it up to a personality conflict, I guess.

As for my own performance as a manager, I'd guess that a majority of those I managed thought I was a decent enough manager, but that there were at least one or two who considered me a major league jerk.

So I don't know what to make of Asher Adelman's eBossWatch, which offers disgruntled employees the opportunity to anonymously rate their bosses "so that you can warn other people about a bad boss". Gruntled workers can "recommend a great boss."

Adelman invites people to answer a few questions about how their boss stacks up with respect to "open and honest communication," caring, concern for your career development, trust and respect, whether they like working for him/her, and whether they would recommend that boss as good to work for.

Please note that eBossWatch is measured and professional in its approach. It is not set up to function as a trash talking board in which people can just get in there and flame someone. (No lack of opportunity elsewhere in the online world for that, of course.) Still, it does provide nasty and brutish folks an easy way to hop on and malign someone in a not particularly constructive way.

And just how much insight do you get into a prospective boss if, say, one person has rated him along a few lines - good or bad.

No, I think that boss evaluations are best done the old-fashioned way: networking, word of mouth.  And by observing the office chemistry and picking up clues from other people you talk with during the interview process. (I once interviewed for a position running a special project for a founder/senior partner of an analyst firm. On the interview trail, several people told me that most people in the firm a) hated the project; b) thought the guy I'd be working for was a jerk for undertaking it; and c) that I had virtually no chance of succeeding. I took the hint. Even if the boss-man wasn't a jerk by my standards, I knew that this was going to be one hell of a political maelstrom to walk into.)

I might find eBossWatch more interesting - and more informative - if it provided tips for discerning a boss' style: what signs to look for, what questions to ask. Or true-life stories (without naming names) of bad-boss behavior, and how people coped with (or reformed) it.

I don't know how successful Adelman has been in getting people to actually use eBossWatch as a boss evaluation venue - or whether there's really a need for this sort of site.

Asher Adelman's quite laudable mission for eBossWatch is "to improve the lives of people by helping them avoid hostile workplaces and abusive bosses."

Methinks that eBossWatch is not quite the way to go about it, but, then again, I'm someone on the backstretch of my career. For the MySpace-Facebook-YouTube generation in which folks are more accustomed to public exposure of every little aspect of their lives, and to people taking anonymous whacks at them, something like this may well become the norm.

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Asher Adelman also runs a site called JerkFreeJobs, which I posted on the other day. (As you'll see for yourself if you read it, I personally don't believe that there is now or ever will be such a thing as a Jerk Free Job, but that's because I view jerk as a generally mild term, and jerkhood as something we are all, on occasion, capable of.)