Comment by hypeatei
5 hours ago
Maybe I'm a bit jaded, and corporate environments have taken their toll, but I see the employee-manager relationship as adversarial by default. Whether my boss wishes me happy birthday or not doesn't move the needle much. I'm there to contribute as an individual and he's there to answer to his boss about staffing, budgeting, and performance.
Although, I do feel slighted when a manager acknowledges the absurdity of all the corporatisms we hear everyday then proceeds to preach them to everyone and waste time anyway. Like, please, I thought we just agreed this is all fluff.
Maybe I'm a bit childish, but I feel neglected when I am asked to sign an work anniversary card for a colleague and next week my manager doesn't even acknowledge my work anniversary. It happened for the last 4 years and, yes, it affects my productivity in the day.
Some time ago I had my 10 year anniversary forgotten once in a company (where I had written almost the entire codebase for their core product myself) and I did feel slighted. I had felt invested in the company, to me this day was a big deal and my company was completely unaware. It felt like a disorienting mismatch of unreciprocated commitment and made me feel a bit sick in the pit of my stomach. I started looking for a new job the next day.
Sounds like you are extremely valuable in the product you built.
In your experience it’s not just the manager direct report relationship that’s adversarial, it’s you against the whole company for the mismatched value they place in you.
You should use that as leverage. This comes with an mindset of looking out for yourself and not any loyalty to the company (I really wish that we could all find companies loyal and nice to their employees, in reality they are few and far between).
Something along the lines of “Hey I built our product. We’re making X in profit. I deserve Y in comp. I’ll give you a week to decide. If you reject I quit and build my own product or join another company.” Obviously add some fluff to reduce harshness.
Does your company have a culture of recognizing work anniversaries? To me it feels very arbitrary. Maybe I’m jaded by big tech.
> then proceeds to preach them to everyone and waste time anyway
This has happened to me, but it's important to distinguish when boss is speaking for himself, and when he is just forwarding orders from above. These two cases can happen literally in the same sentence.
Just last week I was tasked with configuring an automated happy birthday email.
It feels worse to know that it's just an automatic message and that the person who supposedly signed it doesn't even know who you are.
Work is just work, don't expect anything more than that.
Your boss is playing a role, same as you.
> see the employee-manager relationship as adversarial by default.
I don't see how anyone can be happy in their job if that were the default. Maybe I am naive or lucky, but I have a very goed relation with my boss, as well as with the boss above.
When that condition is not fulfilled, i definitely tend to slack off and I will eventually leave. I believe such should be the default.
The relationship between owners and workers has always been extractive. The adversarial relationship is built in. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good relationship with your employer, but there is always a conflict of interest, so to speak.
I’ve had great relationships with my bosses, but they’re always under pressure to extract more work from the workers. In turn, their bosses are also pressured to do the same.
So yes, it’s not the default and you and I have both been lucky.
Classifying a relationship as adversarial presumes a competitive context. I don't believe we are in competition with our employer but in a cooperative relationship, so we're talking game theory. A good employer cooperates with their employees to achieve business goals, a bad manager defects and prioritizes their personal goals/desires above the shared business goals. Your relationship falls out of this behavior (assuming no personal issues).
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This has almost never been my experience in ~20 years of working. Other than a few fleeting assholes, all of my work relationships have essentially been collegial, with all parties, regardless of position, looking at how we can best get the work done that’s in front of us. I’ve never felt exploited or used and never felt I was exploiting those I managed.
I think if one sees their work this way, maybe it comes true? It’s a very cynical way of looking at things.
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This is an oversimplificstion. The relationship between the person holding the scarce resource, and the person holding the common resource, has always been adversarial.
As labor becomes more skilled and less common this dynamic changes.
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First, you're certainly lucky. Secondly, the emphasis should be on "by default"; managers can, and some easily and quickly do, prove that they aren't adversarial. But companies (especially tech companies with high stress on unsustainable growth) don't often incentivize that, and sometimes disincentivize it whether they mean to or not.
I'm happy buying groceries at the grocery store without having to pretend that the checkout clerk loves me.
I also feel that the emotional attachment to one's source of income could cause people to compromise their morality for them, as if they were family e.g. I don't think one child should be favored over another, but I'm happy when my child is favored over others.
> I believe such should be the default.
It's delusional. Your boss is trying to pay you as little as possible for as much work as possible, and you are trying to get him to pay as much as possible for as little work as possible. You've both examined your leverage and have come to a temporary accord which may change a year from now (or a day from now if you get another offer.) The relationship is adversarial. It's not a matter of opinion.
Maybe my knowledge of the English language is subpar but what you describe looks more like _transactional_?
Yeah, I am always going to interpret that sort of thing as performative. There seems to be whole corporate mythology that is absolutely sure there are a bunch of cheap, low-effort things managers can do to raise morale and get more productivity out of employees, like office birthday parties. I propose a name for adherents to this philosophy: the Pizza Party Cult.
Employee is a resource to be mined at as little cost as possible. Employment is designed to take advantage of you in every way possible. Never go above and beyond, always work enough to piss off your manager, but not enough to get you fired.