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*** The reason these people get into positions of power and can force
their pettiness on people is because nobody ever challenges their
authority. This is a problem with many tech pubs managers.... They think
"management" is strictly enforcing rules and commanding people to do
things. They have no concept of what it is to actually LEAD people. ***
What troubles me, and apparently others on this thread, is the
assumption that managers are, by definition, power-abusing martinets who
make idiotic rules because they can. While there are probably enough
such managers to reinforce the stereotype, most managers in my
experience have been indispensable people who earned their stripes and
used their position to do the best work possible with the least pain to
everyone involved. As an employee you don't have to blindly accept every
management decision that comes along, but neither can you just ignore a
policy because you think it's dumb. You talk with your manager to find
out why the policy is there and whether you can't meet the goals of the
policy in a less intrusive way. Or you can just ignore the rules and see
what happens, but if you do that you forfeit your right to complain
about unreasonable bosses.
Jim Purcell
jimpur -at- microsoft -dot- com
My opinions, not Microsoft's
IPCC 01, the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference,
October 24-27, 2001 at historic La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN UNTIL MARCH 15. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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