Ignorant Boss! Need Help Explaining Validation!

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Ignorant Boss! Need Help Explaining Validation!

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sqlsoulman SSC Enthusiast Points: 146 More actions · Answer 1

By the way, I have nothing against Italians. I'm half Italian myself so I know first hand the type of personality that I'm dealing with.

Frank Kalis SSC Guru Points: 111183 More actions · Answer 2

Hi sqlinsite,

quote:
As discussed, If you have ANY questions or something is not "adding up"
correctly make sure we discuss before you provide any more reports.

use this offer!!!

Discuss things with him, document this, maybe call him for even unimportant things on your report, involve him, make him sell your ideas as his own...and think of him what you will.

quote:
How do you deal with an a*@hole like that? The report had "errors" because he couldn't remember that he was using an older table when this data was generated. Therefore, I followed his requirements strictly but used the newest table. Of course, he never apologized. Now you see why my gut starts hurting every time he asks me to run a report.

I guess that's one of the things you MUST HAVE to be in management. Depending on you position and your income you don't make mistake by definition. So, in your case, as this is your boss #1, by all means, he cannot make mistakes, maybe a slight change in paradigma, but never a mistake. So, why should he apologize, you earn less, so it must be your mistake

I guess I'm telling you nothing new, when I say, take a close look at http://www.dilbert.com

Cheers,

Frank

--
Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url]

Lee Dise SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4384 More actions · Answer 3

Personally, I blame it all on Sandra Bullock.

Well, okay, not her personally, but on Hollywood. The callipygous Ms. Bullock comes to mind because she starred in an awful movie called "The Net", in which, if memory serves, she broke past a high-security firewall into the government's super-secret supermainframe computer and re-wrote the entire operating system inside of three minutes.

In other words, Hollywood raises the expectations of everyone who is not a techie, about what techies can accomplish. Your boss would never think of asking a lawyer to write a winning legal brief in one afternoon, or an accountant into doing the corporation's taxes sometime before 10 AM, but they don't bat an eye asking the impossible from computer people, because if Sandra Bullock can do it, they figure, so can you.

Griping about bosses is a rich subject, and I've been in the field for twenty years collecting data. It's tough dealing with unrealistic expectations, especially if your boss isn't technical. Allow me to quantify based on my strictly anecdotal evidence: In twenty years, I have had ten different bosses, only three of which were non-technical people. I have had serious issues with only two, and both were non-technical, leading us to the following lemma:

quote:
Lemma: A good boss is not necessarily technical; but a bad boss is almost always non-technical.

I have personally never had a bad boss who was himself or herself technically oriented, though I know such bad bosses do exist. At a former place of employment, there was one very competent technical boss in charge of the network and hardware shop who would publicly curse people out at a very loud volume, using obscenities, profanities, and taking the Lord's name in vain -- and then five minutes later forget all about it, moving blithely on to other things while the cursed-at employee was still standing there livid and shaking.

How do I deal with these situations? Poorly.

I do try to impress upon customers, at all times, that I am not a data expert but a database expert with working knowledge of certain data. Up front, I try to convey that I can vouch for the data only so far, and that if they're serious about presenting it, it needs to be reviewed by someone who is a data expert. I've had customers come back, surprised, saying, "But I need you to be expert at my data!" I respond, "I don't expect you to know my job, how can you expect me to know yours? If I knew yours, why would we need you?"

You can also try responding using the famous engineering triangulation: You can have it today, or you can have it correct, or you can have it cheap. Pick any two.

When all else fails, vote with your feet. Leave, but of course not before having a better job already lined up. That's harder to do in times like these, perhaps. I was with one of my two bad bosses for eight years, but that was mainly because I was too stubborn to admit defeat.

Edited by - Lee Dise on 08/19/2003 06:20:02 AM

PBirch SSCrazy Eights Points: 8493 More actions · Answer 4

Hollywood is not about the process, it is about the result. In Hollywood lawyers do create briefs in an afternoon (usually with something alcoholic available, but the lawyer decides that he/she/it can write this without it) and I will be first to admit I don't want to see a movie on corporate accountants doing anything.

I do agree that customers/clients/person involved in my having a check are sometimes not technically proficient. I have worked with the useless and the sort of know something.

The useless are easier, since they might be taught about what you actually do (as opposed to their ideas of what you do).

The sort of know somethings will run off their ideas - even though they are not valuable and they seem to be deaf to anything after 1995. Could you create that in Clipper/DBIII?

For example, I had a client who lectured me on database design but did not understand normalization, had a strange concept of indexing and a weath of other half-digested ideas. He had designed the database for his application and therefore did not want to hear that it was useless. He'd spent almost four hours on it. Computers are a hobby.

I avoid them and "idea" guys. Idea guys are those who live for scope creep. The application should not only replace four essential, but separate, applications in his company, but it should also do these other five things. And can you do that for $30K by next month?

Bonne Chance.

Dr. Peter Venkman: Generally you don't see that kind of behavior in a major appliance.

Patrick

Quand on parle du loup, on en voit la queue

Dale Corey SSCrazy Eights Points: 9019 More actions · Answer 5

quote:
Idea guys are those who live for scope creep.

They live for that and "feature creep". You know, "Can it slice, dice, and do hand stands?"

All the best,

Dale

Edited by - DALEC on 08/18/2003 11:38:17 AM

All the best,

Dale

Author: An Introduction to SQL Server 2005 Management Studio

Frank Kalis SSC Guru Points: 111183 More actions · Answer 6

Hi Lee,

quote:
In other words, Hollywood raises the expectations of everyone who is not a techie, about what techies can accomplish. ... or an accountant into doing the corporations taxes sometime before 10 AM, but they don't bat an eye asking the impossible from computer people,...

I'm not sure about that.

There are tendencies, especially in accounting, to present the annual balance sheet as fast as possible after 12/31. They call it 'fast-close'

Cisco claims to be able to do this within one working day!

The major concern about this is, that everyone knows that the numbers cannot be 100% precise and correct, but as long as the fairly represent company's situation, they are believed to be good enough. No, go and translate this to the situation here. If sqlinsite was to say this to his boss, I wouldn't be in his shoes .

See me, I am expected to exactly know which direction equity markets goes and trade in that manner. Besides the fact, that if I would know this, I would be anywhere else but not in the office, this is impossible. But nobody really cares when I mention this. Nobody wants to hear.

So, what do I do?

Nicely document every discussion, every decision, every trade. Although this save my head, it is a maasive overhead of administration, which keeps me away from I originally am supposed to do

Cheers,

Frank

--
Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url]

Lee Dise SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4384 More actions · Answer 7

quote:
I'm not sure about that.
There are tendencies, especially in accounting, to present the annual balance sheet as fast as possible after 12/31. They call it 'fast-close'

Many companies put unreasonable demands on accountants, especially the big accounting firms that prey upon, excuse me, hire kids right out of school. Same with engineers and architects: I know software guys who once worked for one of the large architectural firms, and, frankly, the bosses were slave drivers, from the sound of it.

There are also some big computer consulting firms (no names, please!) that like to grind their software people into the dirt. Places like that are rife with bad management (IMHO) because everyone operates out of fear, and fear brings out the very worst in human nature.

But even then, it's a different kind of bad management than from a non-technical boss, and it has to do with expectations. A technical boss may expect you to accomplish the extremely difficult, but a non-technical boss often expects you to accomplish the impossible.

sqlsoulman SSC Enthusiast Points: 146 More actions · Answer 8

quote:
Places like that are rife with bad management (IMHO) because everyone operates out of fear, and fear brings out the very worst in human nature.

Amen!

Frank Kalis SSC Guru Points: 111183 More actions · Answer 9

quote:
Many companies put unreasonable demands on accountants, especially the big accounting firms that prey upon, excuse me, hire kids right out of school. Same with engineers and architects: I know software guys who once worked for one of the large architectural firms, and, frankly, the bosses were slave drivers, from the sound of it.

yes, that's right. I'm dealing for 4 years now each year with new personel from our auditing company. And explain each year the same stupid things.

quote:
There are also some big computer consulting firms (no names, please!) that like to grind their software people into the dirt. Places like that are rife with bad management (IMHO) because everyone operates out of fear, and fear brings out the very worst in human nature.

we call this here 'banana software'. It matures ?!? at the customer.

Cheers,

Frank

--
Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url]

tymberwyld SSCertifiable Points: 7810 More actions · Answer 10

Haha ! That's great! I thought ours was the only company who did this! To develop the skeleton of the software...and not even a good one...and then when the Client complains, and pays more money for "Enhancements", then the software develops more. However, since new code is crammed on top of the old "bad" code...this soon becomes a huge piece of $&#%.

This is funny, however, because I've noticed that in developing apps for Internal use in the Comapny...God forbid I design ANYTHING that is not user-friendly and does not meet all expectations.

Then I get blamed for weird things happening. Like the user's screen resolution changes because they use a Projector on their Laptop...my software gets blamed for this! Then other things "Umm, my children have stopped eating bananas...I think it was something you installed yesterday!".