I wanted to finally vent the worst boss I've had in my life. I've had 9 different bosses in my 17-year workforce career. My last boss made it hell. This post does not ask for advice or beg for answers, but literally just to get this off my chest. My position was a cybersecurity manager for a team of less than 10.
So the list:
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He denied me PTO (we had unlimited PTO) to visit my son's gravesite two states away. There was a security concern going on with 40+ people on it. He didn't want me taking PTO because he needed max people on the security concern.
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He changed the bonus amount I wanted to give to my employees, drastically. Never told me why. He completely flipped my bonus allocation for my top performer and my garbage performer. Then he told me to defend my numbers to HR. Basically he wanted me to defend why my garbage performer deserved a 20% bonus and my top performer deserved 10%
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We were a work from home company. He called me 30 mins after closing time ON MICROSOFT TEAMS. Of course I missed the call, the day was over. The next day he bitched me out for not answering. I asked him why he didn't just call my cell phone like he has done before AND his boss. He dodged the question. Told him if he wants me to be available after hours, then put it in writing that he expects me to have Teams installed on my phone with notifications on. And I expect he would have the same standard for all his security managers. He never answered that.
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He chewed out 3 women in a month and put them to tears, two threatened to quit.
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He insulted my military background. Whenever we had a disagreement on something, rather than using logic, he would say several times “I don't know if you'd talk to your commanding officer like that.” Of which I said “yeah I would, because he needs to know if an idea may have negative repercussions or any obstacles in front of it.”
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He tried to put me on a PIP and the reasoning “well, you come from a military background which is structured and rigid. The private sector is more fast paced and dynamic. So maybe you're not a right fit for this.” I then told him “so are you basing my performance solely on the fact that I have a military background which is different than this company's? So I couldn't succeed here because of that? Then why did you hire me? Also this sounds like military discrimination and I'm a protected veteran class having recently separated.' He said nothing. Never gave tangible evidence of why I should be on a PIP.
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Speaking of PIP, I also asked him what would even be on it, before I agree to it. He never answered that, but he gave me absurd tasks to do over the next two weeks until I left (I was already interviewing behind the scenes). One crazy task in particular was doing a certain report which is typically 20 pages of work, and most pages cannot be templated out since it's heavily analytical. He wanted it by end of day the next day. And it pissed him off that I actually got it done.
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He wanted to be in my Teams chat with my team. Severe micromanaging. I agreed I'd let him in but I wanted to brief my team first of the new change coming up as it may affect the culture and work environment with more formalities. He was pissed I didn't do it ASAP. When I repeated to him my reasoning, he told me “I dont even wanna be in it. I just wanna see if you would do it.” So he was testing me out
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When I was on PTO for my sisters graduation, he messaged me at 10pm to have a task done the next day. This was while my sister and I were celebrating and having a couple drinks. I refused to do it. He tried to contact me. Told him I'm still on PTO which he approved 2 months ago, I reminded him last week, and it's on my calendar. He told me I should delegate who is in charge. I told him to scroll up in our chat from 3 days ago where he acknowledged who's in charge. He said ok, but I should put it on my away message. Told him its on my automatic out of office. Never replied. Dude had no ownership over mistakes
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He would task my team members with stuff without ever telling me. No courtesy, no “hey I asked Jane to join with Brooke's team on a special project.” Just rearranging my team at will. Just jumping over me and moving around my team
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Metrics. Always a moving target. Always changing expectations 2 days before the monthly meeting, causing multiple teams to scramble to get the data.
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“I wanna know who is attacking our network, with attribution. Get that on next week's report.” Uh…dude, do you know how hard it is to prove attribution in cyber security when all you have are port scans and ever-changing IPs?
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“I hate HR, they never help, they just control.” One of his first quotes I remember from him from week 1 at the company
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My last 4 weeks we had a security concern. I worked 3 consecutive weekends, including through my son's death anniversary.
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He told me he wanted 5 business days notice if I was going to be out for any appt or doctor visit. Read that again. So, if I got sick, he needed 5 business days notice to be informed of my appt to see a doc if I'm sick
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Now go back to that security concern we had. One of those days, I cracked my head on my mounted TV by accident. I hit it so hard I fell down. It was bleeding slightly. I wanted to go get checked out…but after receiving a recent ass chewing on him needing 5 business days notice…I didn't see a doctor. I just monitored myself for symptoms. I did inform him I was injured and what happened, but I was hanging in there but I may need to break the 5 day rule if it's serious. He told me he was concerned about how I couldn't adhere to my supervisor's policy. I never replied. Because if I did, it might've cost me my job, and I didn't have my next job offer signed yet.
— In late July, on a Friday, it was my final day. The termination script was scheduled to hit my computer at 3pm, meaning I would be forever disconnected to my company's network. That whole day I really did nothing except say a few goodbyes over video. BUT, I spent most of it typing up an email. This email had every documented thing I could conjure up of my supervisor's fuck ups and evidence of assholery. It was around 20 paragraphs long….
….I coordinated with the network team to do it exactly at 3pm, because I had a lot to do. I told them do not disconnect me even a minute early. I was friends with one of them, and I told her I needed to send an email where I didn't want to deal with a response while I'm still an employee. She caught the hint and understood.
…..So at 2:57pm, I sent the email. To the entire HR distro, to my boss, to my boss's boss, and to the chief of HR. No way they could read it all and respond in 3 minutes. Every piece of evidence I had was attached to the email and I verified that it sent and didn't get stuck in my outbox. My wife, daughter and I then left for a week of vacation before starting my new job
— Months later, I found out that the security concern is STILL ongoing, and my former boss and his boss have been particularly pissy at everything lately. People are leaving en masse.
I'm not going to disclose the company name because I don't want to deal with a defamation lawsuit if they see this. Especially because now I get paid to do the same thing but making $25K/yr more and 15% more in bonus percentage, and it's 2 promotion steps up. My only regret with this company is that I should have quit earlier. My new company was looking for nearly 2 months for my new position I was hired for. I could've been gone in May and never had to deal with that summer drama. I do miss my people, but I hope that my former manager either has a sudden enlightenment of the asshole he is, or someone shows him by force and he changes.