Mdtryhht

First of all, quitting is always an option. What would your colleague do if the company suddenly closed its doors? (This happens, and the employees are usually the last to see it coming).

Your colleague needs to stop making excuses and start job hunting for real. It may take a long time, but there are better jobs and non-toxic managers out there.

In the meantime, there are a couple of things your colleague can do:

Constantly undermining every one's work by saying thing like "I could have done it in one hour"

• Remember that this person is toxic and whatever comes out of their mouth is not relevant or meaningful. Stop caring about this manager's opinion.

Constantly failing to meet deadlines

• Keep a written log of what was promised, when, and by whom. When anything happens, log that as well (what, when, by whom). It's a major pain in the rear to do, but when the grand boss comes around looking for necks to choke it will not only protect you, it may shine some unwanted light on the toxic manager.

Berating the team for using their rights, such as overtime pay

• Same as above - keep a log about what was earned, paid, etc. and remember that the babbling of fools is best ignored as much as possible.


• If the colleague is paid hourly, then not receiving overtime pay is something to take up with HR or the union, if there is one. If the colleague is salaried and this is "comp time", then the right answer might be to stop working the overtime to begin with (so there's nothing to comp)

To reduce the stress: Stop caring. After 8 hours work a day, stop working. If the manager makes it hard to leave, stop working and get overtime pay without working. If he says “I could have done that in an hour” you say “of course you could” so he doesn’t see you getting upset (because that’s what he wants) while thinking to yourself what you actually think of him. Same if he says “that was really easy”, you say “absolutely, that was really easy, you could have done that in an hour”.

He knows what he is, and you know what he is, so make it clear without saying anything bad that you know and you don’t care. It’s only stress if you care.

@strader: You wouldn't feel belittled if your five year old son said "I could have done that in an hour". Once you change your mental attitude, that boss isn't any more clever than your five year old son, so you don't feel belittled. You know which one is the child and which one the adult.

1) As has been said elsewhere, quitting is always an option. It depends on what you are willing to sacrifice, but quitting is never "not an option".

2) I don't know anything about French work culture, but in North America where I am also a software developer like your colleague, it is perfectly reasonable for an employee to job hunt while working. You don't have to quit and be out of a job before you start job hunting; when you know that you want to leave, start looking for another job, and then you can seamlessly move from one job to the next easily.

My advice to your coworker (former co-worker?) would be to start job hunting ASAP, while continuing to work. He should continue to do his job to the best of his ability, and try to ignore the stupid stuff from his manager as best he can in the meantime, and then as soon as he finds something else, he should jump ship.

I have unfortunately been in this situation. I had been with the company for 2 years longer than my supervisor and she was totally clueless and attempting to fire all of her own employees to the point that I was the last developer standing (sounds kind of crazy when your job is to supervise those employees). She had actually written me up twice for things that were to basically cover her own issues. While this was going on I basically quit talking to her any more than I had to and had my headphone on at all times and sent an email to the HR department and the president of the company informing them of everything she had been doing. Luckily they finally saw her for what she was and she was the one fired in the end and I stayed on at that company for a few more years.

The basics being, do your job, document everything, and sooner or later those at the top will see what is happening and justice will be served, and if not hopefully a new position can be found soon.

The immature way to deal with toxic people who you can't remove from your life, assuming you've already had a sit down with them and explained why their behavior is unacceptable, is to cut them down back.

For example, "I could have done that in an hour" should be answered with something like "You sure you're sober?" or "I'd like to see you try".

Refusing to pay for work should be met with "No money, no honey" and followed up by you not showing up to work the next day for whatever reason - probably sick time, it honestly doesn't matter if it gets approved or not because you're sending a message.

That piece of information you didn't get that put the entire team behind schedule should be something that the manager is never allowed to forget. Bring it up every time it might be relevant.

This is the wrong thing to do, but if you can't quit and really want things to work out, you're going to have to discipline your manager.

The professional thing to do is to document this behavior, send it to your managers superiors even though you know they won't do anything, and find another job. Look for a job while you still have one and then stop working with the toxic manager as soon as you get a new job. People like this are going to have a much bigger impact on your career than they have any right to if you keep working for them.

I agree with most of the answers here. In particular, quitting is always an option, be job hunting already, and stop caring about what the manager is saying (except, obviously, that which is necessary to do your job).

The only addition here is to operationalize the "stop caring" part a bit. The people for whom simply telling them to stop caring is enough to accomplish that are not the people who need to be told it as they will have already stopped caring.

My suggestion is to reframe the situation in your head. Specifically, reframe the manager as just an obstactle. Dealing with the manager's crap is just an (unpleasant) part of the job, no different from dealing with a broken printer, say. Sure it's annoying, but it isn't personal and your mind goes to questions like "Can I fix the printer? Can I get the printer to do what I want despite being broken? Can I work around the printer? Can I accomplish what I need without the printer?" You don't wonder why the printer is so unfair to you.

Here's a more or less equivalent alternative reframing. View your job like a video game. You're trying to do the best job you can. Your manager is like a bad guy trying to thwart you. Not a boss, mind you, just one of the regularly occurring goombas. You're not personally aggrieved by the fact that the goombas in Mario are trying to impede you. You just think about the best strategy to get past them. Again, your mindset when playing a video game is that given this is the way the world is set up, what is the best strategy to navigate through it?

A third that's slightly different but mostly the same is to imagine your manager as a big parrot. If a parrot said belittling things to you, you wouldn't take it personally. The parrot is just making noise, and what it says has much more to do with it than you. This is likely true for your manager too.

The common thread through all of these, just to lay it out, is that you are intentionally dehumanizing your manager. Doing this removes most of the weight from what they say.

Clearly, this is not an ideal situation, and I'm not suggesting the above in lieu of finding a better job.

Constantly failing to meet deadlines, which resulted in everyone else (not him) to stay overtime to try and makes things right (We once had to wait 3 week, for a vital piece of information, and when he delivered it to us, we were one week behind the deadline).

There's a very simple answer to this. The deadline slips. And as much as managers love to say "but that's not acceptable", the answer is simply "but it's going to happen".

And you don't just tell him this. You copy his manager, and his manager's manager. You say what the original plans were, and that because your manager started you all on this late, it'll take that long. And you make sure it takes that long!

For bonus points, you can say "we're all prepared to do overtime to help out the company so it'll only slip by two weeks". Then you look proactive and helpful - but the deadline slip still happens, and management know it's down to your boss.

Berating the team for using their rights, such as overtime pay.

Now this is crazy stuff. If your contract says you get this, then you get it. If he pushes it, the next step is to call HR and say "John thinks we shouldn't be claiming overtime pay. Please can you tell me what our contract says? And please can you email that section of the contract to me and John, so we know for the future?" Especially getting email evidence.

Just have a very short 1:1; tell your manager that you fell in love with him, that you have finally given up on having a relationship and just wanted to take this off your chest. Practice a lot so that you can say this with a straight face.

Once you have declared your love, he will no longer be able to avoid feeling weird and uncomfortable every time he looks at you, forever. With some luck, communication will be cut to a minimum and you will never be asked again to stay in the office a minute longer than necessary. It's not against the law, and if he tries to fire you to spare himself the embarrassment you will get compensated more than adequately.
It's a WIN-WIN, but both wins are for you.