You're the kind of manager that's dreadful to encounter. Your team is there to do a job not You have the job responsibility and even a moral responsibility to do your best to let your team, and thus the company, achieve great things not play god!

I know the reality though. There's more bad managers then real managers. The fact that you have to do budgeting makes you think you are the ruler but you are not, unless you are the owner of the company. Mature, well organized companies, have long put in place safety belts to make sure they would rather fire bad manager retaliating on he's/her's subordinate before they lose valuable specialists.

I second Tom1234, you must feel very insecure already. Good luck

EDIT:
But to be clear, I do hope you are right that such situation was discussed with senior managers. Escalation is a proces to make sure that's the case and in such case there's no point of retaliation other than personal ego.

Dude, you need to wake up and smell the coffee and integrate into the real corporate world. I would never snitch on my manager as 99% of the time you will lose unless it’s some sort of “meetoo” issues or you can round up everyone that reports to him to make a formal complaint. If I didn’t like my Manager, I would simply leave. People generally their managers and not the Company.

It is in everybody's interest that the teams perform properly which is ensured by different things like atmosphere, working conditions etc.. if there are problems with those things and the manager refuses or keeps failing to address them properly I even see it as my duty towards myself and the company to by-pass the direct manager. If the people above him have brains they will act as they should and explain either why I am wrong or take it up with the manager. Me not liking a manager is no reason at all to leave a company, we are colleagues and not friends.

You seem to be from different field. AFAIK, only software companies had "evolved" to treat their engineering staff as a business partners because otherwise they would be stuck with a bunch of unmotivated folks looking only to find a way into management.

I would never jump to think of leaving a company because of someone's else incompetence or fault. If I signaled the problem and nothing happened about it then yes, I'd leave with no regret of such decision and I would blame the company for the situation. It happened to me to have bad managers. Once I landed in a team having someone like you, who thought he owns me, not works with me. He tried his best to block me from changing teams and threatened me to get fired if I won't stop. It took a second level escalation to fix the problem as it turned out the whole team was constantly escalating issues to the next manager. The bad manager was moved under a performance improvement plan to a different country for a few months to be couched and be evaluated fairly outside of his possible net. He did change from what I have heard but I have never had the questionable pleasure to work with him again. The manager's manager also didn't get away of it but nobody knows what was the outcome/punishment/improvement steps.

"Round up everyone..." is it your frequent nightmare? I feel sorry for you, believe me

I second all that, if push comes to shove, nothing wrong with going around your manager and escalate issues. I've done it myself, of course as a last resort, and had no repercussions whatsoever.

Some seem to assume just because you're a "manager", you're somehow better and therefore exempt from behaving a certain way or from any form of punishment. They couldn't be more wrong and I have seen many a manager being fired because of unacceptable behavior - so no, senior execs will not automatically side with them.

There are truly horrifying managers out there that barely deserve the name. While it takes courage (or a massive amount of pain) to go around them to the next level, that's an absolutely okay thing to do. Of course not for some petty issue, but if there's something significant and no amount of conversations or attempt at reconciliation helped, I see nothing wrong with going up one level. Only a very insecure and/or arrogant person would see that differently, no offense.

Haha, true. And once you're looking into management positions your career is over....from a certain point of view.

Btw, I think "meister" is talking from a simple employee's point of view, not as a manager. He thinks this is the way managers deal with stuff, which is not always true. Not every manager is an insecure, resentful guy. I've seen manager(s) moving to a different project because their team was asked to accept a lot more work than acceptable. Some of them have spine... ;-)

I know a better story ;-) I worked in a corporation which as other corporations in 2008 (or 2007 was it?) was hit by a global crisis. They decided to freeze the salaries for 30% of the staff at the end of the year. Now, there was a small team, about 2 years old but achieved a lot due to their team culture. The manager discussed the problem openly with the team, they decided to share the impact of the salary rise budget reduction. Then the corporation warned the manager that it must freeze the salaries of 30% of his staff or will be let go. Guess what, he accepted to be let go, and his whole team resigned. They started looking for a job as a well performing team of experts. Nowadays they run a branch/business unit of another corporation hiring ~300 developers locally and are renowned for awesome company culture.

I thought it's gonna end with the creation of a super-revolutionary startup (btw, CH is a good place for that). But the story is good enough as it is..

Unfortunately it's not in CH. I did knew them only by "face" as in any large corporation. I remember talking with some of them by the coffee machine, during lunch, etc. but when they left I was following them ;-) They did struggle to meet the basic budget for about 2 years contracting for various companies and looking for building their own product and brand. At some point one contracting relation went really well and that's how it started to be the next business unit.

You are better off having accepted the deal:

"25 days additional penalty after being fired and refusing
to go back at 30% less"

http://www.mattinonline.ch/it/articl...0DE5wuUsS4KQhg

Tom

Wow indeed assuming one cannot get a job within the next 2 years. I'm sorry about any potential damage I made with such statement, it's just about pure calculation of the worst scenario.

These laws give Switzerland a bad name. This type of thing would never happen in the UK. Like someone in this thread said, it's like stealing.

Anyway, I guess the Swiss have no choice but to do that. How else are they going to make a profit? No one is investing here, and the economy is stagnant in contrast to the UK which grows by 2-3% on average per year (until Brexit).

You must be living in a parallel universe...

Don't get same salary either in UK......

Hey business partner, we're outsourcing your job to Gujarat, India - interested in relocating and working there at a local salary?

So naive...

No, it is one of the reasons why corporations are willing to absorb the very high cost of employing people here vs. other European countries.

And for worker bees, this is the flip side of the coin of the big $$$ you can make in CH.

Love it or leave it.

Looking back at this now, I am glad to be out of that crappy company. Funny thing is they did the same thing to a colleague of mine who left them after 12 months.

After a year, I got a better offer in London, and am glad to be out of this situation. That company is not professional. Riddance to them.

Happy 2020! The world is my oyster and there are better places. Switzerland is not everything.

Why not move on rather than post here about your misery? Seriously, why post here about this?

Always nice to have thread updates and to see other members are doing well

His focus seems to be more on trying to make clear that Switzerland (where most of us presumably live) sucks.

Hey, don’t get upset because you don’t like my opinion.

Merry Christmas !