An ex-director I worked for had a habit of sending out non-descript meeting requests for Friday afternoon. You never knew if it was was something trivial or layoff announcements. I think he enjoyed spreading panic among his people :-)

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dsr_ 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Way back when, the president of the company had a habit of sending out email on a Monday to schedule a company-wide meeting for Tuesday. These were weeks to months apart from each other.

Every single time, I wondered if it would be routine, or an acquisition, or a bankruptcy...

One day I mentioned my anxiety to him. He immediately apologized, and from then on, the company-wide meetings had agendas. Eventually that stopped -- when we started doing regular company-wide meetings with a standing agenda.

Sometimes everyone needs to communicate better. Without bug reports, what are you going to fix?

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duxup 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's a power play for sure for some managers. It's also a very strong tell of a bad manager / someone who absolutely has character flaws that should disqualify them from being in management.

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hluska 4 days ago | parent [-]

Or more charitably, the manager had no idea and none of their reports had enough social skills to explain?

	▲	fn-mote 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		That is very charitable to the manager but incredibly insulting to the direct reports. Leadership comes from the top. That’s what they’re paid for. If there’s a culture of speaking up and nobody does, sure blame the underlings. But CREATING that culture is the responsibility of management. Managers needs training, too, and I’m willing to give it if they’re willing to listen. I stick my neck out for really important or really offensive items, but it’s awkward when the culture isn’t there.