The WBC Semifinals start tonight. I guess it's been a good tournament. Wish I had the means to see more of the games.
24 thoughts on “March 20, 2017: Semifinals”
So I think last week we had a discussion here about how it sucks that in most companies there's no opportunities for advancement or raises without being a supervisor, and how sometimes we're most valuable to a company where we are, and how people get promoted to supervisor not based on their qualifications on being a supervisor (i.e. Peter Principle).
While there are some opportunities for advancement in my company (and raises) without becoming a supervisor, being a supervisor grants the most money for sure. And I tell people repeatedly that on an hour-to-hour basis, my job is easier than that of my staff and my best day has way less stress than their best day. However, I think my extra money comes from sheer availability. When someone calls in sick, I cover. When someone goes on leave, I cover. When someone screws up, I cover (and fix). I certainly have less flexibility for family, going to doctor appointments, going to my son's school stuff, et cetera because of my role. Which money helps cover for sure. Not complaining one iota. I was just thinking about why supervisors get paid more and I think this is mostly it. Whether or not it's justified is another question, with an answer I'm sure of "it depends."
I suppose I also have a greater risk of being sued, hurt professionally as a supervisor than a line staff. My license covers 13 people's successes and mistakes. So there's that.
I've had supervisors who do the things you describe, and these definitely seem like some of the traits of a good supervisor. My current boss covered for a mistake I made that got us in some hot water with an org elsewhere in our institution. I felt pretty bad about it, but he confessed that he probably would've made the same mistake because the other org is notorious for not disclosing information that we frequently need to make clear-eyed recommendations. I appreciated that, but still feel bad that he had to use some political capital to smooth things over.
Of course, not all supervisors do the things you do. My most recent supervisor was not your kind of supervisor. This person would enforce expectations she wouldn't hold herself to, allowed HR to post positions starting at higher salaries than current staff already in the same position were making, and would use emotional manipulation to derail conversations she didn't like. (She cried in staff meetings occasionally, and she would routinely cry or get choked up in personal meetings with me about various things.) Even then, she's not the worst super I've had – just the most pathetic.
I'll echo the good vs. bad supervisor distinction. The first place I worked after law school was fabulous, and much like what Beau describes. The last place I worked was a supervisor who was herself an excellent attorney but she couldn't delegate at all. A good supervisor needs to know how to trust their staff (while still supervising, of course). The place in between... the supervisors got more money for simply being "decision-makers." They didn't fill in, provide support, take any personal risk, work more, etc. It all ran downhill...
I think the hardest thing to learn as a supervisor is that every employee needs to be supervised differently. Employees who are very similar to me are easy to supervise. After all, it's easy to trust them and I know how I like to be supervised. But every person has individual needs and you have to accept that not everyone does things the same way.
Trusting is hard, but the alternative makes being a supervisor too stressful.
I don't begrudge my supervisor's salary, whatever it is. She does a great job of insulating us from the cr@p, and I'd like to think that over the years she's learned she can trust me to do what should be done (or let her know what can't).
I've always worked for larger companies where there are multiple salary tracks, and that's been intentional. I prefer being a cog in the wheel than the person turning the wheel.
I'm middle management. Some days I'm a cog and turning the wheel, and some days I'm neither.
im half tempted to print out this lte string and leave it on my supervisor's desk. A year and a half ago they fired my boss and passed me over for promotion opting to hire someone from the outside to deal with a couple of problem colleagues. They threw me a largish raise and a consolation prize which actually ends up being golden handcuffs. The problem colleagues were just employees with bad habits produced by shitty management. A year and a half later my boss leaves early, comes in late, is quick to anger, has dropped the ball during major projects, has shared sexually explicit images / text messages, and has been allowed to do a dj gig every Thursday at 2pm. The dj gig was a real breaking point for me and my colleagues. He leaves at noon on thursdays and doesn't return to the office, and because he's on the air he can't be reached. The executive director gave her permission to do this as long as he came in early every day to make up for the time. I'm here most mornings before him, and now he's run himself out of pto with 5 months to go before he resets (my institution is very generous with leave, they provide 4 weeks paid vacation per year, and after 5 years of service they give you 5 weeks paid time off). My boss now wants the institution to make a special case for him to "earn" comp time even though he is an exempt employee. He's told us that it's unfair for him to have to come in early and not be compensated for his work supervising us (non-exempt) subordinates. He showed me his pay stub when he was first hired because he's an idiot, and I know for a fact that he clears a thousand more dollars a month than I do after deductions, and he has the nerve to complain about compensation. Through his bad example the bad colleagues have picked up worse habits, and he's successfully killed the spirit and work ethic of our best employee (not me.. though I'm a disgruntled employee now too...). Morale is lower than it's ever been, and he's been making noise about my performance. I have a documentation file on him, but that's not going to make this situation any more present.
I think you should print this string out, then ball it up in your fist and use it to punch that guy.
More seriously, though, eeh that sounds unpleasant. I've been lucky I've never had to deal with anything like that, which I suspect has somewhat to do with differences in out respective lines of work. I do know that low morale at work makes things really awful, so best of luck dealing with the situation.
Adventures in car repair: The fuel door latch actuator on my wife's car stopped working last week. I had to pry the thing open so now it won't stay closed. Seeing as the car is less than two years old, its still under the bumper-to-bumper warranty so I called the dealership in Madison we bought it at. They told me I had to order the part first before they could schedule an appointment (which is weird), so I looked up the part I know I need and called their parts department. Parts guy said no problem, we'll order that up, but said to have my wife bring it by so they could take a quick look and make sure they were ordering the right part, then transferred me back to service to schedule an appointment.
So after talking to the service guy, we were getting ready to schedule when he asked me what the estimate I got was. Told him it should be a warranty repair, so he said they couldn't do warranty repair if I got the part somewhere else. So I explained I was just on the phone with THEIR service department who was going to order the part. So he tells me they needed one of their technicians to look at it (which of course they couldn't do until next week) and they couldn't do warranty work with a part from someone else. I told him I know what is wrong and exactly what part is needed and that the part would be ORDERED BY THEIR PARTS DEPARTMENT, but he kept insisting they had to look at it first. So I told him I would just order the f*cking part and fix it myself. (Its a $50 friggin part, and would be easy to do. Only reason I want to take it in is because warranties exist for a reason.)
Ugh. I ended up calling the dealership in Janesville and they scheduled the repair for next week with no issue and no requirement I bring it in first even for a warranty issue.
And this is why I usually take my cars to a trusted local mechanic instead.
It's too bad everyone can't have a friendly neighbor who owns an auto shop...
Heh, I actually have two friendly neighbors who are mechanics (just the one who owns a shop, though). The one guy (who doesn't own a shop) has a two daughters my daughter plays with all the time and has been hanging out with my wife a lot lately while he goes through a divorce (which sounds really bad typing it out, but I know it ain't like that) and he was going to get the part for me and fix it but we both agreed it made more sense to go to a Kia dealership because warranty.
It's nice to drop off a key and a garage door opener the night before and have a car park in the garage the next afternoon with the bill on the dash.
I can't argue with that, and now that I have the ability to work from home it'd be a much more doable thing for me in the future. Of course, my preferred method is to spend a weekend wrenching on it myself until its back in shape. I don't know if I'll be able to do as much of that on my new car as I could on the previous, less technologically advanced car I had.
Park wants to play ball.
Not sure who the three yahoos are in the Toronto radio booth, but I'm entertained at least.
Eddie Rosario with the game-winning RBI in the 11th to put Puerto Rico into the finals. It came off of former Twins farmhand Loek van Mil of the Netherlands, which, of course, has pitching coach Bert Blyleven.
Just try and get a 7'1" pitcher not to leave a pitch up.
I had a meeting last night and didn't get to watch; I was hoping the Netherlands would win. Talk about boneheaded. To be fair, the first base coach is also partially to blame; it's his job to maintain that awareness and keep the player's attention on the play.
While it is definitely a boneheaded play, let's also give credit to Molina and to the first baseman. A lot of catchers wouldn't even have looked over to see that, and a lot of first basemen wouldn't have been ready to take a throw.
Absolutely. That was very heads-up baseball, and it removed what might have been the winning run from the equation before Balentien's homer.
Yadi lives for those kinds of plays, but you bring up a good point: the first baseman has to also be ready for that, and it's especially impressive on a WBC team that hasn't been together all that long
I imagine that in his free time, Molina does nothing other than instill in the infielders that he could throw them the ball at any time, because people tend not to run on him and he needs other outlets to showcase his arm.
So I think last week we had a discussion here about how it sucks that in most companies there's no opportunities for advancement or raises without being a supervisor, and how sometimes we're most valuable to a company where we are, and how people get promoted to supervisor not based on their qualifications on being a supervisor (i.e. Peter Principle).
While there are some opportunities for advancement in my company (and raises) without becoming a supervisor, being a supervisor grants the most money for sure. And I tell people repeatedly that on an hour-to-hour basis, my job is easier than that of my staff and my best day has way less stress than their best day. However, I think my extra money comes from sheer availability. When someone calls in sick, I cover. When someone goes on leave, I cover. When someone screws up, I cover (and fix). I certainly have less flexibility for family, going to doctor appointments, going to my son's school stuff, et cetera because of my role. Which money helps cover for sure. Not complaining one iota. I was just thinking about why supervisors get paid more and I think this is mostly it. Whether or not it's justified is another question, with an answer I'm sure of "it depends."
I suppose I also have a greater risk of being sued, hurt professionally as a supervisor than a line staff. My license covers 13 people's successes and mistakes. So there's that.
I've had supervisors who do the things you describe, and these definitely seem like some of the traits of a good supervisor. My current boss covered for a mistake I made that got us in some hot water with an org elsewhere in our institution. I felt pretty bad about it, but he confessed that he probably would've made the same mistake because the other org is notorious for not disclosing information that we frequently need to make clear-eyed recommendations. I appreciated that, but still feel bad that he had to use some political capital to smooth things over.
Of course, not all supervisors do the things you do. My most recent supervisor was not your kind of supervisor. This person would enforce expectations she wouldn't hold herself to, allowed HR to post positions starting at higher salaries than current staff already in the same position were making, and would use emotional manipulation to derail conversations she didn't like. (She cried in staff meetings occasionally, and she would routinely cry or get choked up in personal meetings with me about various things.) Even then, she's not the worst super I've had – just the most pathetic.
I'll echo the good vs. bad supervisor distinction. The first place I worked after law school was fabulous, and much like what Beau describes. The last place I worked was a supervisor who was herself an excellent attorney but she couldn't delegate at all. A good supervisor needs to know how to trust their staff (while still supervising, of course). The place in between... the supervisors got more money for simply being "decision-makers." They didn't fill in, provide support, take any personal risk, work more, etc. It all ran downhill...
I think the hardest thing to learn as a supervisor is that every employee needs to be supervised differently. Employees who are very similar to me are easy to supervise. After all, it's easy to trust them and I know how I like to be supervised. But every person has individual needs and you have to accept that not everyone does things the same way.
Trusting is hard, but the alternative makes being a supervisor too stressful.
I don't begrudge my supervisor's salary, whatever it is. She does a great job of insulating us from the cr@p, and I'd like to think that over the years she's learned she can trust me to do what should be done (or let her know what can't).
I've always worked for larger companies where there are multiple salary tracks, and that's been intentional. I prefer being a cog in the wheel than the person turning the wheel.
I'm middle management. Some days I'm a cog and turning the wheel, and some days I'm neither.
Heh. Just read this editorial in the Strib.
Short version: bad leaders make bad employees.
im half tempted to print out this lte string and leave it on my supervisor's desk. A year and a half ago they fired my boss and passed me over for promotion opting to hire someone from the outside to deal with a couple of problem colleagues. They threw me a largish raise and a consolation prize which actually ends up being golden handcuffs. The problem colleagues were just employees with bad habits produced by shitty management. A year and a half later my boss leaves early, comes in late, is quick to anger, has dropped the ball during major projects, has shared sexually explicit images / text messages, and has been allowed to do a dj gig every Thursday at 2pm. The dj gig was a real breaking point for me and my colleagues. He leaves at noon on thursdays and doesn't return to the office, and because he's on the air he can't be reached. The executive director gave her permission to do this as long as he came in early every day to make up for the time. I'm here most mornings before him, and now he's run himself out of pto with 5 months to go before he resets (my institution is very generous with leave, they provide 4 weeks paid vacation per year, and after 5 years of service they give you 5 weeks paid time off). My boss now wants the institution to make a special case for him to "earn" comp time even though he is an exempt employee. He's told us that it's unfair for him to have to come in early and not be compensated for his work supervising us (non-exempt) subordinates. He showed me his pay stub when he was first hired because he's an idiot, and I know for a fact that he clears a thousand more dollars a month than I do after deductions, and he has the nerve to complain about compensation. Through his bad example the bad colleagues have picked up worse habits, and he's successfully killed the spirit and work ethic of our best employee (not me.. though I'm a disgruntled employee now too...). Morale is lower than it's ever been, and he's been making noise about my performance. I have a documentation file on him, but that's not going to make this situation any more present.
I think you should print this string out, then ball it up in your fist and use it to punch that guy.
More seriously, though, eeh that sounds unpleasant. I've been lucky I've never had to deal with anything like that, which I suspect has somewhat to do with differences in out respective lines of work. I do know that low morale at work makes things really awful, so best of luck dealing with the situation.
Adventures in car repair: The fuel door latch actuator on my wife's car stopped working last week. I had to pry the thing open so now it won't stay closed. Seeing as the car is less than two years old, its still under the bumper-to-bumper warranty so I called the dealership in Madison we bought it at. They told me I had to order the part first before they could schedule an appointment (which is weird), so I looked up the part I know I need and called their parts department. Parts guy said no problem, we'll order that up, but said to have my wife bring it by so they could take a quick look and make sure they were ordering the right part, then transferred me back to service to schedule an appointment.
So after talking to the service guy, we were getting ready to schedule when he asked me what the estimate I got was. Told him it should be a warranty repair, so he said they couldn't do warranty repair if I got the part somewhere else. So I explained I was just on the phone with THEIR service department who was going to order the part. So he tells me they needed one of their technicians to look at it (which of course they couldn't do until next week) and they couldn't do warranty work with a part from someone else. I told him I know what is wrong and exactly what part is needed and that the part would be ORDERED BY THEIR PARTS DEPARTMENT, but he kept insisting they had to look at it first. So I told him I would just order the f*cking part and fix it myself. (Its a $50 friggin part, and would be easy to do. Only reason I want to take it in is because warranties exist for a reason.)
Ugh. I ended up calling the dealership in Janesville and they scheduled the repair for next week with no issue and no requirement I bring it in first even for a warranty issue.
And this is why I usually take my cars to a trusted local mechanic instead.
It's too bad everyone can't have a friendly neighbor who owns an auto shop...
Heh, I actually have two friendly neighbors who are mechanics (just the one who owns a shop, though). The one guy (who doesn't own a shop) has a two daughters my daughter plays with all the time and has been hanging out with my wife a lot lately while he goes through a divorce (which sounds really bad typing it out, but I know it ain't like that) and he was going to get the part for me and fix it but we both agreed it made more sense to go to a Kia dealership because warranty.
It's nice to drop off a key and a garage door opener the night before and have a car park in the garage the next afternoon with the bill on the dash.
I can't argue with that, and now that I have the ability to work from home it'd be a much more doable thing for me in the future. Of course, my preferred method is to spend a weekend wrenching on it myself until its back in shape. I don't know if I'll be able to do as much of that on my new car as I could on the previous, less technologically advanced car I had.
Park wants to play ball.
Not sure who the three yahoos are in the Toronto radio booth, but I'm entertained at least.
Eddie Rosario with the game-winning RBI in the 11th to put Puerto Rico into the finals. It came off of former Twins farmhand Loek van Mil of the Netherlands, which, of course, has pitching coach Bert Blyleven.
Just try and get a 7'1" pitcher not to leave a pitch up.
Jurickson Profar with a lack of
situationalawarenessI had a meeting last night and didn't get to watch; I was hoping the Netherlands would win. Talk about boneheaded. To be fair, the first base coach is also partially to blame; it's his job to maintain that awareness and keep the player's attention on the play.
While it is definitely a boneheaded play, let's also give credit to Molina and to the first baseman. A lot of catchers wouldn't even have looked over to see that, and a lot of first basemen wouldn't have been ready to take a throw.
Absolutely. That was very heads-up baseball, and it removed what might have been the winning run from the equation before Balentien's homer.
Yadi lives for those kinds of plays, but you bring up a good point: the first baseman has to also be ready for that, and it's especially impressive on a WBC team that hasn't been together all that long
I imagine that in his free time, Molina does nothing other than instill in the infielders that he could throw them the ball at any time, because people tend not to run on him and he needs other outlets to showcase his arm.