The right kind of Boss is hard to find
I had the privilege of having such bosses several times. The first fell in disgrace as the holy pope of manglement wanted an overtime sacrifice at all costs and our team leader refused. But we HAD to make overtime, the machine had a fixed delivery date, the customer was already enraged by our "communications" which were - lets say - "reality incompatible"... Long story short, manglement wanted alibi overtime, team leader explained that you cannot program and test segmented profibus without the dp/dp couplers and the terminal resistors which at that time had yet to be delivered (ordered too late, once in a while not even Siemens is to blame).
Management was so enraged by his firm stand against useless hours that he got transferred to a different team in a totally different field, then made redundant with another transfer to a fictitional post that was then cut.
Profibus again, this time with safety modules (PLC I/O hardware in PITA mode). Team leader, programmer and engineer in one person, fired by manglement because he refused to exchange safety hardware against cheaper components, again a case of ordered too late but this time with an additional flavour of incompatible hardware due to manglement infections with marketing mould. Too bad a safety I/O module that already does his own short circuit detection sees an issue in a safety sensor that ALSO does his own version of a short circuit detection. The original sensors chosen by our engineer would not have interfered but those chosen by management, probably out of the "best buddy ever" line of products, simply were not compatible at all.
Replacing the I/O modules is definitely not an option if you have to deliver performance level d+.
Words lead to shout which lead to firing the engineer and team leader in the last month before delivery and also prohibiting him from entering the company in the mandatory 4 weeks termination period. Up to the last second, he stood his ground and made sure that whatever axe management wanted to grind, whatever example they wanted to make, it would be his head on the proverbial platter. What fun it was for our literally beheaded team to try to understand the whole machine in a limited amount of time while also trying to finish it and wrestle in last minute wishes from the customer.
Currently i have a boss who actively refuses to ever make a decision. No worries here, tools like that can be "handled", praise regular readings in the church of BOFH. As long as you make and keep thorough documentation of what was decided or at least ordered when by whom...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
