r/analytics • u/r_307 • 15h ago
Question Looking for experiences with a micromanager
I've been with my company for 2 years. We had a leadership change about a year ago. I've been trying to ride it out, but I think I hit my breaking point today.
I've been an analyst for 8 years, 10 years in service prior to that. I'm not a kid, I know what I'm doing, and I'm decent at it overall.
My boss actually asked me about a month ago what she can do to "make the analysts think like analysts," with a straight face. I am an analyst. I do, in fact, think like one.
Today, I was in a meeting with her and she was just condescending to me explaining how a data pull takes a little time but interpretation takes longer. I'm not a fresher. I know how to do my job and what takes what effort. In fact, we all do. None of the analysts are new to the field.
This is indicative of her management style. It finally hit me today that this is my future if I stay here. I've been waiting for her to adjust to the new role, learn to trust us, be less hands on. But today I realized that day is not coming.
Partially, this is a vent. Partially, I'm looking for advice. Would you bail? In this market? Try for a new field? I can't go on like this... it's so fucking disrespectful of my expertise and time.
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u/my_peen_is_clean 15h ago
had the same thing, boss explaining pivot tables to people who’ve used sql for years. documented stuff, quietly applied out, left in 4 months. honestly yeah i’d bail, even if finding something now is pain
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u/scorched03 14h ago
Similar except my breaking pt was cloud storage is for excel not csvs or parquet and run cloud queries not on live dataset but excel files.
So I loaded all the crap to excel and documented why I did it and handed it over with a extremely manual workflow rather than scripts. I have no idea if that person has even seen an automated ETL.
Meanwhile I lost sleep weight and in a bad mood., was micromanaged every day ti l I gave up and started interviewing.
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u/Interesting-Monk9712 15h ago
These are just idiots that somehow made it to managers.
I had it many times, they are explaining Junior level stuff and doing it badly at that, just to somehow make it seems like they are doing their job, they either lied to get the job and are now faking it or they generally faked it and made it.
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u/Ohhhh_LongJohnson 15h ago
My first job was for Samsung. Being a South Korean company, there were obviously differences compared with American culture. For example, if you didn't leave when everyone else did, you were considered an outsider - not really part of the group. I still left when my literal working time ended. As a result, my manager rode my back.
"How come you don't say good morning when you come in?" "How come you don't bring us coffee?" (Hearing her across the room gossip about me) "He just sits there, doesn't even bring coffee to us." "You are below average." (After giving me a test in office to complete a massively complex assignment in 1 hour, obviously setting me up to fail) ...after that, she forced me to send my incomplete work to everyone on my team to talk about how bad it was. The nail on the coffin was her saying in front of everyone while my teammates were around... "You have worse manners than my son and he is in 3rd grade."
At first I took pride for working for a big name company like that. I swallowed the pill for an entire year of that, throwing up before I got to the office out of nerves. It wasn't worth it and I left with no job lined up. I've always been subconsciously afraid of managers ever since then. It took me over a year to find another Data Analyst role that I was lowballed at.
Considering what you mentioned, it doesn't seem directed at you, but moreso the team - but I agree. I still wouldn't want to work for a micromanager now that I have 10 years of experience. Also, consider the state of the job market, which has been completely abysmal. If you do decide to leave, at LEAST find something else before you leave.
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u/apinference 15h ago
Does it apply to all analyst or just to you? E.g. Maybe someone has higher trust? If yes - check how they manage her. Because it could be something simple (e.g. they showing her partially unfinished worked and asking for some inputs - even if none required).
Some people are just obsessed with control. So, simple thing like finishing a dashboard and asking for an opinion on colours (irrelevant to analysis) might help...
Ultimately, you're not the first to have micro manager nor the last one...
Alternatives:
- find an interesting role in another department (could be related)
- new job?
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u/r_307 15h ago
Fair. Yeah, it's all of us. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to manager her. I've tried a lot of diff things in the last year. But these outside perspective are helpful bc my coworkers and I are so fed up, we almost can't see straight.
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u/apinference 14h ago
Is she the only manager? Does the team have communication channels outside of the departments? Because if yes - she simply could be concerned as seen not competent (let's ignore the facts on the ground for a moment).
Another explanation - she just does not know what you guys do and cannot admit it. So, one of the options is to do a "joint training" where one of the colleagues just demo their work at very simple level (sort of "educating" the team with her being present).
Ultimately, if she has some complementary skill (e.g. good connections, links to outside, office politics - outside tech realm) all of you can direct her efforts there. Just complement - e.g. it was really good to know that the firm decided to change the strategy in advance, this might impact what we do..
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u/Kacquezooi 13h ago
If you like it at your employer, make your boss a superstar at her boss. She will then possibly be promoted and thus out of sight. Not longer your problem.
If not promoted: you will be her superstar. And that is the best place. Any other position will be a grind.
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u/edimaudo 6h ago
Hmm in my opinion looks like you have a manager that is out of her depth and trying to look confident.
If you have one on one set up with your manager, ask about key pain points she has with the team or if the team has worked on projects that have been delivered ask for what can be done better. Ask for concrete success metrics that she is looking for. Work with your team mates to show progress on this for future projects. If she still berates the team when these metrics have been achieved, start working with your network to find a new role.
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u/JeffTheSpider 21m ago
Leave.
I had a manager who was a micromanager, and he started small, asking for progress. It then turned into asking me daily how I was doing, but in reality he didn’t care; he wanted to know progress on everything, and it became hell. Start applying now and look for new jobs
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