I have the same experience. Multiple companies with a crazy manager that bullied and insulted employees. The bosses never do anything because the manager is always right.

At my last job I was the only developer who knew bash and Linux. I handled everything until a new CTO came and destroyed the servers with his lack of technical knowledge.

I was critically useful to the company until I broke down due to the daily harassment. I became valued the instant I gave my two weeks notice, but I still told them to go to hell.

> At my last job I was the only developer who knew bash and Linux.

Where or how so you find such jobs/companies? Whenever I interview for non faang companies I’ve been asked things like the cap theorem, concurrency issues, microservice patterns, ddd, and of course on top of that the live coding and systems design interviews.

For once, I’d like to join a company in which I seem to bring something only I know.

Those are mostly incompetent companies. You might be the only one who knows something critical, but it’s not as fun as it seems.

Sounds like you want systems programming? Some areas to look in could be open source companies and embedded software.

They still did not value you in the end. That was just manipulation to get you to stay.

>Don't put stock in business relationships.

If this is your mentality, is it any wonder you aren't valued?

People post things like this and I'm not sure they have any emotional intelligence whatsoever. Sure, your work/job doesn't have to be your entire life. But what about a little pride in what you're doing? Working with smart people towards a goal to do something useful?

If your mentality is "just show up for work, do what they ask and go home" then it should be no surprise you're at the top of the list to get laid off. I wouldn't want to work with a person who "puts no stock in business relationships".

> If your mentality is "just show up for work, do what they ask and go home" then it should be no surprise you're at the top of the list to get laid off.

Conversely, if you think that devoting yourself to work will put you at the bottom of the list to get laid off, you are in for a big surprise eventually.

Huh, eventually everyone living is gonna die.

But more likely people who do bare minimum at work and always wait for someone else to ask else they just leave for home are first one to go. And it is happening to "minimal interest in work" folks in my team as I type this.

It is not even about having them do work beyond normal hours. But just checking in normal hours if something need be done while they have spare cycle.

I guess it is all fine, employee made their choice and management theirs.

Consider that your point and the parent are opposite ends of a continuum and that healthy relationships lie somewhere in the middle.

Any transaction becomes increasingly zero-sum as you get to either end of the value proposition difference between the two parties. The non-zero area is in the middle.

You made some assumptions. Don't put stock doesn't mean don't be nice, make friends, be helpful, work hard etc. It mean don't be naive. It means also invest in stocks, skills, other income streams, networking etc.

Has it ever occurred to you that you have it backwards?

He has this mentality because he has never been valued, not the other way around.

Certainly there’s a feedback loop, impossible to say which came first

I've heard what you're describing phrase as follows:

"If you want to know who truly values you, look for the people who would not be able to replace you with someone else."

That usually has us pointing to friends and family, with the odd exception.

I'm not sure this is a reliable guide. I'm in academia, and the people who really can't be replaced are the administrative staff with hard-won institutional knowledge and connections--but they're valued far less than splashy big-name faculty with no institutional loyalty.

Why would administrative staff ever be valued over the people providing the core purpose of the institution?

Perform an experiment.

Ask them all to take a month off and see which has greater impact and over which timescales.

Usefulness and value have different dimensions that can be orthogonal or even in opposition to one another. Many of us have worked in the presence of brilliant assholes and had to ponder that question.

I agree. It sounds like lack of documented processes and leadership oversight have made that corner of the organization a kind of personal fiefdom of the administrative staff.

> I agree. It sounds like lack of documented processes and leadership oversight have made that corner of the organization a kind of personal fiefdom of the administrative staff.

There are lots of problems with the way universities are set up, but, from the point of view of a faculty member and, I suspect, also that of a student, "more leadership oversight" would solve none of them. (Unless it was accompanied by a change of university leadership from those who think of a university primarily as a business, to those who think of a university primarily as a university. I have only spent a long time at one university, so it is possible that this problem is peculiar to my university, but my impression from talking to my colleagues is that it is not.)

Yet the admin staff is the first to get fired and treated badly any time something changes.

While faculty basically no matter how useless can never be fired.

"can't be replaced" has two opposing meanings in your post.

They can’t be fired, but if they stop bringing in grants, they can face steep pay cuts and lab closure.

> They can’t be fired, but if they stop bringing in grants, they can face steep pay cuts and lab closure.

This describes the situation of tenured faculty (who are definitely who I had in mind when I referred to splashy big names), but universities have long been moving to a model with as few tenured or tenurable faculty as possible, where some instructors are full time but non-tenure-track, and others are part time (and so, for example, don't have to be paid benefits). At my university these are called lecturers and adjuncts, but other names exist. Both jobs involve renewable contracts (of different lengths), so they need not even be fired, just not have their contracts renewed.

Administrative staff should be the least valuable in academia.

The only way to have a pleasant relationship with a corporation is to approach it with as much apathy is they do.

thats what they want too

if you bring even a tiny bit of your spunk, enthusiasm and passion to work you;d be labeled a problem immediately.

They want apathetic mindless drones.

Which is the correct approach for enterprises with tons of employees. Humans are never happy once they reach groups of certain sizes. Can only handle projects with certain sizes with apathy. Initiative may be looked for in smaller environments.

Ah the joys of the MonkeySphere.

This is key. Such nuances and changes can be seen as a real negative behaviour by some when of course they are not.

If you're called by your family you are better off than the majority of humans.

If you ever own a company, you'll find this concept flipped upside down.