Suggestions for dealing with an old-school boss

aircooled said:

Seems like a fax machine might be useful, if you can still find them.

Ah!  The once-ubiquitous fax machine!  Who didn't love that technology?  Hearing the line ring and getting that magical bit of curly thermal paper with words and even B & W images on it that we took straight to the copier so it wasn't curly.  And who can forget the feeling of "movin' on up" and the sophistication of your first plain-paper fax machine?  Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end!

Fortunately, fax modems are still a thing, though they've gone USB:

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-56K-USB-Dial-up-Modem/dp/B01MYLE06I

GameboyRMH said:

As a (former?) IT guy it hurts that a person with such outdated skills gets to have a job in 2024.

 

The guy that can't find a job has an issue with the guy that's had a 40 year job.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Ever tape 4 pieces of black construction paper in a loop and fax it to a competing office after hours?

GIRTHQUAKE said:

We could push the out of office work as him making those personal and direct connections.

 

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Knock it back Steve; there's a LOT of issues going on in tech right now.

You need to read his other threads, it's not a "tech" issue.

Steve_Jones said:

GIRTHQUAKE said:

We could push the out of office work as him making those personal and direct connections.

 

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Knock it back Steve; there's a LOT of issues going on in tech right now.

You need to read his other threads, it's not a "tech" issue.

Regardless, thats not how we do E36 M3 on this forum.

Also, its berkeleyin christmas.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

There are a lot of older people on this board, and in this thread. Calling them dinosaurs and saying they shouldn't even have a job is cool though right?

Christmas or not, hypocrisy is not a good look.

Dude...

In reply to Steve_Jones :

I already explained why I said that, so you can't put those words in my mouth. It's not that he's old or that he doesn't have IT skills, it's that his skills for his own profession are horrendously out of date. Skills outdated to such a level would tend to cause job loss in most any profession but none more so than IT.

RevRico said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Ever tape 4 pieces of black construction paper in a loop and fax it to a competing office after hours?

No, but when we had $100 combo printer/fax/scanners in our home sales offices I'd fax a coworker a black piece of construction paper - made him really mad.....

Would you two just get a room and berkeley already? 

Let me rephrase.

A member of the mod team is saying: "This feels like it is against Margie's rules for a good party."

If there is an issue with something being said, everyone is free to start a conversation with a mod.  But we won't start slinging mud.

I'm not locking this cause of what happened last time, but I'm keeping an eye on it 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

In reply to Steve_Jones :

I already explained why I said that, so you can't put those words in my mouth. It's not that he's old or that he doesn't have IT skills, it's that his skills for his own profession are horrendously out of date. Skills outdated to such a level would tend to cause job loss in most any profession but none more so than IT.
 

Do we even know what his job is? I think we inferred sales, but that in itself could be a lot of different things. Results are what is important in many jobs, not the latest skills. If he is able to get good results, why would they fire him? The tough part of IT is that if you don't keep up with the latest skills, it's difficult to provide good results. That's not the case with a lot of professions, where they can just do what they know well and let someone else specialize in the new stuff. 

RevRico said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Ever tape 4 pieces of black construction paper in a loop and fax it to a competing office after hours?

I wish I had thought to do that for some people 

RevRico said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Ever tape 4 pieces of black construction paper in a loop and fax it to a competing office after hours?

We drew a Sharpie line on 3 feet of fax paper, looped it, and sent it to our satellite office once.

We also faxed them donuts on the first Friday of every month.

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

I debated replying to this, because my message isn't going to be positive.  Take it with a grain of salt.  Here goes;

Either find a new job, get moved to a different area so you have a different boss, or just get used to it because he's not changing.  I've never had a boss that was really eager to keep changing what they accepted.  They might not sing their songs as loudly but they'll never forget the words.

Good luck with this one.

I don't see that as negative at all, in fact, its right on the nose. The new boss has no reason to change, he is successful, secure in his job, the owner loves him, and the COO couldn't care less. Plus, he's the one in charge, not me. I have no hope of changing him or moving to another role, so my options are adjust or find a new job. I am looking at what else is out there, maybe a great new opportunity comes my way. Until that happens however, myself and a few other people who are affected by, this are strategizing on how to deal with the situation. 

Here's an example, he wanted to make a 2-page flyer about a product. I skipped over asking why we needed a printed flyer when we have zero people in the field, the reason to do it is that he wants it. Normally, I have a process to outline and plan the document, determine target audience, voice, message, etc etc, then review/approve the copy, then review/approve designs.  But I skipped all of that because it is 100% digital. Instead, I created the flyer and printed the final version for him to review. He had plenty of revisions since there was no input up front and I had no idea what he wanted, but I took the redlined paper copies and redid everything a few times until he was happy. It was wasteful, but it made him happy. He could see the finished product first, then make changes until it was what  wanted. It does not align with any overall company campaigns or objectives, but its what he wanted. It does not align with any modern design or readability research or best practices, but he likes it.  UGH. 

 

In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :

I'm curious, who are you selling to? Old guys? Young guys? Women? 

I'm an older guy. As a general rule, I don't read most modern advertising or flyers. It goes straight to the round file if it's mailed. It goes straight to spam if it's an email. Modern advertising doesn't give me enough information. It gives a taste and then wants me to email, click, sign up, watch a video, or whatever to find out more. They give a flashy picture, a few words, and a web address or email contact. Almost 100 percent of the time, I delete them.  I don't have time to wade through some website or some video to find out if what a person is selling will do what I want. 

But mail me a flyer with all the information, one to two pages max, telling me what an item does, what the specs are, and what the options are I will at least peruse it. I had an older sales guy drop off a well-done flyer for a new product a month ago. After reading it, I asked him to send me one so I could test it in a real-world application. He did. I did. I just opened an account with his company and bought 10 of them. Next year I'll probably buy another 100. Call it $25k. All over a flyer that gave me maximum information in a minimum amount of time without requiring a sign-up or web search. 

Maybe the old guy knows his market.

GameboyRMH said:

In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :

Again I could contrast that to one company I worked for, where whenever some SEO snake oil salesman's spambot chucked an email with a bunch of boilerplate claims about problems with our website at us, I had to write a point-by-point rebuttal to explain why it was nonsense. Every time.

Again it's hard to see how he has a job. Why does the owner love him? Is he actually doing something right that is productive enough to offset all his waste and inefficiency and disuse of technology, or is it based on some misconception or misattribution? Maybe he runs a department where all the people under him manage to keep him from running it into the ground and make it succeed despite his best efforts? That's a common issue with top management or owners of small/medium companies but usually not a long-running issue with middle managers.

You are making a lot of assumptions based on what? His age? The fact that he does stuff different than you? You assume he is doing "just enough to offset his (perceived) waste of time, or that others are covering for him. Maybe the owner loves him because he makes him money?

It's not hard for me to see "how he has a job" because technology does not solve all.

I have an old school guy on payroll, I don't "mistakenly believe he makes me money", I know he does. You would look at him and make the same assumptions you do here because he is 70 years old. 

He brought in $2.6M last year and can barely use an iphone for anything other than phone calls. Time to fire him right? After all, he must not be producing the numbers someone else using tech could.....

You have many opinions on how business "should" work without the knowledge of how they actually do work., and I will leave it at that.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

You have said many times in this thread that the guy discussed here shouldn't have a job.  That was based on what exactly? Look 2 posts up, "highly improbable" 2 times, and that the owner "mistakenly believes".

What were those based on if that is "not what you are doing here"? 

This is the meme thread, yes?

In reply to Steve_Jones :

In the rubber hose world in 1995 we retired a guy on a Friday at age 75.  He was 50 years selling hose, belting, rubber and gaskets.  WWII guy that was tough as nails.  

Few knew but he showed up the next Monday as a freelance, non-employee salesman with a group of pet accounts and he got zero benefits and double commission's.  

He was pulling in $10,000/month and working when he wanted.  The company didn't care cause he brought in high profit margins and customers loved him.  

Old guys rule!