Are Your Engineer and You Incompatible?

If the boss has problems with a more introverted or extroverted employee because of the difference, his boss needs to take him in hand. Of course, I am an introverted engineer, so normally do not notice what other people are. Production and RDE engineers are mostly strong introverts. sales engineers are mostly extroverts. Engineer bosses normally cluster towards the center. Most extremely extroverted engineers move out of engineering.

My boss insists that we all have a party mentality, while still getting the job done (according to her definition of party mentality, as judged by MY definition of her behavour. See the pattern here?).

I don't like to eat with a crowd of people, so bag my lunch, and eat in my office, or take a solitary walk outside, and sit under a tree to eat my lunch. I chose to work through my lunch one day on a job that involved being alone, because it was a one man job. She had called a "brown-bag" meeting, which, in our offices, has always meant "lunch with the boss" and entirely voluntary. I got chewed out royally for "insulting her" by not being there for her "brown bag" meeting, which she called during MY lunch break (which is supposed to be MY discretionary time, since by law, I earned it). Now I have to attend one of her "socials" each month, and pretend to enjoy her company.

I'm retiring within 5 years. I never cared much about that, before. But I'm starting to see that my looking forward to retirement (and that of many like me) is a loss on her part. I can only hope SOMEONE in management recognizes that. But I don't expect it.

OK now...enough. Why are we so caught up with how people feel. Everyone needs to remember that it's work. This isn't some social program, we have enough of that in DC. If the "Boss" doesn't like me so what, as along as I get "paid" I"ll be fine. The same should apply for the employee.

I do believe that everyone needs to be professional and respect given to your fellow coworkers, but out side of that... Remember the old saying, Don't @$#% where you eat (work), I truly believe that is as true today as it ever was. I don't believe anyone should define themselves buy what they do. I would rather be the good Dad or Husband and so on. I have plenty of friends and I don't work with any of them.

I leave the Job at the Job, this too is a skill...which works for me!

I don't know where you work but it almost doesn't sound like engineering. Places these days are brutally competitive and if you don't put in at least 45 - 50, you are toast.

Also, if the boss doesn't like you, you are going to get the crap jobs, stuff which neither helps your resume nor you really even like doing. That makes it more likely that you will do a mediocre job and suffer in the peer ratings and then your name is at the top of the list when the RIF comes.

Why would you put your fate in someone else's hands. I had a boss once (owner of the business) tell me how much responsibility he had supporting all the employees and there families. My come back was simple, he isn't supporting me, is paying me for my talent and services. I told him that the responsibility of my welfare and my family's was mine and mine only. The minute I'm not being paid what I'm worth or he feels the need to find someone better then me to do the job, thats fine...

It seems to me that you should take some stock in your talents and have some confidence. Theres a hole world out there...if your great at what you do, you will be paid. If your an every day kind of person, your going to get every day pay. Take some risks, be willing to move, shop your self around.

There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune.

Jean Paul Getty

Just do what you need to do...

Ever have an "in your face" boss? That can be real intimidating even for an extroverted engineer.

I had one in your face boss. He was about 6 inches taller and about 50 pounds heavier ( none of it fat) After watching him confront one of my coworkers, I told him that if he ever treated me the same way, I would attack and then run as fast as I could. He started a few times then backed off to a reasonable distance. I always thought it was because he didn't want to kill me.

It wasn't a boss, but I had a neighbor once who liked to grab people and hold edged tools to their throats, when he was angry (often, usually because his 8 year old daughter set the neighbor kids and their parents up for him. Very manipulative little girl, very responsive father. Any lie she told would set him off, because he believed everything his little demon dark Angel told him).

I met him outside his housing unit one day, as he was heading for mine, and I was carrying a 5-iron over my shoulder. I told him that I knew he could kill me, but that I would break the steel shaft of the iron on his neck, after I split his skull with it, and I would stab him to death with the broken shaft if I survived that long. Then I asked him if wanted to die to avenge his little girl's lies.

He backed down. He never cursed me or my wife or daughter again. He never threatened anyone in my family. In fact, he lived there another 7-8 months while we were there, and then left the country (Japan. He was a contractor. I was US Navy) without ever saying a word to any of us again.

I hate confrontation, but sometimes a big man (or woman, or child) confronts because he/she has learned that size will win with nearly everyone. The one with whom it doesn't win (they never do get it that my response was born of sheer, abject terror, but driven by an intense desire to live without further fear. I do badly at living by watching my back.) puzzles and bewilders them so that they don't know what to do, and subsequently back off and do nothing. Surprisingly, if you take the time to be neutral (not cold, not angry, not defensive) around them in the future, often they will become very good friends. Probably because their first attack seems to be borne of a "everyone always attacks me, so I'll attack back first" viewpoint, which seems, by starting out hostile, to reinforce the root cause of "everyone is against me", no one prior to you will have ever a)stood up to them, and then b) treated them in a human fashion.

I address all that, and I KNOW it sounds like psychobabble (I babble a lot, I'm told, but I KNOW I'm not psycho, so no worries there, anyway!), but it seems to be a working way to do business, even with an overbearing boss, such as you describe. That he backed off is the key. And overweeningly arrogant boss who considers it his RIGHT to browbeat everyone, you would have had to literally break him down physically to convince him that YOU (and he would probably then accept no one else in the workplace as "under your umbrella", unless you could convince him that you'd go to the mat for them, also) are more than he wants to chew off. Then, most times, he will work behind the scenes to shed himself of you, by any means possible, for the remainder of your time in his presence.

Sometimes, the trick is to figure out what drives him/her, and then apply the opposite driver, coldly, dispassionately, and fiercely. But never try to bluff that kind of interaction. You will lose, and possibly more than just your job. If you know what you need to do, plan ahead, start it with every intent to finish it, and be careful of the results.

I was not bluffing, I was saying exactly what I would do.

And he undoubtedly thought so, also. It worked! I didn't think you were bluffing. That was more an exhortation to the general readership. You already seemed to have got that point down pat.

I happen to be in management and lean on the side of extrovert (that comes from years of working with the public in a previous life). However, everyone that you work with needs to be seen as the individual that they are with unique characteristics. Each personality must be respected and no one should force theirs upon someone else.

Let's change the verbiage used in the question from "deal with" to "relate to" as it is much less confrontational. I think that as either the manager or team member (aka associate) everyone should interact at a level that is comfortable for both parties. I know that I can be more gregarious with some people that I work with than others. Respect for the individual creates a much more harmonious work environment (and people who are happy work better).

Also we have on occasion had to hold lunch time meetings but when they are necessary we always provide the lunch to soften the blow.

I think there is more to be learned by looking at characteristics commonly associated with extroversion or introversion. An engineer has to deal with machines, which do not respond to emotiions, while a manager deals with people, who are seldom purely logical. The manager has to constantly make guesses and corrections, while the engineer can hone in on perfect repeatability. As such, he expects his results to be self-evident, but the manager may be stuck on his style of presentation.

I used to be puzzled and frustrated that the best engineers seldom attract the best promoters as partners, until I realized that a salesman will turn down a million bucks to avoid any chance of his peers saying "Well, ANYONE could sell THAT!"

I won a world-wide design competition with a first prototype on a very low budget, and had potential customers working hard to track me down, but no business talent noticed.

Another characteristic I've noticed is that Engineers (being problem solvers) seem to do well at organizing chaos into a working process (an application of your "hone in on perfect repeatability"), while most "managers", who tend to even see people as useful tools (assets, when they are being polite), tend to not want anything to do with chaotic conditions, and want to imposed their own personal "this is how WE do it (cause I said so)" stamp on things as soon as they come aboard.

I worked for one of those ones, after my teammates and I developed a process and a process-environment, in which 5 of us managed three to five upgrades of software and OSes per year on 1700 UNIX systems operating clear across the USA (we felt justifiably proud that 5 of us could manage all of that, without any other support than the development lab, and we were able to keep comprehensive records on every machine we worked). The new boss came in and DESTROYED everything we had working, by implementing his own (and I swear they were asinine, though he thought they made perfect sense) processes.

I didn't understand why we disconnected so badly till one day we were telling him how we had enjoyed building this process, and now we were leaving to go find somewhere else in the company where that kind of skill was appreciated. His response was incredulity. His question set the whole tone, and explained a lot. He asked us "Do you mean to tell me that you CHOSE to be here at the beginning, when it was all in chaos on this project? And why would you leave now when its just now becoming a fixed, smooth operation?" When we told him we were bored and wanted to do something more interesting, he nearly fell out of his chair.

Total disconnect because we didn't think alike, and neither of us was aware of that fact, nor of what the difference would turn out to be. He liked his programs stable and predictable, and we thrived on solving problems.

Engineers and managers are two different animals; different education, different mindset, different priorities. Too bad we can't all be like Kelly Johnson of the Skunk Works.