An important factor that determines how long people stay at their jobs is the relationship they have with their boss. When that relationship is healthy, the sky’s the limit; but when it’s not, productivity and morale are at risk.
In honor of National Boss’s Day on Oct. 16, Comparably asked users to reveal which quality they find to be the worst in a boss. The data comes from more than 5,000 employees from small, midsize, and large public and private U.S. technology companies. Full methodology below.
‘Micromanager’ was the No. 1 response overall
Thirty-eight percent of respondents said being a micromanager was the worst offense, making it the most popular response. The next most-popular response was “overly critical” (21%). The least popular responses were “disorganized” (16%), “know-it-all” (14%) and “impatient” (11%).
To women, being overly critical is almost as bad as being a micromanager
While male and female respondents both chose “micromanager” as their top response (42% vs. 34%, respectively), the percentage of women who chose “overly critical” was also relatively high at 26%. Men, on the other hand, ranked “overly critical” (17%) almost as equally as they ranked “disorganized” (16%) and “know-it-all” (15%).
No difference by ethnicity
When looking at the results by ethnicity, there were no significant differences – every group ranked “micromanager” as the worst quality, and “impatient” as the least offensive quality.
Gen Z is the only age group to rank ‘overly critical’ bosses as the worst kind
When looking at the results by age, those 18 to 25 were the only group to choose “overly critical” (25% of the vote) over “micromanager” (22%). They also ranked bosses who are disorganized as equally bad as those who are micromanagers, and said that having a “know-it-all boss” was slightly less bad than having an impatient boss.
Every other age group ranked “micromanager” as the worst quality in a boss and “impatient” as the least.
Entry-level employees are particularly against ‘overly critical’ bosses
Workers at every experience level chose “micromanager” more than any other response, except for entry-level workers, who were more put off by an overly critical boss than any other. (Twenty-five percent of entry-level respondents chose “overly critical”).
Workers in the 1 to 3 year experience level were slightly more likely to be frustrated with an impatient boss (14%) than with a know-it-all boss (12%).
Tech designers were split between ‘micromanager’ and ‘overly critical’
Twenty-eight percent of respondents who work in design at tech companies chose “micromanager” while another 27% chose “overly critical.” This was the only job role where ‘micromanager’ wasn’t decidedly the top response. Designers also ranked “know-it-all” bosses as slightly less offensive than impatient bosses (12% vs. 14%).
People in business development ranked “disorganized” bosses the least offensive type of boss (13%).
Methodology
- — Number of respondents: 5,174
- — Respondents hail from small, mid-size, and large technology companies (VC-funded, privately-held, and public), including household brands such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, etc.
- — Responses were collected between February 2018 and October 2018. Results are as of Oct. 9, 2018.
- — Question was in multiple choice format.
About Comparably
Comparably is a workplace culture and compensation monitoring site where employees can anonymously and publicly rate their companies and CEOs, access salary data, and find their dream jobs. The comprehensive platform gives job seekers a more accurate picture of what it’s like to work inside an organization since the data is structured and segmented by gender, ethnicity, age, location, tenure, company size, title/department, and education. Since its 2016 launch, Comparably has accumulated more than 5 million ratings from employees across 45,000 U.S. businesses, and has become one of the most used SaaS solutions for employer branding. For more information, go to Comparably.com. For workplace culture and salary studies, including Comparably’s annual Best Places to Work and Best CEOs awards, go to Comparably.com/blog.s
