March 2009
Beginner
512 pages
18h 28m
English
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Chapter 24. Bad Boss
IT WAS THE MID-1990S. FLANNEL WAS IN STYLE, THE THEME FROM FRIENDS WAS A BILLBOARD HIT, and I was working as a programmer at a small suit-and-tie financial company on Wall Street. I joined as a junior programmer, and by this time I'd worked my way up to senior developer. I'd gained a reputation for being able to get big jobs done quickly. I also had a reputation for speaking my mind, even when it wasn't always the most tactful time to be running my mouth. My boss, Peter, once referred to me as a "loose cannon that he learned to point in the right direction." I had no problem with that.
The dot-com boom hadn't quite hit New York yet, and the company where I worked was somewhat traditional and a little stuffy. It was the sort of company where the title "manager" carried a lot of baggage. Only capital-M Managers got offices, and when someone was promoted to Manager it was a big deal. There was a lot of competition for one of those prized Manager slots. The company had a culture where people went out of their way to be more than a little obsequious to the boss, and there was a bit of a cult of personality around the CEO. I'd heard of someone who had been fired after his first day for referring to the CEO as "the old man" to a coworker, who promptly reported the gaffe to her boss.
I didn't mind. Despite the suits and ties and stuffiness, I felt that I'd really carved out a nice niche for myself. I got to work with a lot of new technology, and I was ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.