How do I handle my anger towards management

This post does not answer your question but maybe will make you manage your expectations differently in the future.

When it comes to work, no company has your best interests in minds unless they align with theirs.

Never believe promises of future improvement. Whether that is a promotion, relocation you want or don't want and they don't want or want you to, change to a more interesting position, anything.

If you believe the "maybe one day", they'll milk you as long as they can until you decide they're not doing anything about it. It's not profitable.

It's not profitable to keep employees happy. It's easier to keep them for as long as they can as cheap as they can and replace them when needed. The time it takes a manager to allocate you to another project or location is better spent recruiting 3 new people for said location.

You should not be loyal to any company. It's a transaction. They pay you for your time. Don't give them time they are not paying for. Don't be loyal. If a company wants to fire you, they won't hesitate. Be friend with coworkers if you want, person to person. Not to the company.

HR is there to protect the company, not you.

Exceptions are rare. And probably all of said exceptions are in small companies, and with someone above you who cares about you and has some decision power. But it's rare.

Just keep in mind: no matter how good a company is, when they want to fire you, they won't hesitate. Even if you just lost your marriage, house, and a relative perished the day before. That's not their problem.

So, when things are always behind schedule and asking overtime is the norm: "Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part". You pay with your time.

I'm sorry for the grim point of view.

I mean, it's been 3 years since I left the last place and I still hate the dogshit out of the CEO and regularly imagine how good it will feel when I get the news he died. Imo it's pretty normal to hate people who ruin our lives for no goddamn reason

I think you're handling it fine. Sometimes ranting and ravimg is absolutely necessary and you just need to be pissed off for a while.

Don't let your anger fester, and don't let yourself get quietly replaced. Start unionizing. If you don't know where to start, take the free Organizer Training course by CODE-CWA. I personally pushed out 2 high level asshole managers during my campaign

You need to already be in the job market - if they’re looking at replacing you, you need to be looking at replacing them. And if you find a job where your partner’s dream job is, you just leave.

I’ve probably made a straw man out of him. He probably has a family and interests.

Trying to empathize will probably make it worse because it will never be reciprocated and that hurts. I bet it would be easier to deal with if you accept that he is your adversary and you don't owe him anything.

I don’t want to go back out into the job market.

At least it will mean you will never have to interact with this particular person again. I think it's ok to hate someone, just channel that into removing their ability to make decisions that affect you.

But I am disconcerted by the level of visceral hatred I feel towards this VP. [...] I’ve probably made a straw man out of him. He probably has a family and interests. I don’t like how I feel this way. I’ve never felt this way.

The VP doesn't think about you at all. Don't waste your time and effort hating them.

Unfortunately you will meet many more like this person. They are not special or unique, they are a dime a dozen and yes, it is a skill in learning how to work with them. Amazon does make more than their fair share of these people, and it's because it is a ruthless environment there, where if you want to do anything like get a promotion or raise you have to be visceral. At Amazon, yelling and tearing people down is a normal.

Luckily most I see who leave do not want to continue on like that, but it is clear when Amazon has left it's mark on someone. That being said, that's their problem, you have to learn how to work with them.

I see many in this thread addressing what should happen at a societal/company level, but that is all irrelevant when it's you and your career. For that, you have to act personally and decide how to move forward. That stuff is all well and good but we're talking about your personal career trajectory.

A few notes, I don't know what you're like at all so these aren't personal towards you, but rather my own personal findings when working with leadership who I may be at odds with.

• Use hard facts and figures
  • Hedging, using phrases like "I think" or "I believe" are drilled into them as saying you don't know what you are talking about. Learn to be confident in what you are saying, or if you are not be confident in not knowing. Switch to concrete "It is" and "I do not know, but I'll find out (by X time).
  • NEVER lie. They are literally trained to pick up on lies, and they WILL find out. They have techniques on how to figure out how much of a problem you actually know.
• Do not include emotion/personal feelings.
  • Best left at home or for a venting session later. Emotion will fall on deaf ears, and will be seen as you being unable to handle yourself. It's harsh, yes, but be stoic. Ex amazon people have screamed in my face, be ready for encounters like that and stay neutral, using language above.
• Keep personal thoughts about them out of the room.
  • They know you dislike them. Don't let it come through in the meeting. Prove your worth with your work. Their vapid buzzwords and metrics are how they will discern your ability to do your job. It's their game, and you can either learn it, or be shown the door.

Just a few. I'll add more if I think of any. On the side, yes they are hard to work with, but take it as a skill to learn how to work with them. You'll only see more through your career.

As for your job, you can try again but I would be doubtful that they're going to approve it if your company has hard rules about location. You may not want to, but you also need to address the fact that they more than likely will not let you move. Is your want to move larger than your want to not switch jobs? Your VP and your company are not going to look out for what your life needs, that's your responsibility. If you need to move, you're going to need to make that happen, even if it means leaving.

Companies. Give. No. Fucks. About. You.

This is a good lesson for you. Remember it in future.

Do not get angry at them. Show them the complete and utter lack of care that they show you.

They are not worthy of your energy, so do not waste it on them. Do your job - adequitely - and move on.

You now have free time. Get written recommendations and swap contacts with your superiors and coworkers.

Respectfully make certain that each and every one of them hears that they cannot expect to remain with the company when they move to another area with a separate campus.

Wish I had some advice for you, I absolutely hate the buzz wordy morons that I work with, i feel your pain. I'll leave you with this amusing superhero comic action item man.

Right now I'm working 100% remotely for my company, but considering moving to another state so I can be with my long-distance girlfriend. I was thinking about asking if it was OK but... Now I think I'm just gonna go and if they randomly decide I need to be in the office someday is when I'll tell them the great news lol

...and by that I'll say "yeah, I'll be there in a day to straighten this whole thing out, I'm delayed because of Insert lie here!" And then fly in like a loser because this job is the only thing keeping my head above water right now

Management people like that do deserve your ire. They’re shit people who make it hard for everyone else because they have an extreme authoritarian view of running the corpo and will do what they want at the expense of rationality.

It’s extra stupid because if someone they need (very specific need for a pet project basically) or someone they know personally comes along - that person would get all accommodations in a heart beat.

But your team means nothing, the project means nothing (unless it is the pet project of the dipshit who gets to make the decision). They’re a shit person and you can’t change that and it sucks.

Sorry the inflexibility of dipshit management is hurting you. It happens and it’s their fault, they will cause damage to the corpo, but they’re also probably too weak to tank the whole thing. Just a callous inefficiency. And you can hate them, they deserve it. It’s so easy to see a way towards a solution - but if bozo thinks bozo can get away with burning you to preserve some ephemeral corporate mandate for “in person”, bozo will burn you. The corpo mandate may disappear in a few years, but all that dipshit can do is think short term. And it sucks for you, it suck’s for your coworkers, and again, I’m sorry.

Be stronk, your labor is your power. You’ll have to leave with your power, and that sucks ass. But your partner will be happy, and that may be worth it to you - especially if this corpo has bozos like that in high places, you’d probably run into something stupid that would be a deal breaker at some point.

Lastly, no allegiance to the corpo, but your coworkers can be good. They may advocate for you, they may reference for you. Don’t trust anyone or any promises from corpo, including your local manager on up. Ideally that’s not how it should work - talent is talent even if you have to be flexible to keep talent - but corpos are authoritarian by nature and lack guardrails so dipshits get hooked on capricious short-term behaviour.

Be pissed, fuck em, don’t train your replacement & walk out before that, remember you’re worth keeping in a sane world, because you worth it

Edit: lastly, don’t dwell on it. Leave the shitstain where it is at your old job, don’t bring it in your mind. That’s really hard because it’s literally one capricious decision causing the issue - but do it for your sake. That’s the cost of living in authoritarian structures, don’t let it eat at you. You worth it, you’ll find something else

I empathize. I want to be clear that I think your anger is justified and normal. The machinery of capitalism dehumanizes by default and its operator's casual cruelty amplifies the impact.

That said: I'm going to skip over the rest of the context and cut down to your questions directly. I can't provide "do this" type answers because I'm not you. I can tell you how I think about it, what I do, and why. The first answer is lengthy. The other two are a bit shorter. I hope you find them helpful.

1. How do I handle my anger?

Step 1: Sit with it. Be angry. If I'm questioning the justification for my anger then I give myself permission to be angry anyway. This isn't the same as acting on it. I'm not giving in to my emotions. I'm not bargaining with them. I'm letting them really fully exist in me. Recognizing there is nothing wrong with feeling how I feel.

Once I've settled into this and accepted my emotions (and sometimes this takes a while) I can then decide if any action would be safe and helpful.

Step 2: I often find physicalizing intense emotion helps make it "real". This has to be a considered choice though. It's not reactive or destructive. I can beat up my mattress, take a hike into the woods and scream, make an effigy or a sign and burn it, go to a Rage Room and pay for the privilege of breaking stuff, etc.

It can feel invalidating to have emotion for which there is no acceptable expression. Finding a healthy way of expressing that emotion helps break down that false wall. Polite society is a very unnatural state (thankfully! Nature is terrifying) and we are ultimately natural creatures. This friction can be harnessed to create art and meaning but, sometimes, you just need to break some shit and be mad. That's ok. We still ought to be responsible about it.

Sometimes that responsibility extends to taking actions in the pursuit of fairness and justice. These are noble pursuits that should not be sullied by rash or vengeful acts. Organizing these efforts nets significantly more success than individual acts.

Step 3:

Start unpacking.

Am I enraged? Incensed? Disappointed? Betrayed? Anger is a rug pulled over the top of many other emotions. That's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. I do find it unhelpful when I'm trying to accept and understand myself better though.

Uncovering what the anger is built from makes our emotional scaffolding easier to see. Sometimes I use a thesaurus to find synonyms for the name of the emotion I'm already familiar with.

Identifying the component emotions helps me understand what my emotional state is trying to tell me. We feel what we feel for a reason. Understanding our why help us understand the impact of other's actions without requiring we understand their intentions.

Ultimately the answer for any unknown part of ourselves is self-investigation, acceptance, and curation. It is good and right to ask for help with every part of that process. When I run into something I can't accept and/or change then I know it's time to talk to a professional and build some new tools.

1. How do I avoid making my partner feel guilty?

Talk to them. :)

If I'm worried that I'm going to say something poorly or if I feel accuracy is key I will write out what I want to say ahead of time. I'm not so much writing them a letter as I'm writing myself one. Sometimes I write them a letter though.

Disconnecting initiating factors from their cascade effects after my partner and I have made a decision together is a very useful frame. Say we decide to go camping because my partner wants to and say I get injured during the trip. I can feel what I feel without regretting agreeing to the trip. I'm certainly not going to blame my partner for suggesting the trip. Bad stuff happens. That's life. Sharing the pain of the bad stuff is something I want my partner to do with me. Neglecting the reciprocity of that belittles our relationship.

1. How do I stop hating someone who has wronged me?

The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Hate is empassioned. It burns and writhes and lashes. It urges us to demonize and conquer. I'm not sure what the opposite of hate is, exactly. I think it's something close to disappointment.

I'm reminded of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. One of my most memorable takeaways, in my own words, was that if we're to escape the self-sustaining cycle of human abuse we must realize that in dehumanizing us our oppressors dehumanize themselves as well. To Freire's mind the only successful revolution is one in which the oppressor is re-humanized as well as the oppressed.

I have trouble imagining myself feeling sympathy for those doing evil things. When that gets in the way of me letting go of (arguably justified) hatred I think of my younger self. Would I hate that person for being small-minded or callous? Maybe! A least for a moment. Then I would remember they have so many things they don't know yet and so much growing to do. It doesn't excuse the harm done. It nets me a better perspective on how much potential people can live up to. That helps me avoid hatred. When hatred fizzles out I find I'm left with disappointment and sometimes disgust. Those don't lead me to dehumanize someone. I think that's a good start if nothing else.

I'd just start dicking around, coming in slightly later, leaving slightly earlier, and actively avoiding work. It might not solve the problem, but you're leaving anyway, right? Obviously don't implode so bad that you burn all bridges, but you can ahhhh, leave some embers by the bridge.

When I was let go from my team another member was as well at the least. He was pissed and ranted about not wanting to do anything with the company. Myself. I view it as just business. It sucks for me but I don't expect much by corpos. I do hate the holding company that bought my company before I was let go. After they bought our company a new team came up that had a lot of overlap with mine that was made up of people from other companies within the holding company. I guess I should have suspected what came some months later after we finished a project. That stupid management of yours is part of a stupid company that is part of a stupid capitalist system that has not been properly tamed with taxes and regulation. The one small thing that I have been, well not sure I want to call it happy about. Its that I have no direct responsibility for how tech has evolved in the last two years.

So you are asking for anger management against management anger?

Please reply with 'rage' to subscribe to anger management facts.

SYNERGY

One of the first things your first job (or if you are unlucky, your first few jobs) will teach you is that management has almost no incentive to make your job easier or better in any way. This will enrage you. It will make you burn with resentment at your very core, and cause you to become jaded and pessimistic. You'll grapple with the idea that your life working at that company could be better if only management could see things from your perspective and make some common sense decisions that cost them no additional time, effort, or money to implement.

My outlook improved dramatically when I stopped holding out hope that things would change for the better by staying where I was at and started job hopping until I found a place where I meshed well with the company culture and workflow. The management will still be the same way they are anywhere else, but at least they won't be making you actively miserable.

Assholes have family. Assholes have interests. People are multitudes.

Anger, especially in a situation like this, is expected, natural, and healthy. Not having anger in this situation would be a problem.

If it's causing issues in your life, though, it's definitely worthwhile to consider taking some steps to improve your mental health.

Therapy's probably the obvious low-hanging fruit. You talk about "handling these feelings without making my partner feel guilty". That's something talk therapy would be really good at addressing.

Another approach you can take (and not mutually exclusive with therapy by any means) is a mindfulness sort of practice. Both being mindful of your feelings during your regular day/routine as well as setting aside some time to sit still and watch your thoughts can be very helpful. Here's one guide you could follow. But feel free to research and pick a method yourself if you prefer. (And you definitely don't need an app unless that appeals to you.)

I dealt with the same thing many times and it really helped me to understand what a malignant narcissist is: https://mindpsychiatrist.com/how-to-deal-with-a-malignant-narcissist-at-work/

Malignant narcissists see other human beings as nothing more than puppets. If a puppet isn't doing what they want (usually after some emotional abuse) they'll toss it aside and just get another puppet that will. These people are usually incapable of feeling empathy for others.

Sounds like your VP is a prime example.

I could use the same advice right now.

I may have mentioned that our department would run more smoothly if the manager came to work more than twice a week. She didn't really like that idea, and now she's giving me the cold shoulder.

Yesterday I asked if one of our groups had used the pool. I saw it was originally part of their contract, but I didn't see any pool time on their schedule. I was expecting a simple yes they did, or no they didn't. Instead I got:

"because use of the pool was included in the contracted package and was ultimately not used, we need to ensure the overall value of the agreement remains equitable."

Thanks ChatGPT. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I'm sorry. It sounds like it wasn't a good company to work for long-term, anyway.

even though it will be more expensive and might tank the project

There's a bright side for everything.

A lot of the larger companies I've worked for are rotten inside. They seem to base their decisions on how hard they can fuck over their employees. They would rather lose the entire cake than give you a crumb.

The takeaway from this is to try not to take it personally. Scorpions gonna scorp.

There are jobs everywhere. You just have to find them. Odds are his your partner's relocation package includes help for you to find a job, use it.

They have already moved on from you, move on from them. You owe them two weeks (notice) and that is all.

Here is some reading to help explain the situation
https://ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

I have always hated most of my managers too. I think they are all psychopaths. Totally relate to how you feel.

There is a reason we call these people npcs. They seemingly are missing some important parts in their brains or heart.

Anger management

Go on early, being a fish covered in blue cheese dressing and hide it in the ceiling if you're bosses office.

It will keep happening, management draws assholes. Rage for a bit and then don't let that asshole live rent free in your head.

I'd tell them my honest opinion with all the hate and viscera I have. Sounds like you're either gonna have to quit or will be fired anyway so ain't got nothing to lose. Fuck the bastard's feelings. Tell him what you really think.

You are going to die someday relatively soon.