Untitled.

FP is fond of KfW2. They've gotten along really well since they were introduced, so FP often asks after KfW2 when we're in the pub.

I had told him about the recent KfW2 thing with her new job and my gut feeling that it was, once again, about the money rather than the job itself.

I don't know why I'm bothered about this to the extent that I am. I'm guessing at least part of it is my experience with managers. In my current company I've had two excellent managers, one good manager, three disasters and the rest fall into a middling group of "meh".

That's roughly 1 in 3 managers have been a disaster. Two of them were flat out bullies and one was the very definition of incompetent.

So KfW2 going for a management job is off to me. Obviously, I worked "with" her on a few projects. I can't say it was a pleasant experience. She was a control freak, making big promises that required long hours because she couldn't admit that she was wrong. The big promises also meant that all the knowledge was in her head as she had no time to write training documents, so when it came time to leave the team and pass on her knowledge she couldn't.

Actually, by the time she came to leave the team, she was too busy waltzing off for a chat with her chums in the department that the knowledge transfer never really got anywhere near completed and when I mentioned it in passing one afternoon, months after she'd started her new job, she went home that evening and spent hours trawling through emails to try and prove me wrong.

And let's not ignore the professional "jealousy" when I told her about the recognition I had been getting this year.

Being a manager means being fair, transparent, having the respect of your charges. With this behaviour, how does KfW2 meet those traits?

So... I have issues with managers. I hold them to high standards and have strong ideas about what good managers do. Standards that KfW2 doesn't have and ideas that we don't share. As she admitted a few days ago at tea break, she's a mother first and whatever else is down the list. That's what she works weird hours... so that she can spend time with her kids. Unfortunately, our company will allow her to maintain that, which I fundamentally disagree with. Some jobs require that those benefits are restricted... and in my opinion, being a people manager means you need to be in the office, interacting with your staff. Otherwise, how do you build the respect? How do you build the knowledge of what they do so you can give them accurate performance scores every year?

All conversations with KfW2 have talked about her pay rise or being able to maintain her working arrangement. She's said nothing about the new job, her excitement about taking it, the opportunities it will afford her etc.

FP is a lot more experienced in the management side of it than I am, but he's in full agreement with me when I explained all the above to him (and he'd tell me if he wasn't - this isn't taking my side for the sake of it).

I have a bad feeling about it all, but nothing specific I can put my finger on, just a gut feeling.