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Anyone have this problem while emailing boss?

TickleWatchers

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Besides my 'Tickle Watchers' blog, I write for a professional (but new) anime website. My job is to write reviews, articles and anything that basically interests me about anime, manga and sometimes video games.

To say "I love it" would be an understatement, but there is one problem.

I work under two guys. One's an alright dude, but the other seems to be an idiot. I shouldn't say that about my boss, but it seems to be true. I would send an email to both guys and they would respond, but every time my second boss would respond, I would get the feeling that he never even read my email to begin with. It's like he ignored the question or the reason behind the email.


For instance I did a little volunteer work for Funimation and they rewarded my efforts with a free copy of Strike Witches. I wanted to thank them by writing a review for the anime, but I had a problem. I was going to include a link to watch the anime legally and for free online, but only two websites were showing the two seasons for free and neither one was Funimation. Needless to say I didn't know if it would be appropriate to send people away from Funimation or not considering I had written the review as a way to thank them for the DVD. Well I asked my bosses what they thought and the first one gave me good advice, while the second completely missed the point of my question. Instead he told me to always include 3 pictures for my reviews.

How does that help me?! I already knew that! He beat it into my head so often...

So what about you guys. Do you write emails for bosses who are idiots or what?
 
I had, for a while, a boss that was incredibly terrible at his job. He knew nothing of the industry or what our team was supposed to do. He talked big and surprisingly well, but when we'd get into the finer details, it was quickly apparent that he knew absolutely nothing.

But the thing is, he really thought he was a guru.

It's called the Dunning-Kruger Effect and, in a nutshell, it posits that people can be so incompetent at something that they are too incompetent to recognize actual competency and therefore mistakenly identify themselves as competent. In other, cruder words, they're too stupid to know they're stupid. Conversely, someone super-competent at something has a better chance of underestimating their ability because they know their subject so well that they are very aware of what they don't fully understand.

To echo what you stated above, my boss would latch onto concepts with a ferocity and repeat them whenever he thought it might remotely apply. Often he didn't understand the concept and thus it rarely applied. It was dangerous to use certain industry terms around him for fear he would learn them without any idea of how to use them. Your boss's Three Pictures Rule may be one of the few things he's certain about your job and thus it's one of the things he's always confident in suggesting.

"It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." ~Abraham Maslow

Anyways, as far as any advice... it depends on what you want to achieve, and that may depend on what you feel is achievable. When I found out educating my boss wasn't feasible, I got him transfered to another division when he could do less harm. Though, I should add, he did a large share of the work by being shamefully incompetent in front of the wrong people.
 
I had, for a while, a boss that was incredibly terrible at his job. He knew nothing of the industry or what our team was supposed to do. He talked big and surprisingly well, but when we'd get into the finer details, it was quickly apparent that he knew absolutely nothing.

But the thing is, he really thought he was a guru.

It's called the Dunning-Kruger Effect and, in a nutshell, it posits that people can be so incompetent at something that they are too incompetent to recognize actual competency and therefore mistakenly identify themselves as competent. In other, cruder words, they're too stupid to know they're stupid. Conversely, someone super-competent at something has a better chance of underestimating their ability because they know their subject so well that they are very aware of what they don't fully understand.

To echo what you stated above, my boss would latch onto concepts with a ferocity and repeat them whenever he thought it might remotely apply. Often he didn't understand the concept and thus it rarely applied. It was dangerous to use certain industry terms around him for fear he would learn them without any idea of how to use them. Your boss's Three Pictures Rule may be one of the few things he's certain about your job and thus it's one of the things he's always confident in suggesting.

"It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." ~Abraham Maslow

Anyways, as far as any advice... it depends on what you want to achieve, and that may depend on what you feel is achievable. When I found out educating my boss wasn't feasible, I got him transfered to another division when he could do less harm. Though, I should add, he did a large share of the work by being shamefully incompetent in front of the wrong people.

It makes me wonder if they cheat somehow to get into the positions they are in.
 
I can't remember ever having an idiot for a boss. Well, maybe one or two in the Army, but that was short lived. And we didn't have email back then.
 
It makes me wonder if they cheat somehow to get into the positions they are in.

I can't speak for all, but from my experience, no. You have to understand, people suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect really, really, REALLY think they're good at what they do. Not merely competent, but well-and-above nearly all. Few people can fake confidence strong enough, but if you truly believe, it shows.

I'm fairly certain I know my stuff when it comes to my niche*, and even I was fooled by my idiot boss. He would talk with unwavering conviction and would rarely hesitate. Only after we started working closer and catching him in some baffling mistakes did I start to even question his competence. Things went sharply downhill from there.

* The terrible part about the Dunning-Kruger Effect is once you see it in effect and recognize it, you start to question everything you think you're good at.
 
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