Management by Crisis

I once worked at a company (only briefly, thankfully) where the dominant mode of management was firefighting. I like to call it “Management by Crisis”. Management’s attention was continually shifting from one priority to another, literally on a daily basis. The developers were being jerked one way and then another, always being pulled off of what they were doing to work on something else. Needless to say, this was terrible for productivity as well as morale.

How can you tell that a company suffers form this kind of dysfunction? One clue is if the company has high turnover, which is often associated with high-stress crisis environments. This may be the case if the hiring manager speaks ill of previous employees. Just as you as a candidate should never talk badly about previous employers, it should be a red flag if the hiring manager criticizes his current or former employees.

More specifically, check whether you are interviewing for a job that is vacant because the hiring manager has just fired the previous employee in that position. Of course people are regularly fired for legitimate purposes, but it may behoove you to inquire why the last person in the position was let go. It’s not a comfortable question to ask, but it might shed some light on what kind of a manager the interviewer is, and what expectations they have for the person in the position that needs to be filled. It’s better to understand the job requirements before you start rather than to find out later that the hiring manager had totally unrealistic expectations.