When I was a junior engineer, I quit a position over this. My manager had a direct line of sight from his desk into my screen and would give me passive aggressive comments if I wasn’t always on task.
I was the best performing engineer at that company, handling a contract that was worth >20% of their revenue by myself. They loved me at that company, and I wish I had been honest with the feedback I gave during my exit interview, but I just couldn’t tell the guy my issues were with him.
Curious but did you not think to bring it up before quitting if it was such a big factor in your leaving? You'd have decent clout with your manager's manager in making sure he doesn't micromanage or give passive aggressive comments.
The company had less than 20 employees, everybody knew each other, and my manager was the owner, a self-made man with a really high opinion of himself due to survivorship bias. Also, it was my first job after my failed startup right out of college. It was really tough for me to give feedback, and I didn’t even know if I was just being lazy or the problem was the way things were being run.
Looking back at it, I understand why I quit, but back then I couldn’t even put it in words. Thankfully, I managed to keep all the friendships I made, including my ex boss.
> If I’m your boss, sitting next to you and in full view of your screen, and I’m there for 8 hours working, will the average person work a real 8 hours?
You probably get a few weeks of “real 8 hours” before your best employees find somewhere less oppressive to work and leave your micromanaged company.
Your bad employees will stay because they don’t have better options.
