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If youve been in the workplace for a while, youve probably had your share of bad bosses. Maybe youve worked for someone who frequently went MIA, ignoring your emails or requests for information. Or perhaps youve had to report to someone who changed their mind on a dime and expected you to drop everything and follow along. If these scenarios sound familiar, its because bad management styles often fall into one of several archetypes, says Eric Charran, author of Have You Ever Had a Boss That . . .: Succeeding in a Dysfunctional Workplace. Sometimes the tools in a managers leadership toolbox make it difficultand almost impossibleto want to work for them, he says. The first thing to do is to try to overcome an overwhelming urge to say Why are they doing this to me? It must be that I’m deficient in some way. It’s not necessarily that individual’s personality is a mismatch [for yours] or that they don’t like you. It’s just that they’re using a hammer when they really need a screwdriver. Whether you have a difficult boss right now or one lurking in your future, its possible to thrive under their leadership by understanding their motivations. Here are four of the common boss archetypes that Charran identifies in his book, and how you can deal with their behavior. The Attack Sub An Attack Sub manager is someone who operates stealthily for an extended period with minimal interaction or feedback. Suddenly, they surface with a flood of information and demands, launching figurative bombs and missiles. They catch employees off guard, shifting priorities and directives and leaving everyone wondering what just happened as they return beneath the water The Attack Sub Manager can be extremely difficult to deal with, Charran says. They run silent and deep. You’re trying to send them Slacks, or emails, or texts, and it just bounces off them. On the surface, they appear to have a poor capability to manage communication and to give guidance. If you are comfortable with putting out fires, you may work well with this type of boss. But if youre someone who is detail-oriented, a manager who shoots from the hip will be frustrating. To best work with an Attack Sub manager, Charran recommends reaching out to them first thing in the morning, before they become distracted. Keep messages concise and focused on short, tactical items. It can also help to switch your channels of communication; breaking everyday patterns can draw their attention. The Order Taker The Order Taker boss values harmony, hierarchy, and compliance. Their goal is to prove their value to the organization, and the best way to do that is to get you to do what they ask. While this sounds reasonable, demands can quickly turn into commands that put current workloads at jeopardy. If youre constantly switching from one thing to the other, you’re never going to finish anything, says Charran. Your results at the end of the year from a performance perspective will look abysmal. You will have failed the organization because you are not working on important thingsyou keep stopping them to follow new commands. The way to work with the Order Taker boss is by managing up, says Charran. Their expectation is that youll say yes to everything, adding, Do you want fries with that? he says. They need to be educated and not saluted. They’re looking for somebody to say, Hey, if we do this, here’s what we could jeopardize. They’re looking for more of a partner, rather than somebody that says, Got it, boss. The Raw Nerve The Raw Nerve boss is highly emotional, often reacting in the moment. This archetype often develops in an environment where quick decision-making is valued, says Charran. They equate immediate action with effectiveness. However, it can come at the expense of thoroughness or the well-being of team members if they ignore or dont explore possible consequences. Their decisions are not entirely relationship based and not entirely data based, Charran says. Theyre a confluence of all those things. They utilize their cred for quick decision making unilaterally, which can be harmful in many situations. The best way to thrive with this type of boss is to turn to your support networks that extend beyond your team before any final decisions are made. Leverage the power of a group by talking to customers, higher management, and peers. The key, though, is that you dont do it behind your bosss back. It has to be done completely above board, Charran says. If done correctly, you can make the communication innocuous enough that it will seen by your manager as stakeholder management. The Complainer As the name implies, the Complainer is the boss who is constantly complaining. For example, their team isnt big enough, they dont have the correct resources, or theyve been giving unrealistic goals by their superiors. What they don’t realize is that their venting is bringing down the team and poisoning the well. Off-the-cuff remarks have a cognitive impact on team morale, Charran says. The things may be true, but it ends up coming off negative. What the team sees is a person in a downward spiral of jadedness. This archetype usually results from a deep-seated insecurity. The human brain is wired to look for threats, and, whether theyre a danger or not, the brain will find them. To work for a Complainer, Charran says you need the intellect and drive to make positive mental choices instead of getting dragged into their storm. Coexisting with the Complainer begins with empathy, he says. This doesnt mean condoning endless negativity but rather recognizing it as a cry for help or a sign of deeper issues. Empathy must be balanced with the establishment of positive boundaries to protect your own mental and emotional well-being. While it can be frustrating to work for someone with an outlook and behavior that clashes with your own, Charran says youre ultimately responsible for your own happiness and have tools within your own reach. A fundmental principle in maintaining a positive mental attitude is understanding the emotions of others and how they express them, Charran says. Their attitudes and reactions are not contagious and do not have to be internalized. Empathize with others and understand their emotions, but dont be sucked into a collective negative spiral. Knowing your worth is important and so is choice.
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E-Commerce
Every year, I tell my students in my business analytics class the same thing: Dont just apply for a job. Audition for it. This advice seems particularly relevant this year. In todays turbulent economy, companies are still hiring, but theyre doing it a bit more carefully. More places are offering candidates short-term work experiences like internships and co-op programs in order to evaluate them before making them full-time offers. This is just one of the findings of the 2025 College Hiring Outlook Report. This annual report tracks trends in the job market and offers valuable insights for both job seekers and employers. It is based on a national survey conducted in September 2024, with responses from 1,322 employers spanning all major industries and company sizes, from small firms to large enterprises. The survey looks at employer perspectives on entry-level hiring trends, skills demand, and talent development strategies. I am a professor of information systems at Drexel Universitys LeBow College of Business in Philadelphia, and I coauthored this report along with a team of colleagues at the Center for Career Readiness. Heres what we found: Employers are rethinking talent pipelines Only 21% of the 1,322 employers we surveyed rated the current college hiring market as excellent or very good, which is a dramatic drop from 61% in 2023. This indicates that companies are becoming increasingly cautious about how they recruit and select new talent. While confidence in full-time hiring has declined, employers are not stepping away from hiring altogether. Instead, theyre shifting to paid and unpaid internships, co-ops, and contract-to-hire roles as a less risky route to identify talent and de-risk full-time hiring. Employers we surveyed described internships as a cost-effective talent pipeline, and 70% told us they plan to maintain or increase their co-op and intern hiring in 2025. At a time when many companies are tightening their belts, hiring someone whos already proved themselves saves on onboarding reduces turnover and minimizes potentially costly mishires. For job seekers, this makes every internship or short-term role more than a foot in the door. Its an extended audition. Even with the general market looking unstable, interest in co-op and internship programs appears steady, especially among recent graduates facing fewer full-time opportunities. These programs arent just about trying out a job. They let employers see if a candidate shows initiative, good judgment, and the ability to work well on a team, which we found are traits employers value even more than technical skills. What employers want We found that employers increasingly prioritize self-management skills like adaptability, ethical reasoning, and communication over technical skills such as digital literacy and cybersecurity. Employers are paying attention to how candidates behave during internships, how they take feedback, and whether they bring the mindset needed to grow with the company. This reflects what I have observed in classrooms and in conversations with hiring managers: Credentials matter, but what truly sets candidates apart is how they present themselves and what they contribute to a company. Based on co-op and internship data weve collected at Drexel, however, many students continue to believe that technical proficiency is the key to getting a job. In my opinion, this disconnect reveals a critical gap in expectations: While students focus on hard skills to differentiate themselves, employers are looking for the human skills that indicate long-term potential, resilience, and professionalism. This is especially true in the face of economic uncertainty and the ambiguous, fast-changing nature of todays workplace. Technology is changing how hiring happens Employers also told us that artificial intelligence is now central to how both applicants and employers navigate the hiring process. Some companies are increasingly using AI-powered platforms to transform their hiring processes. For example, Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia uses platforms like HireVue to conduct asynchronous video interviews. HR-focused firms like Phenom and JJ Staffing Services also leverage technologies such as AI-based resume ranking, automated interview scheduling, and one-way video assessments. Not only do these tools speed up the hiring process, but they also reshape how employers and candidates interact. In our survey, large employers said they are increasingly relying on AI tools like resume screeners and one-way video interviews to manage large numbers of job applicants. As a result, the candidates presence, clarity in communication, and authenticity are being evaluated even before a human recruiter becomes involved. At the same time, job seekers are using generative AI tools to write cover letters, practice interviews, or reformat résumés. These tools can help with preparation, but overreliance on them can backfire. Employers want authenticity, and many employers we surveyed mentioned they notice when applications seem overly robotic. In my experience as a professor, the key is teaching students to use AI to enhance their effort, not to replace it. I encourage them to leverage AI tools but always emphasize that the final output and the impression it makes should reflect their own thinking and professionalism. The bottom line is that hiring is still a human decision, and the personal impression you make matters. This isnt just about new grads While our research focuses on early-career hiring, these findings apply to other audiences as well, such as career changers, returning professionals, and even mid-career workers. These workers are increasingly being evaluated on their adaptability, behavior, and collaborative abilitynot just their experience. Many companies now offer project-based assignments and trial roles that let them evaluate performance before making a permanent hire. At the same time, employers are investing in internal reskilling and upskilling programs. Reskilling refers to training workers for entirely new oles, often in response to job changes or automation, while upskilling means helping employees deepen their current skills to stay effective and advance in their existing roles. Our report indicates that approximately 88% of large companies now offer structured upskilling and reskilling programs. For job seekers and workers alike, staying competitive means taking the initiative and demonstrating a commitment to learning and growth. Show up early, and show up well So what can students, or anyone entering or reentering the workforce, do to prepare? Start early. Dont wait until senior year. First- and second-year internships are growing in importance. Sharpen soft skills. Communication, time management, problem-solving, and ethical behavior are top priorities for employers. Understand where work is happening. More than 50% of entry-level jobs are fully in person. Only 4% are fully remote. Show up ready to engage. Use AI strategically. Its a useful tool for research and practice, not a shortcut to connection or clarity. Stay curious. Most large employers now offer reskilling or upskilling opportunities, and they expect employees to take initiative. One of the clearest takeaways from this years report is that hiring is no longer a onetime decision. Its a performance process that often begins before an interview is even scheduled. Whether youre still in school, transitioning in your career, or returning to the workforce after a break, the same principle applies: Every opportunity is an audition. Treat it like one. Murugan Anandarajan is a professor of decision sciences and management information systems at Drexel University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Christopher Pelkey was shot and killed in a road range incident in 2021. On May 8, 2025, at the sentencing hearing for his killer, an AI video reconstruction of Pelkey delivered a victim impact statement. The trial judge reported being deeply moved by this performance and issued the maximum sentence for manslaughter. As part of the ceremonies to mark Israels 77th year of independence on April 30, 2025, officials had planned to host a concert featuring four iconic Israeli singers. All four had died years earlier. The plan was to conjure them using AI-generated sound and video. The dead performers were supposed to sing alongside Yardena Arazi, a famous and still very much alive artist. In the end Arazi pulled out, citing the political atmosphere, and the event didnt happen. In April, the BBC created a deepfake version of the famous mystery writer Agatha Christie to teach a maestro course on writing. Fake Agatha would instruct aspiring murder mystery authors and inspire their writing journey. The use of artificial intelligence to reanimate the dead for a variety of purposes is quickly gaining traction. Over the past few years, weve been studying the moral implications of AI at the Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and we find these AI reanimations to be morally problematic. Before we address the moral challenges the technology raises, its important to distinguish AI reanimations, or deepfakes, from so-called griefbots. Griefbots are chatbots trained on large swaths of data the dead leave behindsocial media posts, texts, emails, videos. These chatbots mimic how the departed used to communicate and are meant to make life easier for surviving relations. The deepfakes we are discussing here have other aims; they are meant to promote legal, political, and educational causes. Moral quandaries The first moral quandary the technology raises has to do with consent: Would the deceased have agreed to do what their likeness is doing? Would the dead Israeli singers have wanted to sing at an Independence ceremony organized by the nations current government? Would Pelkey, the road-rage victim, be comfortable with the script his family wrote for his avatar to recite? What would Christie think about her AI double teaching that class? The answers to these questions can only be deduced circumstantially, from examining the kinds of things the dead did and the views they expressed when alive. And one could ask if the answers even matter. If those in charge of the estates agree to the reanimations, isnt the question settled? After all, such trustees are the legal representatives of the departed. But putting aside the question of consent, a more fundamental question remains. What do these reanimations do to the legacy and reputation of the dead? Doesnt their reputation depend, to some extent, on the scarcity of appearance, on the fact that the dead cant show up anymore? Dying can have a salutary effect on the reputation of prominent people; it was good for John F. Kennedy, and it was good for Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The fifth-century BC Athenian leader Pericles understood this well. In his famous Funeral Oration, delivered at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, he asserts that a noble death can elevate ones reputation and wash away their petty misdeeds. That is because the dead are beyond reach and their mystique grows postmortem. Even extreme virtue will scarcely win you a reputation equal to that of the dead, he insists. Do AI reanimations devalue the currency of the dead by forcing them to keep popping up? Do they cheapen and destabilize their reputation by having them comment on events that happened long after their demise? In addition, these AI representations can be a powerful tool to influence audiences for political or legal purposes. Bringing back a popular dead singer to legitimize a political event and reanimating a dead victim to offer testimony are acts intended to sway an audiences judgment. Its one thing to channel a Churchill or a Roosevelt during a political speech by quoting them or even trying to sound like them. Its another thing to have them speak alongside you. The potential of harnessing nostalgia is supercharged by this technology. Imagine, for example, what the Soviets, who literally worshipped Lenins dead body, would have done with a deepfake of their old icon. Good intentions You could argue that because these reanimations are uniquely engaging, they can be used for virtuous purposes. Consider a reanimated Martin Luther King Jr. speaking to our currently polarized and divided nation, urging moderation and unity. Wouldnt that be grand? Or what about a reanimated Mordechai Anielewicz, the commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, speaking at the trial of a Holocaust denier like David Irving? But do we know what MLK would have thought about our current political divisions? Do we know what Anielewicz would have thought about restrictions on pernicious speech? Does bravely campaigning for civil rights mean we should call upon the digital ghost of King to comment on the impact of populism? Does fearlessly fighting the Nazis mean we should dredge up the AI shadow of an old hero to comment on free speech in the digital age? Even if the political projects these AI avatars served were consistent with the deceaseds views, the problem of manipulationof using the psychological power of deepfakes to appeal to emotionsremains. But what about enlisting AI Agatha Christie to teach a writing class? Deepfakes may indeed have salutary uses in educational settings. The likeness of Christie could make students more enthusiastic about writing. Fake Aristotle could improve the chances that students engage with his austere Nicomachean Ethics. AI Einstein could help those who ant to study physics get their heads around general relativity. But producing these fakes comes with a great deal of responsibility. After all, given how engaging they can be, its possible that the interactions with these representations will be all that students pay attention to, rather than serving as a gateway to exploring the subject further. Living on in the living In a poem written in memory of W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden tells us that after the poets death Yeats became his admirers. His memory was scattered among a hundred cities, and his work subject to endless interpretation: The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living. The dead live on in the many ways we reinterpret their words and works. Auden did that to Yeats, and were doing it to Auden right here. Thats how people stay in touch with those who are gone. In the end, we believe that using technological prowess to concretely bring them back disrespects them and, perhaps more importantly, is an act of disrespect to ourselvesto our capacity to abstract, think, and imagine. Nir Eisikovits is a professor of philosophy and director of the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston. Daniel J. Feldman is a senior research fellow at the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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