Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

“They can be very convincing in making you invest in their dubious schemes.”

This one really applies to LE and MH

WTF does this have to do with layoffs?

MH - not even competent at being a sociopath! He should have played Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies.

"These types of people target empaths."

Isn't an empath supposed to be someone who can sense feelings via ESP?

From dictionary.com:

" a person with the paranormal ability to apprehend the mental or emotional state of another individual."

I think part of the ability to fool people, at least with the managers at work, is the disbelief that someone with the title of director would actually behave like a 6 year old boy.

Look at DJT. This man clearly never grew up. The other day he lied to the prime minister of Canada about the trade deficit, then later admitted that he was just making up what he told him on the fly. Bragging about it. Like a 6 year old boy bragging to his friends that he just made up a bunch of stuff that he told his mom. DJT never grew up. He doesn't understand the consequences of his actions and doesn't care. If he'd caught he just makes something else up.

It's just hard to believe that there is a 6 year old brain that never developed fully inside a grown man who has the title president.

Same at Oracle, until you are worked over by one of these guys and their followers, you just can't believe that someone in an adult body has a 6 year old mind.

I bet your dad is a really nice guy, or was. These types of people target empaths. Empaths are easy to manipulate with a lot a fake stuff, easy to get them to feel sorry for someone who is really just manipulating them.

What's amazing to me is how they get other people around them to gang up and target someone in the group. It seems like they don't have a sense of right and wrong, a moral compass.

I think the manager was trying me out to see if he could use me to attack people. He'd make nasty comments about other groups and then pause, I think to see if I would join in. I never took the bait. I don't do that. But I suspect a lot of people can be manipulated that way.

Of course, then I was not of any use to the manager, although I was a very good developer, so I was targeted and forced out. They target the decent people, the ones that won't do evil for the manager.

They are intensely manipulative. All those sudden mood changes are fake. They do that to manipulate and intimidate people.

I'm sorry about your dad. From the other side, she is probably being really nice sometimes. She might also be telling him lies about other people in the family and he believes them because she seems like she is on his side. It's sad, but people don't see until they leave and look at the whole thing all together.

I didn't really get what my manager was doing until I left and thought about it later.

After my mother died, a narcissistic sociopath swooped down on my father like a buzzard. He was her 4th mark (oops, I mean hudband). He's a different person now: mean, uncaring, and willing to throw his family under the bus to please her.

Sudden changes of mood occur. Like they are suddenly angry about someone, then they are suddenly not upset. Good way to intimidate someone or get someone to dislike someone else.

Also, if you ask a repeated question, something that you need to know, I have gotten different lies in response followed by a "You are really obsessed, aren't you?" Like it is your problem, but you still need to know the answer.

This has nothing to do with HR. You can't do anything about the person, except be aware that they are manipulating you and the people around you. They will lie about anyone, stab their most loyal follower in the back at any time. They do whatever they need to do to maintain their image and they don't care about the people around them.

Signs of sociopathy:

Superficial charm and good intelligence

Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking

Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations

Unreliability

Untruthfulness and insincerity

Lack of remorse and shame

Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior

Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience

Pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love

General poverty in major affective reactions

Specific loss of insight

Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations

Fantastic and uninviting behavior with alcohol and sometimes without

Suicide threats rarely carried out

S-x life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated

Failure to follow any life plan

from https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201305/how-spot-sociopath

I would add the following:

The guy that I had to work for would always end our conversations with a little put-down or slight. We would have a completely normal conversation, then he would say something at the end that didn't sound right. A little bit of a put-down.

He was always doing a give-and-take kind-of thing. Say really nice things, then follow it with some put-down. He also did this between people in his group. Elevate someone for one conversation and say something bad about someone else, who was present. Then switch it around during a different conversation.

I think this tends to cause people to want to please him. They like the praise so much, that they ignore the put-downs and try to please him. It's really rather disturbing.

Also, he never talked about himself. If you ask him a personal question, he would just change the subject. He had a lot of info he could use about me, but I knew nothing really about him.

I've also read that psychopaths/narcissists/sociopaths sometimes do not have a yawn reflex. You know, like when someone in the room yawns, usually other people will yawn automatically. This is not a sure thing though.

"Advice: chat with HR." What baloney. HR doesn't care if your manager is a sociopath. They only care about the company.