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Good advice that every employee needs to read.

Supervising people isn't always easy.  The best and easiest to supervise are those employees that are married and have kids.  These people know how to compromise and understand/accept  that things might not always go their way.  Employees that are married but with no kids are a bit more difficult to handle.  They usually don't understand how to compromise and have difficulty handling change.  The most difficult employees to supervise are those that are getting up there in age and have never been married.  A supervisor is really screwed if this person is an only child.  This employee is convinced that the world revolves around him and constantly rejects authority.  God help you if you hire one of these primo donnas.

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As a business owner, I can narrow it down to one item, and it's the hardest thing to find in an employee.

COMMON SENSE

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When people say they want "common sense" what they, nearly invariably, mean is: "I want other people to think, act and behave like I do and prioritize the same things I think are important in the same order I do."

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Good info here.   For the TLDR crowd, just read the first line... it may help you!    

8 Things Your Boss Won't Tell You (But Wishes You Knew)

Have you ever noticed that when people are promoted to a management position, their whole perspective on workplaces issues often changes? That’s because, as managers, they see things that they might not have been exposed to as employees. As a result, they view workplace questions through a different lens than the one they used before.
Understanding that shift in perspective can help you get along better with your boss, have more insight into her actions and decisions, and even perform your job better.

1. Your Attitude Matters Almost as Much as Your Work
You might think that if you do great work, that’s all that matters—but attitude and interpersonal skills can matter a great deal. Healthy organizations have low tolerance for difficult personalities, in part because managing a team can be exhausting, and it gets significantly harder when a team member is resistant to feedback, difficult to work with, or just plain unpleasant.
If you complain frequently, regularly shoot down ideas, or act like the office prima donna, your boss probably considers you a pain to deal with, even if she never says so. That could result in you getting less interesting work assignments, less flexibility, lower raises, and a higher chance of ending up at the top of the list if cuts ever need to be made—yes, even if your work product is stellar. To be clear, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t speak up if you disagree or are unhappy. Good managers value input. But if you find yourself resisting more projects than you embrace or if you get feedback that you’re coming across as negative or combative rather than constructive, there’s a problem. Speaking of which...

2. You can disagree—if You Go About it the Right Way
Good bosses want to hear when you have a different take on a project, or how realistic a deadline is, or the best way to deal with a difficult client—but you need to be emotionally intelligent about how you present your input. In fact, when I’ve heard people complain that their managers don’t welcome dissent or feedback, it’s nearly always been because they’ve been offering that dissent or feedback in the wrong way.
The key is to present your stance calmly and unemotionally—similarly to how you might if you were a consultant observing a situation, rather than like someone with a strong emotional stake in the outcome. Tone is really crucial here; it can be the difference between sounding like a collaborative partner in solving a business problem and sounding like a frustrated adversary. "I’m concerned by the number of errors I’m catching in the other team’s drafts and wonder if we need to give them better guidelines” will go over a lot better than "I’m sick of having to fix Beth’s errors all the time.”
And no matter the issue, you’ll get the best results if you frame the conversation in a way that demonstrates that you understand that in the end, your boss will make the final call—and that you’re willing to go along with it even if it’s different from yours.

---snip --- [edited for conduct code]

8. We Want You to Ask for Help When You Need It
Most managers want to hear when you’re struggling, whether it’s with a particular problem on a project, a difficult client or an overwhelming workload. Don’t hide your problems in the hopes that they won’t be noticed—speak up when you’re struggling and ask for advice. Good managers will welcome it.

Source

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14. My job is to make promises to the client without looking at facts.  Your job is to make my promises into reality regardless of the facts.  At no time do facts enter into this equation.

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If you want your employees to meet your expectations all you have to do is clearly define them. Part of being a leader is communicating the path to success to everyone involved. Part of setting your crew up to fail is to "wish" they were all just clones of you and expect them to behave "your way" without guidance.

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  12. All of my economic problems can be solved by screaming at you louder and asking for more work in less time, but still with zero mistakes.  

13. I can fire you at the drop of a hat, but if you even think of taking another job you are a disloyal scumbag.  

14. My job is to make promises to the client without looking at facts.  Your job is to make my promises into reality regardless of the facts.  At no time do facts enter into this equation.  

15. Wanting to take time for family, children, medical problems, or tornado warnings = lazy and disloyal to the company.  

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Reread no 1.

It's says your boss is female.

And she doesn't like you.

Fuck that bitch!

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The most difficult employees to supervise are those that are getting up there in age and have never been married.

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That article is the purest form of bullshit ever produced.

Notice the tone.  All of the pronouns are feminine.

That shit might work in the pink ghettos that most businesses have turned into, but it's cost the company a huge amount of unseen loss in productivity.

If you set your metrics low enough you can accomplish anything, all the while accomplishing nothing.

My fave is this one:  "We Want You to Ask for Help When You Need It."  It's always been my experience that the boss wants to know that stuff so that they can exploit it for their own benefit & career advancement.

Hey, family guys, who do you suppose has to cover for you while you're out doing the important family stuff?  Sure we now have FMLA, etc. but what about the people who don't have kids, elderly parents to take care of, etc.?  I've never heard of a boss saying "Hey, you don't have kids.  Everybody else has taken off quite a bit of unaccounted for family time.  Why don't you take the next week off to make up for it."

...and I never will.

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10.  If you don't work the 'voluntary' overtime you will get a poor review summary even if each item in your review is 'above average'.
Just because I don't like you.

11.  I (manager) get a bonus and you don't.  O and no raises either for the mere pions.
Especially if the company spent $60million on stock buybacks and hundreds of millions on other crap(paying off debt in the lowest interest rate era EVAH).

eta; I am not a manager, just a coder.

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I got lucky here.  Most of those lessons I learned when I got a great boss.  He's no longer my boss, so instead I merely have a good boss.  The old boss is now the boss's boss.  

The overtime coder is going to hate me for this, but I'm also a software developer.   The unofficial policy in our department, as established by the old boss and reinforced by the new, is that if you're working more than 40 hours in a week, it's because you aren't doing your job properly or management isn't.  And since we haven't fired you yet, you're probably doing your job.  Which means management needs to do a better job.

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I got lucky here.  Most of those lessons I learned when I got a great boss.  He's no longer my boss, so instead I merely have a good boss.  The old boss is now the boss's boss.  
The overtime coder is going to hate me for this, but I'm also a software developer.   The unofficial policy in our department, as established by the old boss and reinforced by the new, is that if you're working more than 40 hours in a week, it's because you aren't doing your job properly or management isn't.  And since we haven't fired you yet, you're probably doing your job.  Which means management needs to do a better job.

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#18... Success is what your boss achieves through your hard work.

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Ha.  They never met my boss.   Here's his rules:

1) Fix it yourself, so I can take credit.

2) I can't help you, I got my own stuff to deal with.

3) If you're wrong, it's your fault.

4) If you're right, it's because you listened to me.

5) When management comes down on both our heads, I'll sell you out faster than crack dealer peddling rocks at a rehab center.

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http://i.imgur.com/AFefvgX.jpg

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Should be called "8 things anyone with a little gray matter in their noggin already knows"