Marcus was incompetent and completely untouchable.
He had been hired directly by the CEO and was widely understood to be somebody’s nephew or college friend. Everybody knew it. It changed nothing. He wasn’t going anywhere, and for at least another eighteen months, neither was I.
That combination is the one nobody writes useful advice about. The literature assumes either that you can fix the relationship or that you can leave.
When both are off the table for a fixed period, you need something narrower. How to get through it without your work suffering, and without becoming somebody unpleasant in the process.
Why is going over their head usually wrong?
Because you need to know who protects them before you do anything, and in this case the answer was the person I would have been appealing to. Escalating to the CEO about a manager the CEO personally hired is asking somebody to concede they made a bad decision, in a matter involving a relative or a friend, on the word of somebody several levels below them. There was no version of that conversation that ended well for me.
This is worth working out early and unemotionally. The useful question is who benefits from them staying, not whether your boss is bad. If the answer is somebody with more authority than the person you’d complain to, the escalation route is closed and continuing to think about it just costs you sleep.
The book on this: My Boss is Insane is 19 chapters on nine kinds of bad boss, what each one responds to, and what’s documentable. Every story in it happened, with the names changed.
What do you protect when your boss can’t be fired?
Your work, your record and your standards, in that order.
The work, because it’s the thing that survives the situation. Doing it well under a bad manager is the only asset you take with you.
The record, because the main risk with a protected incompetent is that the account of what happened gets rewritten later, and rewritten in their favor, because they have more standing than you do. Decisions in writing. Instructions confirmed by email.
Commitments captured at the time they were made, in ordinary language, without any suggestion that you’re building a case. That’s the cheapest insurance available.
The standards, because they’re the thing most at risk and the loss is hardest to notice.
What does the other kind of bad boss look like?
There’s a story in the book about a man named Duane, in a restaurant, at what he thought was a routine conversation with his boss Gary.
Doing it well under a bad manager is the only asset you take with you.
Gary told him he didn’t care what religion Duane followed, but while he was working for him, he wasn’t to talk about it there. Duane looked into his face to check whether this was some sick joke, and saw that he was serious. I’m glad you told me that, Duane said. And you know something, prejudices are disgusting, and I won’t work for a person like you. I practice the Wiccan religion, and I’m proud of it.
What are you telling me, Gary asked.
I quit.
Gary’s voice went smooth immediately. Let’s talk about this. There was nothing to talk about. Duane got up and left the restaurant, and was amazed at how good it felt to be in a position in life where he didn’t have to take it.
That last clause is the hard part. The hard part wasn’t the principle, which he’d had all along. It was the position, which he’d built.
How does a bad boss make you worse?
By making their behavior look like the way things are done. Spend eighteen months watching somebody withhold information to stay useful, claim work that wasn’t theirs, and manage upward while neglecting everything below them, and those tactics stop looking outrageous. They start looking like the local rules. You begin to think that protecting yourself requires the same tools, and you’re not entirely wrong, and that makes it dangerous.
The people I’ve seen damaged most by bad managers are the ones who learned from them, and then carried it into their own teams a decade later, entirely unaware of where they picked it up.
Naming it helps more than you’d expect. Once you can say out loud that a particular tactic is something Marcus does instead of something managers do, it stops being ambient and becomes a choice.
What does a good manager look like?
I had one earlier in my career, before Marcus. Steve, who went on to be a vice president at Disney and to sit on their IT Leadership Board and Enterprise Architecture Board, though at the time he was still building the reputation. What made him different was dozens of small things, accumulating. The example I still use: a project I was on hit a serious technical problem. The deadline was firm, the client mattered, and I was stuck. I went to him fully expecting to be told off for not seeing it coming. Instead he sat down, listened to all of it, and worked on it with me.
That’s a small event. It’s also the entire difference. He understood that his success depended on his team’s success, so he invested in people getting better, and one consequence was that his people brought him problems early instead of hiding them until they were catastrophic.
What is an exit strategy from a bad boss for?
For making the eighteen months a choice and not a sentence.
The point is that the difference between staying because you decided to and staying because you have no alternative is enormous, and it’s almost entirely internal. The same job feels completely different depending on which of those is true.
I’ve also watched what happens to people who never do this.
Colleagues who were let go in layoffs with no savings, no current resume and no professional network, forced into the first job available, usually at lower pay and worse conditions than the one they’d lost. They hadn’t been reckless. They’d simply assumed there would be warning.
My take
Don’t go over the head of a boss who’s protected. You’ll lose, and you’ll mark yourself. Protect your work and your reputation, keep your own standards, and build an exit plan so the eighteen months become a choice. Keep savings, a current resume and a network even when nothing’s wrong. The colleagues I watched get laid off with none of that had assumed there would be warning. There won’t be.
What do you do about an incompetent boss you cannot escape?
Find out who protects them. That answer determines every option you have.
Put decisions in writing as they happen. Not a dossier. A normal record that means the story can’t be changed afterward.
Watch for their habits appearing in you. This is the biggest cost and it’s the one nobody warns you about.
Keep the resume and the network current whether or not you plan to go. The people who got hurt worst were the ones who assumed they’d see it coming.
Set an end date, even privately. Eighteen months with a date at the end of it is a different experience from eighteen months without one.
| Move | What it means | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Find out who protects them | Work out who benefits from them staying | If it’s the person you’d appeal to, escalation is closed |
| Keep doing the work well | Hold your standard under a bad manager | The work is the only asset you take with you |
| Put decisions in writing | Confirm instructions by email; capture commitments when made | The story can’t be rewritten in their favor later |
| Watch for their habits in you | Name a tactic as theirs, not as how managers work | Learning from a bad boss is the biggest hidden cost |
| Keep savings, resume and network current | Do it whether or not you plan to go | People laid off without them took worse jobs |
| Set an end date, even privately | Decide how long you are staying | Eighteen months becomes a choice instead of a sentence |
Marcus never became competent and was never removed while I was there. That’s the ending. Most bad manager stories conclude with you leaving, better at something you’d rather not have had to learn.
Marcus never became competent and was never removed while I was there.Share on X
Bad bosses fall into patterns you can learn to spot. My Boss is Insane covers nine kinds of bad boss and why the people working for them believe they’re the only one.
