Ask HN: My manager is bad. Should I care?

I am a lead in a department where the manager is considered incompetent but nice. I am recognized as high performing and a good team builder (clear communication, involving people as needed, etc.). The manager, however, fails to include me or the team, and this is reflected in declining team satisfaction ratings. The director is supportive but typically sides with the manager and communicates only through them, despite many sharing concerns with him. Should I be upset about this situation, or am I overthinking it and should just go with the flow?

On one hand, I’m upset the director can’t appropriately lead and allows the entire department to be corrupted by a single non-performer. On the other hand, maybe I’m too involved and should just worry about myself. I’d get less professional development potentially (verses leaving) but I could kick back more.

Incompetent, autocratic managers (as you describe) will sooner or later cause huge problems. You're already seeing the problems start in the declining team satisfaction ratings. Sooner or later, major problems can happen. Unfortunately, the decline can take years. My advice is to care. Since you (and apparently others) have gone around the manager to the director without any resolution, it's time to start looking for a new job. Assuming you're in the US, your employer owes you next to no loyalty, and uses your emotional attachment to the job or the product to bind you to the situation. Rewrite your resume and quietly start looking.

If it was one layer of poor management, you could get away with not caring because eventually the higher levels of management would notice and act. But once you have 2+ levels of management allowing each other to get away with being poor leaders, you are in a deeply flawed organization and it is absolutely time to care about it.

Caring about it can result in a few different paths:

1) You can care and accept the reality of it (easy, but stagnant)

2) You can care and act to fix things (difficult but rewarding if you succeed)

3) You can care and choose to leave the organization.

It is up to you what actions to take, but I have to recommend caring enough to deliberately choose one of those overall paths. Personally, I have almost universally regretted staying in an org if multiple levels of management are problematic. But everyone's situation is different.

I don't have a ton of experience, but I think you saying this reflects back on you as well.

Maybe your boss and their boss really are terrible, or maybe you are angling for more power, and want them (even subconsciously) to look bad so you can be a hero in comparison.

There's a lot of space between "I don't like my boss" and "they are ruining this company and need to go and I should replace them"

> The manager, however, fails to include me or the team, and this is reflected in declining team satisfaction ratings.

To me it feels like there needs to be more information before we can come to a judgement (excluding bias aside). I don't feel like "failing to include" people is necessarily an indication that a manager is bad... rather it feels like his communication style clashes with your preference. There are plenty of places where information is shared on the "need-to-know" basis. Is the manager not including your team on things that your team should be knowing?

Was the manager also given a fair chance to receive the feedback and take action on it?