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I am facing this situation right now. How do you deal with a manager like that?

Do you confront them directly and tell them how you feel? Do you "report" them? Do you realize life is too short and likely they won't change and just quit?

Any other suggestion?

In that situation I either try to switch teams (if possible), or move on and just provide feedback during the exit interview.

If the manager's even a little bit politically-minded, you're gonna have a bad time if you try to fix the situation while he's still your boss.

(Sorry, the cynical codger in me is talking.)

Apply for other jobs.

I have done all of the following at various points in the past:

1. Report to HR.

2. Switch teams (new manager).

3. Quit.

IMHO (1) doesn't accomplish anything. Human nature is such that even the most empathetic, self-aware, fair people have a tough time changing their day to day habits and standards. The likelihood of a tyrannical manager somehow finding the light because some underling told them how they felt is infinitesimally unlikely.

Switch teams or quit, imo. (switching teams is kind of like quitting anyways) And start looking asap, since job searches tend to take a while.

Also,

4. Tell them how you feel.

My former coworker did this. Did not accomplish anything. However, when another team member left for a very prominent company which at this point had developed a track record of recruiting from our company, he did get a decent raise. (this doesn't help the root cause of the frustration at all, but letting your boss know that you're unhappy does make him realize that you might quit at any moment)

edit: I'm happy to be a sounding board in private if you think that'd help. Ping me on twitter and we can exchange contact details. (same ID as my HN ID)

These managers are essentially adult versions of bullies and you should deal with them accordingly.

Within a company there are two options:

1) This is considered unacceptable behaviour but it has gone undetected so far.

2) This is considered acceptable or even desirable behaviour.

In the first case, standing up for yourself and exposing the behaviour will be the right thing to do and you'll find that your company will back you up.

In the second case, standing up for yourself will get you (and possibly anyone who supports you) fired.

Either way standing up for yourself will be an educational experience, but statistically speaking if this is happening to you it's most likely because it's normal within the company.

How about:

5. Do nothing and adopt a "it will be done when it's done" attitude bordering on passive aggressiveness, leave work at 5:01pm every day, etc. while preparing (mentally and/or practically) for switching team or company. At least that's my natural tendency.

This would make me unhappy and I believe it is also true for most people. This positions oneself as helpless and feeling helpless is feeling unhappy.

If you choose aggressiveness then at least make it active (advice to be taken with a grain of salt :-) )

Not necessarily. I did that for a while at a job I hated. It was the only thing that kept me sane. Lots of hackers (like me) hate confrontation. Even small amounts of interpersonal conflict cause intense discomfort. So, when under a toxic boss, I think adopting a clockwatcher attitude is an entirely valid strategy.

I analogize it to the strict shift rotations employed by nuclear reactor workers, chemical plant workers, and others who have to deal with dangerous and toxic materials in their day-to-day jobs. You set hard limits on exposure and stick to them. The act of setting and sticking to those boundaries can give you a modicum of control over a situation where you feel like you have no control at all. It can make a huge difference.

And, of course, as a side benefit, setting hard limits on the hours you work also allows you to have time to conduct a search for a less terrible job. :)

In general that'll just make you miserable. If it's that bad, either start actively looking (eg. interviews at lunch time), or quit and fall back on your 3-6 months of savings runway while you look.

Give him a fair share of your mind, wait. Then give his superior a fair share of your mind, wait. If things don't change, quit.

PS: Don't threaten in any way though, that will make you sound like a loser.

Next time he asks you to do something, drop trou and moon him. I guarantee that your relationship with the company will never be the same.

Be a "yes man" while you bide your time and look for something else.

People like that rarely change. By confronting them, you'll only force them to worsen their behaviour in defence at which point they might condemn or criticise you unfairly, leaving you with a lower opinion of yourself undeservedly. You also run the risk of having your reputation harmed.

So for your own happiness, no matter how tempting, generally it's better to avoid confrontation with the ones that don't have the willingness or capacity to change.

I totally agree with this.

I had to deal with a situation like this at one point in time, where my manager was dictatorial, unreasonable and extremely defensive and saw every suggestion as an attack on his authority and would immediately run upstairs to the upper management and write people up. When I saw that normal dialogue was not possible with this kind of person, I decided to start agreeing with him on everything and made sure he wouldn't perceive me as a threat anymore. It completely killed any chance for positive feedback on my part but it also protected me from his outbursts because I wasn't giving him a reason to see me as a threat to his authority anymore.

Going to their bosses does nothing and more likely than not, you will be perceived as a moaner and troublemaker and may get yourself into even more trouble. They are holding those positions because the management TRUSTS THEM. They are also in charge of keeping their people in check.　Also, if the organization was any good, they wouldn't be putting people into these kinds of situations in the first place.

Bide your time, look for work elsewhere (or wait until your project is over and get reassigned to a different team) and absolutely do not confront anybody unless you're prepared to walk right then and there if things go south (and they probably will).

Shitty people/organizations don't change. Moving on is usually the correct course of action.

I guess it also depends on what kind of person you are. I experienced something like this recently and I did stand up for myself.

It did cost several people I cared about their jobs, it didn't cause the company to change much and the personal cost was very high, but in the end I'm still glad we stood up for our principles.

I don't intend to sound facetious or condescending, but walking away would have been as good a way of standing up for your principles. At least in my opinion. Don't get me wrong. I've had more than my fair share of confrontations too, but you start to realise that that there are better ways to maintain your principles.

Your comment isn't condescending at all; re-reading mine it might actually have across as such. I think we're actually talking about different degrees of transgressions.

I guess I wanted to say that if you feel the behaviour is too far out of line, say systemic overt discrimination or such, to also not be afraid to make a stand, speak up and accept that it might cost you your job.

If anybody ever wants to go that route I'd suggest getting a lawyer / interest group on your side from the get-go though.

I didn't feel yours was condescending at all. I guess we agree that people don't change ;-)

Quit.

I don't believe any manager behaving like that is doing it without his/her full consent and awareness of the situation, and its effect on the lives of his team. Do you really want to make such person successful by sacrificing your health and happiness?

This.

A manager should be able to provide the team with a unified vision, but allow the team members to be creative and flexible. A manager should be (or try their best to be) unbiased, respectful, and acknowledge the accomplishments of his or her team. A manager should be able to give the team valid and solid reasons for goals and vision.

I recently had the opportunity to work with a good team, but a weak (see: crappy) manager. I wrote a blog post about it: http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/how-a-b-environment-is-created/

I think this is a really good point. Management is a skill just like software engineering, and from my experience there appears to be a wide spread of management ability among the ranks of those who call themselves managers. If managers create a toxic atmosphere workers are going to leave regardless of how many xboxes, espresso machines, travel opportunities or whatever.

There's a whole range of "management skills" that are pertinent to being a manager. This is what really complicates things.

My former manager was extremely gifted at salesmanship (selling our "product" to the C level) and was deft at dealing with interdepartmental politics (including posturing to make our product/team more important in the company) for us. But he was a squeezer, and honestly just didn't care about the well being or mental sanity of each of his team members. This made him (in my view) a good or even very-good manager, but far from a great one.

This is the classic case of someone who excels at "managing up" but is deficient at "managing down".

The way most of corporate America is structured today, most managers are incentivized to manage up. That's why great managers are so rare.

Keep in mind too that many managers of technical teams are upjumped engineers; this is one of the worst antipatterns I've encountered. Not only does the organization pay the opportunity cost of losing engineering talent to the duties of management; the skills of management are orthogonal to those of engineering.

"Not only does the organization pay the opportunity cost of losing engineering talent to the duties of management"

In my experience a lot of these managers were essentially failed engineers, they never demonstrated they were at all good at engineering, so no loss like the one above you've seen, and of course they make terrible managers due to poor technical judgement and envy of those who can do it.

If your team is crap (disorganised and unfocused) you might need that kind of manager to ensure basic hygiene practices are followed. A nice guy who lets people run wild can be just as stressful.

The problem is, most managers never change their style to fit the challenges they face. Headkickers try to whip good teams into shape (and just piss everyone off). Hands-off managers will let an unfocused team drive into an iceberg. If the manager is a bad fit for the team, or you are a bad fit for the team, then change teams.

If the team is disorganized and unfocused, then it's already a failure of leadership.

Being a shitty, tyrannical manager as described by hkmurakami and using the "team is crap" as an excuse is unacceptable, and managers who do that are just deflecting the blame off themselves to avoid accountability.

There's a saying that people quit managers, not jobs.

Poor product decisions, unsustainable work pace, decisions/sales made by people incompetent in the field

I've suffered under this. At some point I'm either starting my own product or join a company who's decisions I can get behind. Software engineer run. Even designers should be developers.

That's probably because GitHub doesn't have managers.

(Or everyone's a manager, depending on how you look at it.)