Its not such a bad thing to have a dumb boss "steal your ideas." If your ideas work and benefit your boss and he's not smart enough to come up with the ideas himself, then he's dependent on you, he's really your "puppet on a string." Its very easy to wrestle what you want out of those kinds of bosses or alternately to set them up and leave them twisting in the wind.
Dumb bosses are the second least offensive kind of bad boss (next to the do nothing boss). Some advice:
1) Go out and buy yourself a copy of Yourdon's "Death March" and read it.
2) You have to decide where you want to go with your bad boss. If you decide you want things to work and take responsibility, you will need to make your bad boss an ally in your efforts. If you don't, you'll have to either be happy with your lot or find another job.
3) Dumb bosses love smart sycophants. Consider sucking up to them to at least shield yourself and your colleagues from some of their worst vagaries. Properly wielded, you can wrangle considerable resources out of a charmed dumb boss (e.g. "as long as we are redoing the network we should buy all the developers Microsoft Developer Network subscriptions.").
Another shake-n-bake controversy courtesy of Mr. Dvorak. It's fun, you can do it too:
Those darn [insert community that threatens my business model] are [pick three]:
a) Insane b) Violent c) Strange and/or Hippy-Like d) Destroying our American way of life e) Frighteningly Over-Zealous e) Part of organized crime
and they ought to be stopped and/or will come to an end due to [see above]. [insert repeatable sound bite that simultaneously insults community while reflecting your complete disconnection from reality]. It is fortunate that you the reader have a journalist of my talent and insight to warn you about them.
Slashdot Mirror
Its not such a bad thing to have a dumb boss "steal your ideas." If your ideas work and benefit your boss and he's not smart enough to come up with the ideas himself, then he's dependent on you, he's really your "puppet on a string." Its very easy to wrestle what you want out of those kinds of bosses or alternately to set them up and leave them twisting in the wind.
Dumb bosses are the second least offensive kind of bad boss (next to the do nothing boss). Some advice:
1) Go out and buy yourself a copy of Yourdon's "Death March" and read it.
2) You have to decide where you want to go with your bad boss. If you decide you want things to work and take responsibility, you will need to make your bad boss an ally in your efforts. If you don't, you'll have to either be happy with your lot or find another job.
3) Dumb bosses love smart sycophants. Consider sucking up to them to at least shield yourself and your colleagues from some of their worst vagaries. Properly wielded, you can wrangle considerable resources out of a charmed dumb boss (e.g. "as long as we are redoing the network we should buy all the developers Microsoft Developer Network subscriptions.").
Another shake-n-bake controversy courtesy of Mr. Dvorak. It's fun, you can do it too:
Those darn [insert community that threatens my business model] are [pick three]:
a) Insane
b) Violent
c) Strange and/or Hippy-Like
d) Destroying our American way of life
e) Frighteningly Over-Zealous
e) Part of organized crime
and they ought to be stopped and/or will come to an end due to [see above]. [insert repeatable sound bite that simultaneously insults community while reflecting your complete disconnection from reality]. It is fortunate that you the reader have a journalist of my talent and insight to warn you about them.