Thinking of catastrophic managers I and loved ones have dealt with (not too many, but catastrophic they were), some of these resonate strongly but not others.

Thinking of catastrophic managers I and loved ones have dealt with (not too many, but catastrophic they were), some of these resonate strongly but not others. For example, the worst manager I remember dealing with was relentlessly focused on output, but with no sense of a plan, or of intermediate steps, or of why a given situation might be as it is when he arrived, or anything. Not even what output to aim for or why. You were expected to simply intuit his desires and then be so motivated to please him that fear of his disapproval and power was enough to produce the output, whatever that was. Probably many of these things on this list are problematic at either extreme; maybe the particular extremes he encountered is as much a function of Microsoft as a culture as anything else? I also feel like there's certain things missing from this list, like communication problems, which are some of the worst forms of problems in my experience. I suppose like a lot of these sorts of things, it's best taken as advice with a grain of salt.