> isn't an employee supposed to take direction from a manager? Well, yes. But the relationship should also benefit the employee. I'm not a great fan of manage

> isn't an employee supposed to take direction from a manager? Well, yes. But the relationship should also benefit the employee. I'm not a great fan of managers in general, but I do recognise that they can play an important role in shielding you from a lot of the political nonsense that can float around in a large organisations. On top of this they also have a role to play in providing HR guidance, pastoral support, and also as someone to bounce ideas off - I sometimes use my manager as my rubber duck [1] However, if your relationship with your manager is all one way then there's almost certainly something wrong there. The best managers (IMHO) clear the path to allow their staff to achieve what needs to be done, rather that micromanaging and cracking the whip. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging