My new coworker may become my boss, and he is terrible

Question

I work in a team of 5 persons in a medium sized company. This service is new within my company and was formed by taking people from different services. So in my team, the knowledge of our processes, product, customer and market is very high but about the job itself is lower.

I initialy though that my boss, that has been in my company 1 year and has a lot of previous experience, would train us but I realized he has never worked into this exact job (think director of sales becomes vp of marketing).

I spend a lot of time training myself and it is apparent that my boss is not pulling the team in the right direction. He leans into what he knows (and that is another team job) rather than learning our real job.

Recently he recruited a senior [my job]. It is not official but I think the plan is for this guy to become my new manager. Senior guy is like my boss: experienced but not in what we need. On top of that, he is a condescending jerk trying to micro manage me. He pretends to know everything when he does know neither the job or the context (3 weeks in he still has not bothered to learn about our product)

What can I do ? I love this company and I think I could thrive in this line of job with proper support

Answer 1

In a midsize to large company, it is often possible to interview for other assignments within the company. The closer the new position is to your current position on the management tree, the easier this is likely to be, but I managed to jump divisions at one point.

It helps if you are enthusiastic about the target project or otherwise have a career reason for the move, rather than it just being about avoiding conflict with a specific individual.

Having said that, sometimes people do grow into their assignments.

Answer 2

If this person is destined to become your manager, now is the time to gently start recording what they've asked you do, and the consequences of those decisions; nothing emotional, just a record of what they've done.

Then it might be worth chatting to your current manager, and gently mentioning a few of the issues that have arisen; if they show interest, you can then produce paperwork to back up your assertions.

If despite that, the person does become your manager, one technique you could try is to pick an area that you know is outside their experience, and ask for a decision: "Please guide me; do you want me to do A, B, or C", secure in the knowledge that they'll probably pick the wrong option. After a few such wrong decisions, senior management may realise that this person isn't cut out to run your section.