There are diseases medicine has yet to classify. One of them is the chronic syndrome of a superior who does not know, yet knows he is superior. The etiology is unknown. The therapy is symptomatic. The prognosis depends on your ability to remain silent while your soul slowly turns into medical waste, category B.
The first symptom of such a boss is absolute certainty in his own uncertainty. He does not know, but he knows that you must not know more than he does. If you accidentally do, that is already the beginning of your professional end. In his world, knowledge is dangerous, because knowledge asks questions, and questions threaten a hierarchy built on shaky legs of ego and other people’s achievements.
The second symptom is selective visibility. Your work is invisible. Your night shifts are invisible. Your exhausted eyes at three in the morning are invisible. But his sentence, delivered in front of a higher superior, borrowed from your explanation the day before, suddenly becomes a brilliant thought. He does not steal ideas. He administratively adopts them and assigns the credit to himself.
The third symptom is an evolutionary survival instinct expressed through sycophancy. He does not walk with the wind; he walks with the boot. His natural habitat is proximity to authority, where he nods with the precision of a metronome. His “Yes, of course” has more variations than an ECG arrhythmia.
How to survive?
First, master the art of the neutral facial expression. It is a face that reveals no thought. No sarcasm. No despair. No desire to explain something that has already been misinterpreted three times. It is the face of professional survival.
Second, speak less than you know. In such an ecosystem, knowledge is like light — it attracts insects and disturbs those accustomed to the dark.
Third, develop an inner sense of humor, because when your boss explains to you something you taught him six months ago, the only alternative to laughter is an existential crisis.
Fourth, and most importantly, remember: he is temporary. The system is slow, but time is precise. Careers built on emptiness have an expiration date. Knowledge does not.
And finally, the most important rule: do not let him convince you that his limit is your limit. The greatest illusion of a bad boss is not that he knows, but that you do not know you can move forward without him.
He may rule the room, but you rule the knowledge.
And the history of medicine has never remembered sycophants, only those who survived despite them.
