A wrong piece of advice often given is that you should remember that you work for the person directly above you, that you should make them look good, and by doing so, you’d get a better bonus at the end of the year.

Do not ever follow this advice. This is a recipe for career stagnation and for becoming a sycophant. A culture is very wrong when people are encouraged to prioritize the interests of their managers over the mission of the company.

Managers do communicate intent, make decisions, and sometimes override suggestions. Those are necessary for being effective in their jobs. However, these actions must be aligned with the company’s mission to be justifiable. While this line can be blurry, once crossed, it becomes crystal clear to everyone.

Corruption

A manager who is aware that flattery and bootlicking are happening—and they know it 100% of the time—and allows it to continue is being corrupt in multiple ways.

1. Employees as serfs: When people are seen as tools to make oneself look “good,” they are being treated as modern-day equivalents of serfs who lack initiative and ownership of their work.
2. Misalignment: Power and priorities are shifted from customers to the internal politics of a middle manager.
3. Signaling of wrong incentives: Optimizations are made to please the “boss.”
4. Morale: The team knows that the manager plays favorites. Morale suffers, the best employees leave, quality of products and services deteriorates, and the company pays the price—together with all employees.
5. Compromised decision-making: Decisions will not be based on what is best for customers and the company but rather on what maintains the status quo for the manager and his/her alliances.
6. Abuse of power: Compensation and promotions will be held as hostages, pending on “delivering” an elusive goal that is ever-changing (i.e., moving the goalpost).

And what happens when such a manager leaves? It is likely that the people reporting to him or her will have a hard time justifying the value of their contributions. There will always be a suspicion that they were not merit-based.

It should never be like that

If you, for whatever reason, are in this situation (yes, sometimes life is complicated), do all you can to find a better job elsewhere, as soon as your circumstances permit.

In a healthy working relationship, both manager and managed support each other to be successful doing the work and to execute on the mission of the company.