Typical traits of a PHB
- Does not understand what his employees do for a living.
- Enjoys using buzzwords such as "synergy", "leadership", "evangelize", "competency", "collaboration", "Empowerment", "Quality", and
"team-enhancing", often to escape having to commit or be precise.
- Pretends to understand technology, but is really clueless. He often shifts towards buzzwords (see above) to compensate or
change subject.
- Easily mesmerized by silver-tongued sales people peddling management or technology fads.
- Decisions seem random or capricious.
- Gross failures of logic, such as holding long meetings to discuss why a project is behind schedule.
- Likes meetings because he/she does not know how to use email properly or does not want their bad decisions committed to
writing.
- Steals his employees' ideas and presents them as his own, almost always to the same employees.
- Is always right.
- You warn him/her to do X or else Y will happen. He doesn't do X. Y happens. You somehow get the blame.
- Doesn't seem to remember anything beyond a month's range.
- Rewards employees based on how well they stroke his/her ego instead of how well they do their job.
- More focused on sounding important than being important.
Taken from Wikipedia's entry on the PHB.
Here's another interesting article about how to deal with PHBs.