Dealing with my boss... tips?

My boss is really getting on my damn nerves. He has been for awhile but it's becoming harder and harder to let things just roll off my back.

I work as a software developer and when I first started it was just him and I - we were in the same position. We were just a 2 man show for a somewhat large (300+) business. Eventually the projects started rolling in and we became bigger and bigger. Soon enough he became the boss and I elected to just stay a software developer (hey, I like it!).

I've been working here for about 5 years now and about a year in is when we became a bigger shop and he became boss. I ended up becoming lead developer.

First, there are some good things. On a personal level he can be okay - if there's a non-work function with beers and what-not involved then he can be cool to talk to, hang out with...etc. Also good is that he smokes pot (casually) and he knows I smoke and he doesn't care. He even knows I smoke at work from time to time and as long as I get my shit done (which I always do) he doesn't mind - big ups there.

As a manager - he SUCKS! It almost seems like he tries to annoy people. He works the floor like a sweatshop a lot of times. I'll see him hover around desks and there will be times where I'll have to debug complex issues and he will not leave my cube - he will sit down and wait until it's finished - very annoying. He no longer believes in testing thoroughly or documentation or anything of the like (he did when he was a developer) now it's just GO GO GO! He doesn't want to see us have developer meetings or talk at all - he would rather see heads down and fingers coding. This bites him in the ass on every project (we get a lot of bugs without proper testing) but he always blames us.

He is very much a finger pointer in a very destructive way. Just today for instance he couldn't find a project I created in source control (sort of a central storage for all source code) so I get an email saying "I can't believe you LIED to ME! I asked you HUNDREDS of times if EVERYTHING you wrote is in source control and YOU SAID YES EVERY TIME AND NOW I FIND OUT YOU ARE LYING TO ME! WE NEED TO TALK NOW!" When I went in his office we discovered that he just wasn't looking in the right place. No apologies, no nothing - just started the day out destructive which sort of set the tone for the rest of the day. He approaches most problems in this manner. Usually the deadlines bit him in the ass because often-times they are just downright impossible to meet. He'll just blame us.

He gives INSANE deadlines for projects and promises clients they will get done. One example is I had to write this task tracking software to track all the employees in a law firm (500+), track all their outsourcing, track efficiency for each person, department, region...etc - develop reports for which is the most efficient employee, most efficent region. This all had to be fully featured (able to add new enterprises, regions, employees, departments...etc sorta like Active Directory), use different efficiency algorithms, had to include all the required security...etc and it had to be fully up and running in... 2 WEEKS! Thats to develop the database, the software, the training documents - everything. Well, I worked over 110 hours per week for those 2 weeks while everyone else is working their normal 40, getting their weekends off...etc (for some reason only I was tasked with this project) but I actually got it done - at least the bulk. I didn't get a thanks and in fact I got yelled at because one of the grids on the interface showed a column with the record ID (for testing, forgot to take it out). So for all that work I got screamed at for an insignificant "bug".

I'll get off my soap-box now but the point is that he's just negative. Nobody likes him. He's very destructive in his approach to everything and it always blows up in his face - but then he just points the finger at one of us. It's too bad because I like what I do and I like everyone else there but he's just too much - I can't take all the negativity coming from him every single day and soon enough I'm going to blow the hell up. We have argued before but I feel like I'm going to fly off the handle.

Sorry, I'm off the box now. Any tips?

EDIT: I suppose I should comment that he's quite up in the chain of command and he brown-noses the shit out of the few that are above him and they love him. Trying to go over his head would surely be a disaster.

 

The only problem is that he's already pretty high in the chain. Going above is disaster for sure. I'd literally be talking to the CEO of a fairly large firm. And the guys above him are similar in their approach to problem-solving unfortunately.

 

That's funny, I gave him a book called "Software Project Survival Guide" which details how essential it is to implement proper testing and what-not. He laughed and said that's just not how it works in the real world. How the hell would he know... this was his first software job and it's certainly his first manager-type job (I have no idea how he made it so far up the chain so fast though).

 

I suppose... it was a very rough day at work.

Also the only advice I've really been given is to go above him and I tried to edit my post fast enough to include why I can't do that. I suppose I just wanted to hop on the box for a minute - just ignore this thread.

 

I like where this is heading...