I’m going to do what I always do. Out-perform everyone else here and hope for the best.
Preach it, brother! I think there’s an outside chance we actually work for the same company.
I’m experiencing a deliberate, organized version of what you describe.
That doesn’t always work, and can even work to your deteriment. To use my own example, there have been a few people who were the only ones here who had the skills to do certain work, but because the manager didn’t understand the work they did, seemed to think they weren’t doing enough, and just got more micromanaging and just random crap. They all eventually left, and now those jobs are either being done in a much more tedious way, getting done wrong, or just plain not getting done.
And even if you are more productive, some bosses would rather have two kiss-asses than one competent but “defiant” employee. Hell, a lot of them see a level of autonomy as a threat, or the lack of reporting of work being done as evidence of work being undone. There’s a guy here, pretty terrible at what he does, but sends out status reports at least once a day, often two or three times a day. No one wants to work with him, but he keeps getting put on high priority projects because, surprise, the micromanaging boss thinks he’s awesome.
General Dynamics? 
**Winston Smith **has a cold, and is depressed about work because he’s watched too closely. I think I just heard a clock strike 13.
Earlier this year, I worked with the micromanager from hell. She would stop me in the middle of throwing something away and want to know what it was, for Christ’s sake. Everybody hated her. The final straw for me was when she forbade me from asking my coworker questions about work, because she wanted every single question about everything to go through her, so she could know exactly what I do and don’t know. I left that job months ago and I still get pissed off when I think about her. I love my current job and my boss is pretty much the opposite extreme.
What I’m telling you is find a new job before you become an empty, bitter shell of a human being. I’m not a person prone to hate, but I fucking hate that woman. I hope her organization fails spectacularly. I still daydream about telling her off, and get all angry for no damn reason. Don’t become me.
Oh, and if you absolutely must work there, find some time where you can get together with your coworkers and just bitch about your boss. That’s how we survived.
I work very hard, volunteer for most anything that comes my way, take on new challenges and learn new skills. I lead all new technology deployments, run the projects, manage the upgrades, mentor staff. My name is on everything, and I’m widely sought after to assist on projects in other departments. I’m not exactly defiant. I do what I’m told to do, and I do it well. Even these reports. As much as I don’t like doing them, my reports are held up as an example of how they should be written. My real problem is that I actually (for the most part) enjoy my job - it’s interesting, challenging and intellectually stimulating. But this sort of micromanaging nonsense is a huge distraction and makes me less productive.
Oh man, I feel your pain. I recently posted a workplace gripe about being dinged on my end-of-year performance review because apparently I didn’t keep my boss informed enough about my work during the year. This despite me sending weekly summaries to her, having weekly one-on-ones with her, and setting up monthly meetings in the office for discussing project updates. Never mind also that she never even told me this was a problem until she evaluated me. Hopefully the boss doesn’t expect you to read his mind too, because that trait combined with micromanagment is a comical nightmare.
I’ve taken some tentative steps toward the door. I’ve actually landed a side-job that could turn into a permanent, full-time gig if I want it to. Here’s the thing: my (immediate) boss (between me and micromanager) knows I’m getting tired of the BS, so he’s doing what he can to keep me happy. So, I pretty much come and go as I please, take comp days when I want, and he’s arranging some business travel for me - Houston, China and UK (because he knows I like to travel). So, it’s not all terrible. My boss is a really good guy, and we understand each other. And I think he’s made it clear that I’m the capstone employee. So, I’ve got some incentive to ride this out.
I think the yearly review is a bunch of bullshit. Last year, my boss dinged me for not communicating well enough well enough, so I stepped up my game in that regard, and asked him fairly regularly if I’d improved. He said I had improved remarkably, and that it was no longer and issue. Till review time again. I reminded him of the previous year and he just sort of shrugged.
It is a deliberate method of denying you any more than a cost of living increase every year (if that), by focusing on your shortcomings instead of your strong points.
If this guy is like my boss, he’ll look for a fault in you to complain about. Pleasing a micromanager is like playing a game of wack-a-mole.
Better hope his management style is a sign of incompetence so massive that his higher ups can’t tolerate it, and he’s let go.
As a middle manager, I get to both micromanage and be micromanaged at the same time!
Seriously though, most of the advice given so far is terrible.
Speaking as a manager, one of the challenges with any employee or team of employees is making sure they are working on the correct tasks and working on them correctly. You don’t want to be up their ass micromanaging every detail (otherwise you could just do it yourself), and you don’t want to be so removed that no one on your team knows what you look like.
How do you report your time? When I was in management consulting, we would have to file our time every week through our online time management software. Everyone hated doing in, but it has to be done because that’s how the company gets paid. It’s also how practice leaders measure overall performance of the business.
Tracking time is different from managing tasks. Believe me, if you find that I am up your ass every two minutes, it’s because you have somehow proven to me that you either don’t know what you are doing, don’t seem to be getting it done in a timely manner or otherwise not doing your job properly.
Chances are, since your director is new, a lot of his micromanagement may be the result of him trying to learn what you actually do. I find it interesting that much of his reporting is based on “what you are doing” versus “here is what I’d like you to do”. Being a new manager is difficult because you are supposed to be the trusted leader and expert, but you don’t really know anything about your team, what they work on, or the interal processes within the company.
My advice, and what I typically do with both my underdrones and the overgoons I report to, is to set up a formal communication plan. Typically once a week, send a detailed email of what accomplished that week, what you plan to work on the following week, any longer term activities in your pipeline and any issues, risks or challenges you face. Try to set up a time each week to discuss as well.
What will typically happen is once your manager trusts that you know what you are doing and are getting the job done, he won’t need to be up your ass every two minutes.
I’d also offer to spend some time with him teaching him about what you do.
Performance reviews are bullshit. They are just a way for companies to exert control over their employees. Unless you are in sales and have actual tangible numbers to guage your performance by, they are completely arbitrary. At the end of the day, most places will simply rank you in order by how much the management team likes you, whether it’s a forced curve grading, the Jack Welch A,B, C ranking system or just a straight ranking. The actual raises are determined by your groups budget.
Also, the company doesn’t need any rationale for “denying you any more than a cost of living increase”. They will just pay whatever they think the market thinks your worth until there is an exodus of key personal.
I agree with msmith537’s post.
In addition, keeping detailed track of what you are doing is not necessarily micromanaging, and as posted above regarding consulting billing, I’ve been in environments where every 15 minutes was tracked.
Micromanaging is when they tell you exactly how to do the stuff you are doing. That’s annoying.
I’ve been doing my job for five years. My current supervisor is the one who hired me to do it. I’ve always kicked ass at it. Now we have a new director who is apparently forcing his supervisors to hold their employees “more accountable.” Than means micromanage in my (and most of my peers’) book. Also, I am no longer able to come up with ideas on my own; I have to drive a program that I’m handed in the exact way I’m told, no argument, no input, with constant dressing-down when I do anything my own way.
How do I handle it? I’m actively and aggressively looking for a new job.
He does. Not so much with me but a lot with my team.
I deal with it by finding something else to do. It’s an intolerable working condition in my book. One of the reasons I’ve spent most of my life working for myself. At the moment I work for someone else and I have the opposite problem, management is too hands off. I end up doing their job for them.
Not so Happy, eh?
I handle micromanaging the same way as everyone else; do what they’re asking for, bitch to my co-workers/husband, quit if it gets completely insane. I probably have a higher tolerance for it than a lot of workers, being a temporary office worker. I get paid by the hour; if you want to spend hours of my day filling in reports of what I’m doing with my time, fine by me. I get paid the same as actually being productive. 
Raises are determined by budget, but usually over the whole group. But what happens is that Bob is below market, and Sandy has really valuable institutional knowledge and has been showing up dressed in suits and leaving work early and they want to keep her. Then you have John, who really does need to get promoted, he’s been acting at a senior level for two years, but the budget doesn’t exist, so the manager cuts a deal to promote him within budget. So they budget a 3% increase, Bob gets 4%, Sandy gets a big 5% raise, and John gets his promotion and a 5% raise (and is now below market, next year he’s Bob) - even if their performance numbers are the same as everyone else’s - and everyone else gets less than the 3%.
Way back when I had a group and a budget, the game “who do we NEED to reward and who can we screw over” had to happen every year. It was not a fun game, but that was how it worked.