[nostrademons]

Good engineers can ship with a bad manager, but it basically requires one of the engineers "managing up" and taking on the role of manager without pissing off his actual manager. That's a delicate balance to strike, but there are some folks (usually experienced engineers who have been around the block a few times, or folks who have previously held manager/executive positions but "downshifted" because they really like to code) that can pull it off.

[collyw]

That sound like my situation where my team leader is not very experienced (or good in my opinion). As such I often refuse to do things the way he suggests. "Just do it like this". When the word "just" is part of the phrase, it means that he probably hasn't thought it out very thoroughly.

[nostrademons]

When I've seen this done effectively, the engineer never outright refuses to do things the way their manager says. Instead, they take responsibility for educating their manager, in a way that the manager can understand and without threatening their ego. So if the manager says "Just do it like this", your response should be "That won't work because X, Y, and Z. However, I could do it like this, and it will have these costs and benefits and take me this long, and that's why I believe this is a superior course of action." At all points the decision is still up to the manager, but the senior engineer has brought enough data and experience to bear that they can convince their manager that it was a good idea to begin with.