How do you deal with a bad manager?

Start by naming the problem precisely, because the responses differ. A disorganized or overloaded manager often improves with structure you supply: written recaps after conversations, a shared priorities list, agreed deadlines, and short regular check-ins that reduce their need to interrupt. An absent manager requires you to build your own visibility through other stakeholders and written updates. An insecure or credit-taking manager calls for documenting your work in ways that travel, project records, cross-functional relationships, and results other leaders see directly. In all three cases, staying calm, professional, and factual protects your position and often improves the relationship more than confrontation does.

Genuinely abusive behavior, harassment, discrimination, retaliation, threats, is a different category and should not be absorbed as a management style problem. Document specifics with dates, keep copies outside company systems where lawful, understand your employer's reporting process and HR's actual role, which is protecting the company rather than you, and know that certain conduct is illegal and enforced by agencies like the EEOC and state equivalents. Even short of that line, the honest calculation is that people rarely change managers by wishing, so the realistic options are adapting, transferring internally, or leaving. Start a quiet job search early rather than late, since searching from a position of employment and composure beats searching from burnout.