These are possibilities but I think you missed a much more likely one -- they're just bullies who like to pick on people.

If they were just bullies, then there shouldn't be a preference for hypothetical UI and architecture folks.

Even bullies can be lazy in their metier - it's quicker and easier to find a tangible target for abuse in a finished product, and, perhaps more importantly, it doesn't risk an ego brusing when a critique of an abstract proves to be incorrect.

I've certainly seen my fair share of these types - too busy (ie. lazy) to really get stuck into detail during a project even when invited to do so, but very quick to point out an issue after a few minutes of expressly looking for one when it's too late.

They seem to see it as demonstrating their experience and superiority over others ie. "I only need a few minutes to find an issue". In my experiences, they also tend to insist on saying "everything needs to go through me", but never make time to follow through - out of laziness. This gives a high ROI on effort expended to stress created.

The best times I had with these people (when I was beyond caring) was laying low and doing launches semi covertly, so that there was time for clients to provide positive feedback and praise first. Then play dumb and deliver news about launch and feedback as a package.

Is this true? Are bullies indiscriminate and swing in all directions or do they focus on where the power dynamic benefits them? I feel like I've seen both.

I'd call that the difference between bullies and sociopaths.

At least to me, one of the defining bully characteristics is an inability to moderate their own behavior, even for their own benefit.

A sociopath can bully people though. In terms of words I don't think the distinction you're talking about is widely accepted.

That falls under the "feeling superior" bucket. And like others have said it doesn't explain bias towards certain people.

Yes it could. The boss seems to show strong tendencies of narcissism. Narcissists gather so called “flying monkeys” around them which fuel their sense of superiority and they bind them through various techniques to them (until they are also discarded). In this case the narcissist the PowerPoint-mockup people are these flying monkeys, feeding the narcissist all the grandiose ideas and it gives the narcissist a high for going towards that idea - similar how somebody just announcing they will do a hard task, e.g. stop smoking will make somebody feel good immediately before even reaching that goal.

Then, the people to whom the actual task of implementing it was left can’t deliver the grandiose perfectionist idea, and the narcissistic boss can and actually wants to fiercely abuse their power over them in order to feed on the high of superiority and control over them. It’s the perfect position for this kind of person, they can feel high all the time (eventually the tolerance will kick in and the boss must leave though but this can take some time).

Organization-wise it’s a bad boss really. It’s the job of the creatives to come up with great ideas, then the boss should moderate that working together with the feedback from the implementers. Instead the boss is due to personal weakness too suggestible against the creatives and puts the damage of his own making on to the team with bullying.

Thank you for bringing narcissism to the table and explaining the flying monkeys so well! Especially in this two staged process of designing and implementing it's easy to pick up the utopian ideas and see the realistic implementation and/or timetable on which one can blame the inperfect people not reaching the high (unreachable) goals.

> 1. These people are dreamers and dislike people who bring them back down to reality, even if they need those people to actually build things.

I worked for a non-toxic-personality friendly boss of this type. Took me a long time to figure out how to manage upward in that case. Everything that had worked with previous "builder"-type bosses seemed to backfire and I wasn't sure why.

Because the personality was good it was especially frustrating. Deliver stuff on time without bugs or surprises, but still fail to change his mind about ambitious-yet-unrealistic goals, or put a dent in his confidence in (and preference for) the "idea people" feeding him similar goals in hypothetical-land. "But really, if you'd just build [vague idea], we'd be golden!"