[hopespringseternal]

He hires people based on how convincingly they suck up to him.

I think you are exactly right. He is a bit narcissistic and definitely expends a tremendous amount of energy feeding his own ego.

Makes him very easy to manipulate by the right kind of person.

[Steely Tom]

I hope I'm wrong.

But I've known managers like that during my career.

Makes him very easy to manipulate by the right kind of person.

Yeah, that's the problem. Well, one of the problems.

The other problem with managers like that is that they tend to do whatever the last person they talked to advised them to do.