My first job out of collage, I had a boss who was a total and complete moron. This guy was the epitome of the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert. He treated me well, it's just he asked me to do some of the most moronic engineering. Still, we were never on bad terms. He was perhaps too much a "nice guy" boss to be really effective. He always bent-over-backwards for anyone who challenged him so our department got walked over constantly and numerous virtual take-overs by other department managers resulted. Eventually, our whole department got downsized into non-existence and everyone got re-assigned. I quit at that point since I didn't want to relocate to a different state.

My second big job was pure hell. It was a revolving door of talent. They hired 5 engineers every week and laid off 5. Once your specific talents were deemed used up, out you went like a used condom. Being a company always looking for employee-du-jour, I interviewed with them and was damned near insulted by my interviewer. Three weeks later, a placement agency called to place me at this job. They assured me they were only looking for a short term, high pay contract dealing with my specialty from my previous job and it would only be 3 to 4 weeks at most. I didn't care. I needed money. I took it.

I was there for 9 months treated like a ghost in a sea of cubicles. The plus side, I had good pay, the bad side, the conditions were miserable and management treated the contract employees like filth; always dangling the carrot of "if you do good, we'll hire you permanently". They never did. When they dumped me on a Tuesday (after my direct boss there just gave me two new assignments that morning) I actually felt more relief than anything.

My current job I love. My boss is very cool and friendly, even though we share few common interests we get along extremely well. My current job is also with a tiny company of about 14 office employees and maybe 10 shop employees as opposed to the huge megacorp I worked for in the first job (major automaker), and the midsize hell of my second job (45 office, 100 shop). My boss treats me with respect that I admit sometimes I don't deserve but I find myself wanting to put in the extra mile with my work. At this point, I've got a bit of seniority so it makes the position that much sweeter.

I got extremely lucky with this one. My recommendation, your new job doesn't sound all that bad. It may be too early to receive the respect that transforms you from "the new guy" to "part of the family". Write your email status to organize your thoughts and when you call with your daily status (that's micromanagement right there though, so red-flag ) just read off from your screen.

If you start getting sick about it, bring it up with your boss. Tell him you don't see the need to waste XX minutes a day with a daily phone call when a project spreadsheet that can be updated and emailed in seconds would be more efficient and provide a paper trail for when problems arise. After a bit of time, say a year or two. If you're just getting sick of your manager or he isn't changing his ways, start looking.