Switching from one thesis supervisor to another is hardly a "rebellion". In fact it's a fairly common thing: in my own PhD program it seems to happen roughly 5-10% of the time. (In institutions with a higher rate of faculty turnover, it is probably more common.) And switching advisors is much easier than any form of "starting over a PhD". You should definitely look into this: starting by identifying some other faculty member in your program that you think would be a more suitable supervisor, and see if they are amenable to research-related discussions.

Your claim that your advisor "really is incompetent" is disturbing. I am a bit skeptical of it: not necessarily through arrogance, graduate students often have unrealistic ideas about faculty knowledge. If you walk into my office and ask me a question about something, maybe I can answer it right away and maybe I can't. But if I can't it might still be in one of my papers! Being an expert is much more about knowing how to find out important information / solve problems eventually than about what can summon at a moment's notice. In general I feel like I am fairly helpful in providing information to others in a professional context, but I have had the experience of people who for whatever reason simply don't wait a reasonable amount of time for me to answer their question. I remember one person in particular who would ask me a question cold, and after less than a minute of my thinking about it, he would say "Never mind" and move on to something else. That was rather frustrating: what kind of question is important enough to deliberately ask someone else yet not important enough to wait a few minutes for a good response?

Another point is that there are levels of expertise. Most faculty members are regional, national or global experts on something; but that thing or things may not be what they are teaching in all their courses or even what they want their students to work on. One of the hard parts of the advisor/student relationship is to find a topic of mutual interest in which the advisor's expertise is strong and can be appropriately conveyed to the student. Oftentimes this requires some patience and several tries: most of my students have not written their thesis on the first thing I suggested to them.

Anyway, though I may not want to, I have to admit the possibility that there are truly incompetent faculty members supervising PhD students. That sucks. If you feel this way about your advisor that's more than enough reason to look for a new advisor. But I think that in practice you should keep this to yourself as a reason for switching, at least until your thesis is approved and you are ready to move on to your new job. To have an incompetent tenured professor is only possible through some alarming combination of enabling / incompetence / total lack of contact or oversight on the part of the other faculty in the department. Fixing that kind of problem is above your pay grade.

Added: Though switching to a different faculty member in your department is easiest, it need not be the best choice: there may or may not be another suitable advisor in your current department. It's quite possible to transfer from one PhD program to another: doing so need not be (and probably will not be, unless you promote it this way yourself) a failure or rebellion. If you have only been in your current program for a year or two, you could plausibly start fresh elsewhere. If it's been more than that, you may want to look into the possibility of arriving at another program with advanced standing, up to "ABD status". Also, (especially) if you are American and studying in Europe, maybe consider coming back to the US, especially if that's part of your post-PhD plans. I mention that because coming back to your native country provides a sort of implicit explanation for your change of programs: many fewer questions will be asked of you.

Switching from one thesis supervisor to another is hardly a "rebellion". In fact it's a fairly common thing: in my own PhD program it seems to happen roughly 5-10% of the time. (In institutions with a higher rate of faculty turnover, it is probably more common.) And switching advisors is much easier than any form of "starting over a PhD". You should definitely look into this: starting by identifying some other faculty member in your program that you think would be a more suitable supervisor, and see if they are amenable to research-related discussions.

Your claim that your advisor "really is incompetent" is disturbing. I am a bit skeptical of it: not necessarily through arrogance, graduate students often have unrealistic ideas about faculty knowledge. If you walk into my office and ask me a question about something, maybe I can answer it right away and maybe I can't. But if I can't it might still be in one of my papers! Being an expert is much more about knowing how to find out important information / solve problems eventually than about what can be summoned at a moment's notice. In general I feel like I am fairly helpful in providing information to others in a professional context, but I have had the experience of people who for whatever reason simply don't wait a reasonable amount of time for me to answer their question. I remember one person in particular who would ask me a question cold, and after less than a minute of my thinking about it, he would say "Never mind" and move on to something else. That was rather frustrating: what kind of question is important enough to deliberately ask someone else yet not important enough to wait a few minutes for a good response?

Another point is that there are levels of expertise. Most faculty members are regional, national or global experts on something; but that thing or things may not be what they are teaching in all their courses or even what they want their students to work on. One of the hard parts of the advisor/student relationship is to find a topic of mutual interest in which the advisor's expertise is strong and can be appropriately conveyed to the student. Oftentimes this requires some patience and several tries: most of my students have not written their thesis on the first thing I suggested to them.

Anyway, though I may not want to, I have to admit the possibility that there are truly incompetent faculty members supervising PhD students. That sucks. If you feel this way about your advisor that's more than enough reason to look for a new advisor. But I think that in practice you should keep this to yourself as a reason for switching, at least until your thesis is approved and you are ready to move on to your new job. To have an incompetent tenured professor is only possible through some alarming combination of enabling / incompetence / total lack of contact or oversight on the part of the other faculty in the department. Fixing that kind of problem is above your pay grade.

Added: Though switching to a different faculty member in your department is easiest, it need not be the best choice: there may or may not be another suitable advisor in your current department. It's quite possible to transfer from one PhD program to another: doing so need not be (and probably will not be, unless you promote it this way yourself) a failure or rebellion. If you have only been in your current program for a year or two, you could plausibly start fresh elsewhere. If it's been more than that, you may want to look into the possibility of arriving at another program with advanced standing, up to "ABD status". Also, (especially) if you are American and studying in Europe, maybe consider coming back to the US, especially if that's part of your post-PhD plans. I mention that because coming back to your native country provides a sort of implicit explanation for your change of programs: many fewer questions will be asked of you.

Switching from one thesis supervisor to another is hardly a "rebellion". In fact it's a fairly common thing: in my own PhD program it seems to happen roughly 5-10% of the time. (In institutions with a higher rate of faculty turnover, it is probably more common.) And switching advisors is much easier than any form of "starting over a PhD". You should definitely look into this: starting by identifying some other faculty member in your program that you think would be a more suitable supervisor, and see if they are amenable to research-related discussions.

Your claim that your advisor "really is incompetent" is disturbing. I am a bit skeptical of it: not necessarily through arrogance, graduate students often have unrealistic ideas about faculty knowledge. If you walk into my office and ask me a question about something, maybe I can answer it right away and maybe I can't. But if I can't it might still be in one of my papers! Being an expert is much more about knowing how to find out important information / solve problems eventually than about what can summon at a moment's notice. In general I feel like I am fairly helpful in providing information to others in a professional context, but I have had the experience of people who for whatever reason simply don't wait a reasonable amount of time for me to answer their question. I remember one person in particular who would ask me a question cold, and after less than a minute of my thinking about it, he would say "Never mind" and move on to something else. That was rather frustrating: what kind of question is important enough to deliberately ask someone else yet not important enough to wait a few minutes for a good response?

Another point is that there are levels of expertise. Most faculty members are regional, national or global experts on something; but that thing or things may not be what they are teaching in all their courses or even what they want their students to work on. One of the hard parts of the advisor/student relationship is to find a topic of mutual interest in which the advisor's expertise is strong and can be appropriately conveyed to the student. Oftentimes this requires some patience and several tries: most of my students have not written their thesis on the first thing I suggested to them.

Anyway, though I may not want to, I have to admit the possibility that there are truly incompetent faculty members supervising PhD students. That sucks. If you feel this way about your advisor that's more than enough reason to look for a new advisor. But I think that in practice you should keep this to yourself as a reason for switching, at least until your thesis is approved and you are ready to move on to your new job. To have an incompetent tenured professor is only possible through some alarming combination of enabling / incompetence / total lack of contact or oversight on the part of the other faculty in the department. Fixing that kind of problem is above your pay grade.

Switching from one thesis supervisor to another is hardly a "rebellion". In fact it's a fairly common thing: in my own PhD program it seems to happen roughly 5-10% of the time. (In institutions with a higher rate of faculty turnover, it is probably more common.) And switching advisors is much easier than any form of "starting over a PhD". You should definitely look into this: starting by identifying some other faculty member in your program that you think would be a more suitable supervisor, and see if they are amenable to research-related discussions.

Your claim that your advisor "really is incompetent" is disturbing. I am a bit skeptical of it: not necessarily through arrogance, graduate students often have unrealistic ideas about faculty knowledge. If you walk into my office and ask me a question about something, maybe I can answer it right away and maybe I can't. But if I can't it might still be in one of my papers! Being an expert is much more about knowing how to find out important information / solve problems eventually than about what can summon at a moment's notice. In general I feel like I am fairly helpful in providing information to others in a professional context, but I have had the experience of people who for whatever reason simply don't wait a reasonable amount of time for me to answer their question. I remember one person in particular who would ask me a question cold, and after less than a minute of my thinking about it, he would say "Never mind" and move on to something else. That was rather frustrating: what kind of question is important enough to deliberately ask someone else yet not important enough to wait a few minutes for a good response?

Another point is that there are levels of expertise. Most faculty members are regional, national or global experts on something; but that thing or things may not be what they are teaching in all their courses or even what they want their students to work on. One of the hard parts of the advisor/student relationship is to find a topic of mutual interest in which the advisor's expertise is strong and can be appropriately conveyed to the student. Oftentimes this requires some patience and several tries: most of my students have not written their thesis on the first thing I suggested to them.

Anyway, though I may not want to, I have to admit the possibility that there are truly incompetent faculty members supervising PhD students. That sucks. If you feel this way about your advisor that's more than enough reason to look for a new advisor. But I think that in practice you should keep this to yourself as a reason for switching, at least until your thesis is approved and you are ready to move on to your new job. To have an incompetent tenured professor is only possible through some alarming combination of enabling / incompetence / total lack of contact or oversight on the part of the other faculty in the department. Fixing that kind of problem is above your pay grade.

Added: Though switching to a different faculty member in your department is easiest, it need not be the best choice: there may or may not be another suitable advisor in your current department. It's quite possible to transfer from one PhD program to another: doing so need not be (and probably will not be, unless you promote it this way yourself) a failure or rebellion. If you have only been in your current program for a year or two, you could plausibly start fresh elsewhere. If it's been more than that, you may want to look into the possibility of arriving at another program with advanced standing, up to "ABD status". Also, (especially) if you are American and studying in Europe, maybe consider coming back to the US, especially if that's part of your post-PhD plans. I mention that because coming back to your native country provides a sort of implicit explanation for your change of programs: many fewer questions will be asked of you.