Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?
97 comments
·October 25, 2025jdlshore
VP of Eng here. If we take your statements at face value, your manager isn’t doing his job. Toxic employees are death to companies and it’s management’s job to get rid of them. (After attempting to address the issue. But my experience is that toxics are gonna toxic. Don’t coddle them.)
If you’re willing to lightly scorch some bridges, talk to your skip-level manager. If that doesn’t work, or you don’t want to, your best option is to go work for a decent manager, either at the same company or another one. Life’s too short, and you’re not going to be able to fix the toxic employee.
In other words, get someone who can help, or get out. Take your friends with you.
imetatroll
Now how do I deal with an engineer who seems to be brilliant - though this is sometimes hard to gauge since code quality can be subjective - who always leaps in to answer things quicker and is loved by upper management because he, I guess, constantly codes even outside of work hours, but who is extremely grating to get along with. Lord I need a different job.
tacostakohashi
That sounds very familiar to me... I know of a guy like that, who will rapidly jump on and propose and implement half-baked "tactical" solutions to any production incident. As you say, he is valued by management, because he is very responsive, at all hours, and always has some kind of snake oil "fix" to offer for any problem, and generally maintains a bit of a "mad scientist" vibe.
The issue is that, most of his "fixes" are just rearranging deck chairs, increasing timeouts, decreasing timeouts, adding memory, upgrading random libraries, etc., and he's constantly operating in "emergency mode", trampling on other people's work and priorities to get his "urgent" stuff out the door. He also just sort of throws things at the wall - "what if we change / disable X to fix this, would that break any client use cases?"... well, I dunno buddy, you are the one proposing the change, you have access to the logs, you are the genius, why is it _my_ job to evaluate your stream of half-baked ideas to separate the wheat from the chaff?
Ultimately, we co-exist, and I'd even say there are things to learn from him, i.e. being responsive is important and hugely valued. Over time, I've learnt not to get sucked into his urgent, half-baked proposals to save the world, I just say look, if you think that's a good idea, go for it, do it, but... you don't get to force it down everyone's throat and pretend there is consensus, I have my own, different priorities that I am not going to drop for you.
actsasbuffoon
I’d go so far as to say that you and this other engineer both fill vital roles on your team. It’s not that you’re right or he’s right; you’re both right.
I’ve been on teams where I needed to be the methodical engineer who carefully built critical infrastructure and agonized over every decision. I’m currently at a small startup that hasn’t yet reached breakeven, so I’m scrambling like crazy to build things our customers and investors will pay for. That’s what this team needs.
Thank goodness for both of you. Your team would be worse for it if they lacked either.
frank_nitti
Great insight and advice I need to take - your description captures my current situation almost to a tee, better than I’ve been able to understand it for myself, so thank you.
In addition to what you described, in my case this engineer quickly recognizes other highly-effective and/or important people, and aggressively tries to build that reputation by privately messaging and even privately demoing work where the recipient has some stake in the outcome.
I would onboard him to a project, sharing all of my tools, key contacts and personal insights, e.g.
“our manager Smith is hinting that there is a big customer interested in X capability, which I’ve discussed with their power user Wilson and product owner Flores informally in recent demos. I think we could use Y approach and want to start prototyping if we get the go-ahead”
This engineer would start messaging Flores, Wilson and Smith privately and schedule calls about X excluding me and other core maintainers to push the thing forward, often proposing Y in his own words.
This strategy worked wonders for him in terms of upward movement. He is a diligent and extremely responsive to important people. But the strong engineers from whom he has effectively stolen credit, or even the opportunity to have a seat at the table in critical early discussions, obviously resent it.
His direct manager is lackadaisical and basically just gets bombarded by this engineer asking for frequent, long 1-1 calls where he shares “his” accomplishments and ideas. I’ve watched this play out in person (we are a remote-only team except for big project-related events) — his manager clearly trying to leave the event after it concluded, keys in hand and facing his car door, everyone else has said goodbye and given space, and this engineer keeps him there talking for no less than 10 more minutes.
I’ve never met someone so comically ambitious and overzealous to be seen as the MVP He was promoted in record time, much to the frustration of stronger and more critical maintainers.
I am baffled by the whole thing, and just laugh at this point. My most charitable interpretation of manager’s actions are that they do recognize the dynamic, and just don’t care because ultimately their job is slightly easier for the meantime. But if any 2+ of the critical core maintainers split in frustration, the whole thing will suffer, badly
ETA: it seems to me that remote-only teams are particularly susceptible to this kind of thing getting out of hand, because the capacity for secret communication is immensely greater
golly_ned
This sounds similar to the guy I'm working with. He's great in certain ways and takes his job seriously but can be really grating to work with. (Frankly, I think it probably has something to do with taking stimulants, just based on similarities between him and another engineer I worked with who was open about being on a big dose of stimulants, and who resembles this guy but about 2x worse.)
golly_ned
Thank you for your advice.
> your manager isn’t doing his job
Yeah, I do believe this and agree. My manager's new, and hasn't gotten much guidance or mentorship. I feel like he depends on me for a lot, and since I don't have a clear answer for him in this situation since I'm actually involved in it, I think he doesn't know what to do. He's said in the past with respect to this engineer's conflict with a struggling engineer on the team -- publicly pointing out that engineer's mistakes and lack of progress -- that he was afraid to have this come up to our director's (his skip's) visibility to avoid making a bad impression.
I can see talking to my skip, and overall I think it'll have a decent chance of him being receptive, and that he has a good amount of trust for me. I think my manager will be understanding about what I've done and why, but it'll put friction and distance between me and him -- so far he's been an incredible advocate for me in everything. Everything except this, which is exactly what I really need him for, since it's affecting my well-being.
The hard part is pointing to specific behaviors that I'd like changed. It's really difficult since it can all be covered up as just doing work and participating in the team -- that's the nature of passive-aggressive behavior like this.
jdlshore
Based on what you’ve written, you owe it to your skip to have this conversation with him. This issue isn’t just affecting you, it’s affecting the whole team, and I guarantee it’s dragging down the performance of the team as a whole. (Team performance always jumps up after a toxic employee is removed, in my experience, no matter how brilliant or essential they seemed to be.)
Your manager’s fear of looking bad to his boss reflects his inexperience. (Or a dysfunctional organization, but let’s hope that’s not true.) It’s your skip’s job to provide mentoring to a new manager, and to support him in creating a high-performing team, which includes guiding him through using the company’s performance management process to take care of underperforming employees like your toxic coworker.
Since you have a good relationship with your skip, I think a frank conversation about the effect this person is having on the team will go well. You can also share that you’re worried about it blowing back on you, and your manager’s fear of looking bad. If your skip is smart, he’ll use that opportunity to take a more active hand in mentoring your manager without bringing your name into it.
johnwheeler
Yeah, fuck your boss. Guys an asshole. He knows how stressful it is for you and either doesn't do something about it because the guy's nice to him, or because he's threatened by you and he knows that having this dickhead around gives him leverage against you. Worst-case scenario: he's just plain incompetent. I guess there is no worst-case scenario. They're all terrible.
icedrop
This is phenomenal advice. The post itself strikes me as either lifted directly from reddit (experienceddevs or another sub), but your advice is generally great for any reader curious about how to handle this type of problem employee.
From the perspective of a line manager, your statement about not coddling and directly confronting the issue intuitively sound correct. If it's possible to address behavioral issues in this type of high-talent high-friction engineer, it actually doesn't hurt to bruise their ego a little--if anything, doing it respectfully means they listen, and value the feedback more than usual.
Edit: also, took a look at your profile--couldn't tell, what type of org are you VP of eng at? (Private, equity-funded, late-stage, early stage, fintech, biotech, saas, etc.). Curious as the advice rings sound, but I only saw your consultancy work.
jmkni
A slight left-field suggestion, but have you tried asking this 'competent jerk' if he wants to go for a coffee (or pint, depending on your culture)?
He might just not be aware he's being a jerk, have you tried having a casual, non-confrontational chat with him and raising your concerns?
ie "I respect you as an engineer but you can be difficult to work with sometimes"
Maybe he just isn't aware?
Sometimes you just need to communicate more and build alliances
throwaway290
This 100x. But it's not for everyone. If like me you are not good at social stuff it is hard to just get on this casual level and say "so what's been going on? those deadlines amirite?" to who you think is your enemy but it can lead to very nice results and +100 social XP
Maybe it turns out he is nice and all you need is to treat him so like he feels he's respected by you. Give him important jobs etc. It's easier after you go for drink/coffee and become a bit more chill with each other. And if he fails on something sensitive that you gave him then you don't have to struggle for proof to management that he sucks
But maybe BE prepared to confront if he starts it? Maybe it's just me but it's dreadful if you bring it up and this guy shoots you down with some snark and you freeze out of surprise and lose the meeting. I would if you are value to company and he is really being an outright asshole on this meeting be prepared to say "look if you're not gonna genuinely cooperate as your lead I'll officially file a complaint/recommend to boot you from this team/whatever" and leave. Be prepared to talk over your manager to his manager. Get your drink in takeaway cup
Document this guy's sabotages with a summary of what harm it did?
I hate politics
karlitooo
I've had mixed success with this. It works when you have a nice person going through a tough time in their life who doesn't realise they are reacting badly to everything. I don't think that applies here because this person seems to believe their rudeness is justifiable.
A habit of being an asshole is not cost effective to fix. And giving validation to their belief that they should have "important jobs" just gives them real power to bully you more.
Instead of rewarding bad behaviour, they need an unambiguous dressing down from someone they respect, and a PIP. But IME it's a waste of time, rip the bandaid off and get someone with better default settings.
jmkni
If it goes that way, the other advice in this thread is valid.
But at least try the non-confrontational 'lets have a coffee' approach first, especially if OP is their superior (which by the other comments, OP is).
throwaway290
Totally I edited it to say that first.
Also, it feels like that guy is defensive and feeling butthurt. So op can try pretend he's awesome and give him all the difficult tasks to prove. If he fails you know what to do. If he is good then less work for you.
As the lead you don't need to be always the rockstar, the coolest managers are the ones create chance for teammates to be rockstars.
(I had bad leads where it just felt like what is the point for me existing here as a code monkey if this guy sorted it all. Tho I would never sabotage it. I just quit;))
29athrowaway
The guy clearly is an underperformer that knows he cannot win through merit and instead wants to win by playing dirty.
Do not reward aggression towards you with attention and empathy.
You have to stay away from such people. The guy is likely someone with behavioral issues, bad personality traits and the undermining/sabotage could be a sign of a low skill workplace psychopath trying to manipulate and create a psychopathic fiction. You are not a therapist and it is not your job to fix that person.
When fire has nothing else to burn it consumes itself. Just don't add more fuel to the fire. Don't let that person be in your head, drain your energy. Do not ruminate about interactions with this person. Practice mental hygiene and focus on what's important: collaboration, your actual job, your goals, your friends and family, or something you can contribute in any way...
jmkni
There isn't nearly enough information in OP's post to draw that conclusion.
collingreen
I disagree - years of behavior pattern plus other people leaving for exactly the same reason is plenty of information.
In your eyes what WOULD be nearly enough information to draw that conclusion?
null
cwmoore
“Do not reward aggression towards you with attention and empathy.”
Source?
I really dislike this style of framing.
29athrowaway
Why would you let yourself be drained of your energy by someone who is determined to undermine your role and create a precedent that you can be disrespected without consequences? Not only having to tolerate the person but giving them your time and attention? Using your energy that would otherwise be meant to do your job efficiently, advance your career and meet expectations outside of work with your family and friends, etc.
If someone wants to play a different game, let them play alone. It must be clear that the game is collaborating towards a common goal, and if you want to play a different one then you will be playing alone.
We are a band, we are all playing an instrument for the same song requested by a customer, and if you want to play another song I won't start playing the notes of your song that nobody requested.
You can be kind to others, but you also have to be kind to yourself, your employer, and have respect for your profession and the sacrifice others have made to help you attain the position you have.
smus
What source can you possibly be looking for lmao
bargainbin
Been there, got the scars.
First thing, explain to them in writing how their behaviour impacts the team as a collective, not just you specifically.
If the behaviour persists, put them on a performance improvement plan. Specifically outline the behaviour that needs to change and importantly: hold the whole team to the same standard and scrutiny.
Three outcomes in order of likelihood:
- they take the hint and leave
- they improve enough to get the PIP off them
- you have justification for disciplinary actions including termination.
It’s a drain on your time and energy, but it’s a sure fire way to create an actionable record of this employees bad behaviour.
Make sure your boss and your skip-level are aware you’re taking this action - there’s nothing they can do to stop you doing it, and if they’re genuine they’ll appreciate that you’re putting in the effort to set this guy straight.
feydaykyn
Have you discussed with HR? Toxic employees should be their responsibility too.
As others suggested, take note and proof. Start by copying the exact same content you've published here, and complete it with new toxic behaviour. What will create a body of proofs HR will need and will "expel it" from your head.
I would also meet your manager's manager, this situation has taken too long to resolve and your manager is not doing enough (as far as we know at least). Ask your N+1 whether he has heard of the situation, if he has not your manager is in troubles.
Finally, you have not described how others employees are living through this situation, they may be upset to and be able to help: - they can report the employee behaviour - they can react when the employee is not behaving correctly - they can provide feedbacks, ideas, support?
I wish you all the best, this is a hard situation you're living!
golly_ned
I haven't, because I want the support of my manager, and he's resistant to going to HR because he is afraid of looking bad to our director. Really crappy situation.
Another thing is: it's really difficult to point to specific cases that really are "HR-worthy". That's the nature of passive-aggressive behavior. His treatment of another engineer, who has since been fired for performance, early this year really did qualify for HR based on how distressed the other employee was.
I think I may have to bring this up to my manager's manager, since my manager doesn't want to. It'll hurt my relationship with my manager, but I think this is feedback he really does need to hear and receive, or he'll just keep tolerating competent jerks on his teams.
Several other employees have had issues with him. The sense I get is they're really just seeking peace at this point and it's clear they're avoiding him. Since he's been there since the beginning he knows a lot that no one else does, but they rarely approach him for help -- he's made it clear to me in early 1:1s he isn't interested in investing more time in trying to up-level his peers.
He does have a good relationship with a junior engineer on the team, though, and may be developing a good one with another engineer that he probably has more respect for than me.
yobbo
The devil's advocate would lift a few points. The OP equates disagreement with conflict and sees the main cost as being loss of status and "hurting team vibe". They seem to make a point that their own main contribution is bringing stability (good vibes?) to the team.
It could be the story of a weak or unaware engineer/employee that has been promoted to a level they thought implied some sort of impunity. Because being reviewed or questioned weakens the public perception of them, they experience it as unfair and toxic. Using the word "trivial" to characterise critique directed towards them could be emotionally rather than technically motivated.
golly_ned
I think from what I've written, it could be possible to interpret this as the case. At least part of it's true -- I'm not nearly as experienced in some of the technologies this team uses as the other engineer who's been working on the team for a lot longer. I think I'm self-aware about what I know and what I don't, and defer to him in those cases. I do think that plays into why he doesn't seem to have much respect for me.
But the cases where we have the most conflict aren't those in which I'm reviewed or questioned, but in which I'm reviewing or questioning something about the other engineer. As an example -- there was recently an incident that resulted in a global outage for three hours due to a bad code change. The root cause was related to his change, which enabled another change to break the code. Users had to report this to us -- we didn't have alerts. The impact would directly affect growth and revenue, but in ways we can't quantitatively determine.
I said we should do a post-mortem, add an integration test that would prevent recurrence, and add an alert -- the other engineer vehemently pushed back, claiming that it was another team's fault, since the code was shared with them, and pushed for another action item that wouldn't improve our operational stance. The other engineer has never worked in an operationally excellent team, whereas I have -- any other engineer who has would see a post-mortem as obvious. I think the opposite that you describe is the case; the other engineer still sees himself as effectively 'the lead', and wants to prove it, so is vulnerable and sensitive to loss of status or criticism.
Overall I don't think what you've described is actually the real story. Several engineers both on the team and off the team have had complaints about this engineer, and the same thing happened with the previous lead, who was much more experienced than either of us. One engineer was distressed enough that it really should've warranted going to HR, which I suggested to my manager, who didn't follow through out of fear of it reflecting poorly on him, which is really unfortunate. I was brought into the team exactly because my style of leadership isn't top-down, brusque, or imposing -- I made it clear from the start my intention wasn't to unseat the other engineer as 'lead', and deliberately tried to make a lot of space for him to have ownership and growth and put him back on the promotion track.
You don't have to take my word about this, but the intention of my post is to get advice. My main goal isn't to solidify my performance or status -- I'm already comfortably trusted and performing well. My goal is not to come into work with a high risk of conflict and stress each week, and needing to contort myself to avoid this. What would your advice be if I am representing the truth?
yobbo
It sounds as though there is unclarity in roles. You might have a style of avoiding or de-escalating confrontation which could make him believe your call for a post-mortem is a suggestion he can set aside.
My advice would be 1) to not phrase decisions as suggestions, 2) motivate/justify with hard facts ("an outage occurred, we are having a meeting to discuss causes/mitigations"), 3) if post-mortems are perceived as publicly assigning blame, it can't work and the culture is wrong, and 4) never motivate decisions by identity ("my background is fancier than yours so get in line") which might be happening implicitly if decisions aren't sufficiently grounded in details and facts.
bjourne
> My advice would be 1) to not phrase decisions as suggestions,
I was about to write the same thing. TS, if you feel strongly about the need for a post-mortem analysis then it is: "We WILL do a post-mortem analysis, and you WILL analyze root cause issues and you WILL help me write a report about the incident. It has the highest priority." It is not: "We should do a post-mortem analysis, you guys agree it is a good idea?" TS comes of as wanting to lead by persuasion, which imo very often doesn't work.
bitbasher
Life's too short-- tell your manager you can't work like this. You resign unless something is done about it. If they value you, something will be done about it.
golly_ned
Pretty much everything else about my job is basically my dream job. I don't think the "it's him or me" position will work out, especially given I'm more two levels more senior. I think that would just cause me to lose a lot of trust either way. I'd rather fix his behavior, or have him encouraged to move teams without me threatening to leave.
bitbasher
I once had a dream job. I was employee #2 and today the company is worth multiple billions of dollars. I built much of the company's core technology myself.
It didn't take long for a few employees to turn that dream into a nightmare. It's not worth it, regardless of what you would be giving up.
It's not your job to "fix" them. I also wouldn't approach the employee myself as that may backfire. I'd voice my thoughts to their manager and offer to have a sit down between the three of you to see if it can be worked out. If nothing changes, I'd make a change myself.
null
pfannkuchen
If you are two levels above the guy, why isn’t management taking you seriously? Have you considered going to your skip about this? Seems appropriate if you’re being ignored.
rewgs
From what I've read in this thread, you don't have a ton of power with regards to meaningfully dealing with this guy. As far as I can tell, your only real course of action is to learn to live with him.
I've worked with many people like this. Personally, I've always landed with curt, minimal responses, such as:
- Them: says mean/passive-aggressive thing
- Me: "Noted, thanks." And then I move onto the next thing.
It's only exhausting if you let it be. I know that might feel dismissive to you, but really: it's all about how you frame it. Be no more angry with this guy for being a dick than you would with a dog for barking (it's in its nature) or a baby for crying (it's in its nature) or for the sky raining (it's in its nature).
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly...[I] have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind...and so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.” - Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
paulcole
Why the heck would you resign before talking directly to the other employee about the issue?
omosubi
a few ideas:
- see if he can be put on a project that he has complete autonomy over that is separate from the normal work that you are doing. or try and come up with something that he could do separately and doesn't need to be in meetings.
- split the team up so that he leads his own team. if he's that bad the people on his team will leave and his behavior will be that much more obvious. if he's a good engineer maybe he can actually get stuff done with him separately. if he's bad it's an easy case to make. if you make the decisions about who works on what give him the work you don't want to do. you're two levels higher and it sounds like he doesn't have much leadership experience.
- you said in one of your comments that your manager doesn't want to look bad to his manager. what could you do to make him look good and also get rid of this guy?
- can the bad guy move teams to something he likes more? where could he go that doesn't necessitate him working with you?
- make the business case that this guy is bad and not worth keeping. if he's already gotten rid of one good lead and burning out other people, I'm sure you can make the case that keeping him is not worth the cost. if his behavior is preventing you from shipping x% faster or higher quality or whatever it shouldn't be that hard a sell to management.
- whatever route you take document everything that he does that is preventing the team from accomplishing more.
- are the other people on your team reporting this behavior to your manager? if enough people are complaining and your manager doesn't do anything, he's clearly not doing his job.
- the skip level talk is also a good route. see if people that he interacts with that aren't your manager or teammates have difficulty with him. if he's that toxic you have more ammo with your skiplevel or anyone else with influence.
zippyman55
Do you have someone functioning as senior engineer? That person should help establish the direction. Sometimes people think they are smarter than the head engineer and you get a lot of non congruent engineering that is hard to unwind from. I’d review the landscape and see what support you and your team is getting and what support this guy is getting. Who does his reviews? Do you have input? Could you influence his removal or not? He may be resentful that he is not running the team. After reviewing what levers you have, I’d consider meeting him in your office. Let him know you want to discuss some things. Let him know you will want to hear from him. Explain that it’s a challenge running the group, historically there have been issues even before you showed up. Point out that many skills are needed to run the group, and when he acts a certain way, it’s way harder for you and his is also demonstrating he is weak in these executive level skills. Then listen to him in his points. Discuss if relevant. Does he have points or is he a nut. Then, tell him you need to re-baseline expectations. Explain how things need to operate. Summarize the discussion in email and send it to him. Separately send a write up to your boss in the conversation. Again, this is not an attempt to throw him under the bus, just to get him aligned with direction. But if the re-baseline of expectations fails, you can work to take more steps regarding his review. I wonder if your team does not have a good well defined engineering leader.
golly_ned
I'm the "senior" engineer in this situation (actually, senior staff -- the other engineer is 'senior', though titles in this company are inflated by ~1 relative to standards at FAANG). I'm the designated engineering leader, and the rest of the team very much likes working with me and respects me a lot -- three of our engineers joined the team citing wanting to to work with me specifically, including one engineer from a previous team of mine, an internal transfer, and an external hire. I think the problem is he simply rejects me as the designated engineering leader, because he recognizes he is more knowledgeable than me about a set of technologies he has more experience with than I do.
I'm glad you brought this up, though: The only other person is the principal engineer, who I do think I have to continue to build a relationship with. That principal engineer worked very closely with the difficult engineer, and the difficult engineer has a lot of trust for the principal. The principal has a lot of trust for me, and supported my promotion to senior staff.
He's certainly resentful he's not running the team. He was told really early on by our previous director wanted him to be the lead of this team, despite big gaps in experience. He made a big deal about "officially" abdicating his role as lead to me when I joined, which was a bit much -- I had no intention of replacing him, but just to get the team functioning and working and not trying to get each other fired. At that point I had been moved against my own will and wanted to keep the door open to me going back to my previous team, which was closer to my interests, in 6-12 months.
I think he was put into a position of too much responsibility too soon, did a very good job on parts of it (the technical parts), and an awful part on other parts of it (the team leadership parts).
I think the direct conversation you mean is one potentially effective way to handle this, but things blew up with the last lead too, who was much more brusque. If I'm not careful, and he sees this as "pulling rank", I can see things blowing up once again.
zippyman55
I think your conversation with him could be professional, but you just need to point out You’re the leader and they gotta follow your direction and he doesn’t wanna be on board with that then he needs to find some other role which means leave your group and then work with management above you to make that happen but I’m assuming you can do the reviews for him and then penalize in that manner if you don’t have that ability to give them a poor review then something else is structurally wrong and where you are in that organization.
5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV
Next time tell him that if he isn't going to provide something constructive to the meeting, that he won't be allowed to join further ones.
As long as you make it clear from your tone and wording, that this is not you being aggressive in any way but you protecting the time of the team from distractions, the rest of the team shouldn't see you any different than before.
dpark
Don’t do this in front of the team. This sort of message should be delivered privately.
Doubt this is the way to go anyway but it’s definitely not something to say during the meeting.
5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV
I would 100% do it anytime because at some point enough is enough and you as the lead should have the backbone to put him into place. Best things is he shuts up forever, worst thing is he get's pissed off, goes to the manager and the manager sides with you anyways because you're known to be a good employee and he quits by himself/gets fired.
Obviously this is a rare thing to do, but from reading the other comments it's miles better than being bullied out, quitting and letting the other person continue with that attitude
throwaway74201
“There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.” —Albert Ellis
hshdhdhehd
Those are wise words.
al_borland
> was told by a previous director that he was meant to be the lead of this platform. Hence the fighting with the other lead from a year ago. And with me over the past year.
Have you (or higher ups) pointed out his immaturity and behavior are likely the exact reasons he wasn’t selected to lead the team, and if he continues on this path he is ensuring he will never advance at the company? That could do one of two things… get him to shift his attitude or find a new job where he can advance.
Do you have the power to get rid of him? Competent or not, this behavior sounds toxic to the team and likely isn’t worth it. Assuming what you said is accurate, as we’re only hearing the story from one perspective.
golly_ned
| Have you (or higher ups) pointed out his immaturity and behavior are likely the exact reasons he wasn’t selected to lead the team, and if he continues on this path he is ensuring he will never advance at the company? That could do one of two things… get him to shift his attitude or find a new job where he can advance.
This is currently my top option I'm considering. I'd like to deliver (or have my manager deliver) the feedback based on the leveling guidelines that include team leadership skills, and make it very unclear that this is the biggest blocker for his promotion, and unless he changes, he will not be promoted on the team.
I'm eager to move that forward to end up solving this problem and moving it out of the current state, which is intolerable to me, but it's not review time. Next time I meet with my manager I want to float this idea to him.
I personally can't get rid of him, and I know of at least one good engineer on the team who would be upset if he left, since he has a lot of historical knowledge about the stack no one else has -- no one on the team enjoyed working with him except for one junior engineer, so no one else has learned certain parts of the stack.
About whether he's toxic: things really switch back and forth. More recently, he's mostly stopped working with everyone but a junior engineer who he does have a good relationship with. He is responsible and a strong owner for the thing he owns. He does a lot of generous, unglamorous work for the team, like clearing up tech debt -- though he doesn't commit to things on the roadmap that'll help move the stack forward, I think out of a fear of failure, since I think a lot of his behavior is partially explained by insecurity -- but that's another conversation.
I think from his perspective, he would say that I'm not good enough to be the lead of this team, and he would be better at it than I am. In a couple dimensions (his historical knowledge/background, and his experience with the stack) he'd have a point, but still wrong overall, I think.
But either way, whether he respects me or not, I am owed to be treated as if he respects me. That's part of being a professional and a good teammate, and he should owe that equally to anyone on the team -- he doesn't do a good job at hiding his disdain for other people on the team, or many people outside the team either; when we were a bit closer, near to when I joined the team, he badmouthed almost everyone he currently works with, or has worked with.
al_borland
There is another thing in here to add to the feedback about why won’t be moving up. If he is the only one he knows the stack, and he isn’t personable enough to work with for a hand off (for most of the team), he had stuck himself in that role. Some people think if only they can do a certain job it means security, but what it really means is they can never be promoted.
If he wants to move up he needs to show that is can successfully work with people and have everything off, so he isn’t a single point of failure.
Being a lead is also more than hard skills, it’s soft skills and being able to work with people, which sounds like a weakness.
If he is serious about wanting to move up, there are lots of things he needs to address here, not just his attitude towards you.
mdavid626
Ignore the guy.
Never give up against him. Push through your ways every single time.
Sooner or later he’ll get the point and he’ll leave.
golly_ned
> Push through your ways every single time.
This kind of sadly has been the most effective. Previously when I did this he'd re-litigate this over slack and in meetings again and again, trying to prove this was a bad decision. He's stopped doing that after my manager told him to knock it off.
I say "sadly" since this is basically pulling rank, which I don't want to have to do. But I don't think he'll leave -- he seems really entrenched in, having worked on the team for a lot longer, and seeming to enjoy it anyway.
It's also hard to ignore in team meetings without things being tense and awkward. I can easily come across as "the bad guy". And the last lead was a lot more willing to lay down the law like that -- the team completely fell apart and everyone tried to get each other fired, and it just took a single quarter for that lead to leave.
It's all risky and high-stakes, since I do really value my position and enjoy it (except for this) -- I can easily turn into the bad guy.
I work with a competent jerk: https://www.pickardlaws.com/myleadership/myfiles/rtdocs/hbr/...
Backstory -- I joined my current team a year ago. It was falling apart. The team members hated each other and were trying to get each other fired. The team lead who’d joined a quarter before had quit to join another team largely due to conflict with one difficult coworker.
Then I joined as the lead. I helped to stabilize the team over the last year. It’s grown from four to ten engineers. Three engineers joined specifically to work with me.
Yet the entire time I’ve been on that team, that one difficult coworker has been criticizing and fighting almost everything I’ve done. That coworker was relatively inexperienced, yet was told by a previous director that he was meant to be the lead of this platform. Hence the fighting with the other lead from a year ago. And with me over the past year. It’s burning me out bad.
It mostly comes across in passive-aggressive comments, and in trying to argue and prove he is right about trivial things, with every bit of disagreement. It used to come up in terms of aggression towards his peers. That stopped when me and my manager intervened. Yet continues with me. It's clear he doesn't respect me as lead, and makes that clear in team meetings.
It makes everything harder. Even in an incident that caused a global outage for three hours, and where we didn't have alerts and had to get told by our users we were down, I get pushback on calling for a post-mortem since his work was involved. Now I have to back-channel to my manager (who wasn't in the room), and still face the . Just the friction alone that he adds in getting anything done makes doing the right thing often not worth it.
I'm at a loss. My other teammates love working with me. I was promoted last year. I'm two levels above this guy which means my company trusts me. I'm frankly wishing I could leave the team but it's difficult to transfer since I'm in something of a specialty and there aren't other positions at my level in the company.
My manager's been resistant to doing much of anything. I think he's tired of me bringing it up. He says that the engineer "gets along with [junior engineer who never disagrees with him]". He says the difficult engineer is improving and sees him trying. His feedback to me is not to let it bother me so much. He asks me what he should do to change his behavior (he's the manager, not me...).
I really just want to be able to come in to work and do my job without dealing with an asshole trying to one-up me or "score points" against me all day and without expecting conflict every time we're in the same meeting. I'm tired of the status and perception games and his overall impact on the team vibe and culture.