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.
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.
As a manager? Coach your report on his soft skills. Software dev is about being a good team member as much as a good individual contributor. If the strongest guy is dominating meetings and dominating the team's direction with his opinion, that's something to work on.
He has to give others space to contribute by not jumping in. And his manager should be coaching this directly. As the EM, you want your whole team to be able to confidently do what he does. Functioning teams have multiple engineers concurrently owning your scope.
If your company isn't toxic, over-working would also be seen as a negative because of the precedent it sets. If this guy wants to be a leader and not a monkey, he has to appreciate that. And senior/staff counts as "leader" here.
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.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We are remote. He’s been told at least a few times.
I can do this over 1:1 over remote, but it definitely doesn’t feel the same.
We have a team onsite in a few weeks. I could do it then. I still think it’s more likely than not that things will go sour, especially since the rest of the team will actually be there, and I’ll be letting him know a lot of the team has had issues with him.
The rest of the team is extremely passive and conflict-averse. It’ll be awkward then.
I can try a remote 1:1 since I think there are more ways to keep a cap on this.
The very fact that I have to tiptoe around this makes me realize this guy is super volatile and angry. Even reducing our 1:1 cadence, which I did for all team members simply due to too much meeting load on me, led him to cancel them altogether.
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...
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.
I see, so would “self-assured syncretism” be unfair?
As such, is the definite certainty justifiable or more of a personality choice?
Not picking on you, exactly, trying to find why I’ve been hearing this kind of language used so confidently among more or less equal peers, and what it’s actually doing for people.
Some toxic people can be good at provocation, victimization and distorting situations. An attempt to improve things over a cup of coffee can be distorted as rumors, slander, harassment, intimidation, threats, etc.
A person that reached adulthood while being toxic throughout their life is probably competent at it at this point. While you were focused in acquiring your skills, they were probably getting better at being toxic. So you are probably not prepared for a direct confrontation with a veteran sabotaging jerk. Do not play a game you have never practiced as the away team because you are probably not going to win.
The more you have advanced your career, the more you have to lose while engaging someone. And in this case you have not much to win, against a person that has less than you to lose. Just using up your time and distracting you from your job is a win for a saboteur.
Anything you say can be held against you, so unless you've talked to a workplace attorney better stay out of it. If the situation is affecting you psychologically then engaging the person can affect you even more. Seek therapy if that helps, or channel your frustration through physical activity.
The best you can do is to limit your interactions to the professional level, and limit the topics to what he is working on. Everything else is your business and not his and you can seek additional collaboration at your discretion.
I try as much as possible to stay out of politics and believe in merit. If someone advances their career through merit, I will be the first to celebrate with them.
But at the same time, I do not believe in the power of "let's have a coffee" in a situation like this. There are core beliefs that a cup of coffee will not change.
If someone believes in playing dirty, believes in that basic respect is earned not given, and other rotten beliefs... that person was a bad hire, and needs to have an expedited firing.
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'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.
> And giving validation to their belief that they should have "important jobs" just gives them real power to bully you more.
I think this guy's manager said he won't fire or move him. So then if to avoid sabotage you must respect him and give him important tasks then that's what you do. Even if you think it harms the company. Then you show how it harm the company and you win.
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;))
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
This sounds incredibly frustrating. But given you're in the leadership seat, it's worth taking a hard look
at yourself asking how you're playing a role in this, especially since it's unlikely people are this difficult for no reason. I am rather a bit skeptical of this account as written.
One hint: he was told he was meant to be the lead. That's a bit of a shitty promise to be given and taken away.
This guy is almost certainly operating from a place of "status injury." He sees you as the person who took his job.
So, some hard questions for self-reflection:
Knowing he felt slighted, did you ever try to build an alliance with him and acknowledge his expertise? Or did you just expect him to fall in line?
Are you showing him respect, or just demanding it because of your title?
Are his arguments over "trivial things" really trivial? Or is it his (unproductive) way of trying to assert the technical authority he feels you're ignoring?
Right now, your manager hears a personal problem ("This guy is a jerk to me"). That's why he's giving you the weak "don't let it bother you" response.
Stop making it personal. Use your leadership skills to actually lead this person. Try to fix the relationship. Give him ownership.
If that fails, you can go to your manager with a leadership problem ("I've tried A, B, and C to leverage his skills, but his behavior is still causing X business risk"). That is a problem a manager has to solve.
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.
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.
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.
I've been in this scenario a couple of times. I see no reprise here
People. Pay. Work.
You'll only get one good thing at any company. One other thing will be decent. The third one will inevitably be nonsense. Choose to stay or leave depending on this rule.
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.
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"
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!
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.
Your phrasing makes it totally HR worthy to my mind, especially if the only thing justifying keeping him (experience) is not there.
I was going to give you more advice, but actually here the only one that matters : get counceling/coaching help outside the company, with someone specialised in work related topics. You need someone on your side, to listen, give you fact based advices, discuss strategies, challenge you.
It's a very stressful situation, get all the help you can!
- 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.
> if he's that bad the people on his team will leave and his behavior will be that much more obvious.
Often not true: while such people don't do great (programming) work, they are very political adept (which also includes being good at bullying outsiders), so often being a "disciple" of them is very useful for your career. So, while many people may not particularly "like" such a person, they often become "disciple" of him for such a self-interest.
Once my boss told me: “You can’t force people to do something they don’t want to do.” And this guy just don’t want to work well with you. Period.
I learned one approach that sometimes works: Figure out what they want and give them what they want. But with the condition they change their behavior. From your post, it sounds like this guy wants to be promoted.
If I were you, I would talk to him like this:
“Look, you are good technically. You should be promoted. But higher levels here mean more than just code. It means mentoring, working closer with peers, hiring people, training them, helping management. We have a career path in place, let’s make a plan for you.”
In big companies it’s even easier. Use the promotion track. Show him what’s expected. If he wants the title, he has to play the role.
Three things can happen:
He rises to it: He starts acting more professional, helps others, builds trust. You win, he wins, team wins.
He tries and fails: He’s exposed higher up. He has direct reports. He’s in meetings with management. He can’t hide his behavior anymore. Eventually, they’ll act.
He says “no thanks”: Then it’s clear. He just wants to stay where he is and make your life harder. At least now everyone sees it.
This puts the pressure where it belongs. On him, to live up to what he says he wants.
[Edit]: You can also tell him that if he wants the promotion, he has to start acting like someone at that level. That means following the principle: “There are no mistakes, only lessons we learn from.”
Tell him: "There was an outage. OK. Then step up. Take the lead, organize a post-mortem, and work with others to find real measures that prevent it in the future. Not to assign blame, but to help the organization improve."
Maybe you don’t even join the post-mortem, let him own it. Just make clear: this isn’t about finger-pointing, it’s about building a culture where problems lead to better systems.
I’m planning on making it clear we should do this. I’m expecting push-back. I’m just not going to entertain it and rely on my manager to handle scheduling while I take part in technical review. I’m exhausted of having to fight this guy to do what’s right.
It probably won’t be him who writes it but he’ll have to be involved at least as a code reviewer for the AIs. I’m sure he’s going to complain and try to make it look unnecessary. I’m mostly done trying to make things work with this guy. I’ll move up to my skip if I keep getting hassled like this.
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.
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.
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.
The first is dead stupid but it tends to work with these sort of people. You need to be very question focused. The "correct" answer to every question you ask from here on out has to be NO. Is the sky purple today... NO. Is really dumb thing a good idea... NO.
> I get pushback on calling for a post-mortem
You're the lead, so just assume that you have cart blanche to just book the meeting. Set it up... If they say NO, just agree and have the meeting with the rest of the team. Let them exclude themselves.
> His feedback to me is not to let it bother me so much.
This is probably good feedback. What if they were more abrasive but amazing at the job??
> expecting conflict every time we're in the same meeting
Call him out on it. In public. Out loud. Dont be nice about it. It's time to tell him to "cut the shit".
Your other job, every day in the shower, or making coffee your ritual is to think of a new and interesting way to say NO. At some point your gonna get good at this (and its a life skill I swear). Have the one liner ready. And if he follows up "we can have a chat about this after the meeting" or "lets take this offline"
> If they say NO, just agree and have the meeting with the rest of the team. Let them exclude themselves.
Sorry, let who exclude whom?
This is off topic, but I am not sure why you insist on saying "they" if even the OP says "he". I do not think you run the risk of offending anyone here.
But the "they"s are especially disorienting, as the context specifically requires distinguishing "them" (the team) and him (the competent jerk), so the pronoun replacement significantly reduces the clarity of your communication.
This. You’re the boss, would you let your grade school kid keep talking back to you like this? You are the authority figure here. I seriously doubt he will begin to treat you any differently unless he has some fear put in him (and a slim chance even if that happens)
I would suggest that to come out on top here that you need to pitch a perfect game from here on out, even if it means following some suggestion from this guy or something. Being correct and being willing to verbalize when you don’t know something or don’t know the ideal answer to a situation is the number one trick to establishing a reputation as a rockstar IMO. That may give you a lot of sway.
Keep a great paper trail both on this guy and to cover your own ass.
I would probably begin building a case to fire him, aka “managing him out”.
I would start by documenting every incident and every fuckup by this guy in detail with links to tickets, slack and commits related to problems he has caused. Meeting notes about his poor professionalism could be used against him. You need that evidence, once you have a pretty good book on him, 5-10 incidents, especially with production downtime or company revenue ramifications, and you will have a good base with which to PIP him.
Make life as uncomfortable for him as possible while remaining professional. What’s the worst thing that happens, he quits? As long as you document the shit out of everything he does wrong, your ass is covered.
Best of luck, I can’t stand obnoxious people at work so I hope you can get him his comeuppance.
I hate this bullshit employee. But, in reading the post, I was not sure the OP was "the boss" as he stated he was "team lead" [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.]
So, that's why I advised to better understand what is going on. I've been a "powerless" team lead more than once, and if you are not doing reviews and if the "manager" is not actively involved in making the team better but using input to perform a review, then its really frustrating. So, either he has the levers to fix the problem or he needs to go to his manager and figure out what levers there are to fix this.
> You're the lead, so just assume that you have cart blanche to just book the meeting
You're right. I should just push this. I'm attempting to be collaborative but I'm ending up just being conflict-averse to the detriment of everyone. I'll do this this upcoming week.
> This is probably good feedback.
I'd like for it not to bother me so much. It just accumulates and has festered. I should've been more forceful and insistent sooner. It's been on the verge of being worthwhile to force the issue for a long time; it's an ambiguous case since it's mostly passive-aggressiveness, not plain meanness.
> Call him out on it. In public. Out loud.
I really can't see this turning out well for me. It's easy for me to smirk and laugh, and for me to end up looking like the asshole. I'd be playing his game and losing.
> And if he follows up "we can have a chat about this after the meeting" or "lets take this offline"
> I really can't see this turning out well for me. It's easy for me to smirk and laugh, and for me to end up looking like the asshole. I'd be playing his game and losing.
Your style doesn't jive with this sort of aggressive posturing. Thats fair.
I would advise that you find a strategy and voice that does work for you. You need to have the things you're going to say "loaded up". Spend the first week taking time after the meeting taking an hour to write down all the things you should have said to "disarm" this person. It's less about the delivery and more that you have a message to send ready.
> 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.
| 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.
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.
If you've already managed to assert your boundaries and they've failed to respect them, then your boss is failing to listen, do their job, and maybe simply there to collect a paycheck and follow the path of least resistance rather than have a backbone.
Try to have them see the light or you'll need to find somewhere else to be for your own sanity. Maybe bring your boss a copy of the No *sshole Rule by Prof. Sutton.
Never put up with excessive toxicity because silence gives consent and your feet vote. Just as there are many other workers, there are many other jobs.
Yes, I am disappointed with my manager, especially given the number of times and the insistence with which I've raised this. It's clear to me both that he's afraid how this will reflect on him to his manager, and he's afraid of how the other engineer will react. He wants to keep the peace, which means me just sucking this up.
I don't want to leave this job unless I've exhausted all other possibilities. With this exception, it's great.
But the thing for your manager is, if you leave because he didn't handle this, that will also reflect badly on him. And it sounds like leaving because of this is a real option for you. You wouldn't just be saying it to blackmail your manager - you're really thinking that you may have to leave because of this.
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.
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
Worst thing is that the team dynamic gets even worse, the guy becomes bitter and impossible to work with, and management punishes you for unprofessional and inappropriate behavior.
I obviously know absolutely nothing about what is really going on.
>I'm tired of the status and perception games and his overall impact on the team vibe and culture.
I have never heard this sentence said by anyone who wasn't deeply invested in status and perception games.
>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...).
Which kinda shows that your manager does not agree with your viewpoint. If you take his words at face value, he is pretty much telling you that you are the problem.
Again, I don't know what is really happening. But if I read between the lines the picture seems to be the following: You have a engineer in your team who thinks you are a looser and incompetent. This is why he second guesses you at every point, because he does not believe that you can make adequate decisions. At the same time other coworkers "love working with you", I am absolutely sure they do, but I guess that they have very little respect for you as a leader, they love working with you because it allows them to do what they want. The opinion of your boss towards the "problem engineer" seems quite positive, which also suggests that your manager does not consider your judgements of your teammates as particularly relevant.
If you take all of this together the picture becomes quite clear. Nobody respect your leadership. Your staff doesn't and your manager doesn't.
I take issue with comments like this, firing off inflammatory criticism based on nothing but guesswork and extremely tenuous “deductions”. There’s like, 8 extremely debatable assumptions here.
Reading between the lines is fair but architecting entire narratives is a stretch. Even then, the narrative lacks logic: why are we arbitrarily trusting what the manager and engineer says “at face value” but not OP? Where on earth is it even remotely implied that OP lets the engineers do what they want?
Repeatedly saying “I don’t know what’s really happening buuut” is not a coupon to let you arrive at such a negative conclusion.
>why are we arbitrarily trusting what the manager and engineer says “at face value” but not OP?
Trust does not matter. The manager might be totally wrong and the guy is getting worse and worse. This does not matter for my argument, which is that the manager puts his opinions above the one of the team lead. And he sees the team lead as part of the problem. Do you think there is an alternative explanation besides the manager not believing in the leadership qualities of OP?
I am also not trusting what the problem guy says, except that OP calls him a competent jerk, which tells me that OP does not disagree that the problem guy is a capable engineer.
>Where on earth is it even remotely implied that OP lets the engineers do what they want?
I wrote it below. If you are the leader of 10 people, 9 of whom trust you and 1 constantly disagrees with you, you can still push through any decisions, because the 9 people will stand up for you and force the one guy to accept whatever you decide.
Imagine having to go to your manager because one guy in your team of 10 does not want to do a post mortem. There have to be 9 other guys who do not care at all about your decisions, else they would have immediately stood up for you, for something as reasonable as a post mortem.
So why do you love working for a leader, but do not care at all when the leader gets criticised for something extremely reasonable. They do not like him because of his leadership abilities. Maybe they like him because he is a nice person or because his lack of leadership gets them something they want.
In the first instance, even if you’re right and the manager thinks team lead is the problem here, it’s quite the leap to go straight to “questions his leadership qualities” over a single interpersonal conflict or difference in viewpoint. It’s plausible, sure. But the manager could just as easily be trying to avoid (needed) conflict.
To your second point, there’s MANY other explanations. We don’t know how the team reacted for a start - maybe they did back up OP. Or maybe, based on the alleged jerk’s aggressive behaviour to the team in the past, they felt scared to speak up. Or maybe they’re junior. Or maybe you’re right and all 9 people unanimously felt OP was in the wrong.
My point wasn’t any of this though, it was mainly: avoid coming to such harsh judgments based on so much extrapolation. Criticise the reported actions, sure, discuss some hypotheticals, but going straight for “you’re a bad leader” goes a bit beyond.
We know they reacted in a way which forced OP to go to his manager.
>Or maybe, based on the alleged jerk’s aggressive behaviour to the team in the past
If that were the case OP would have mentioned it. Workplace bullying is certainly more important than disagreeing and this would make a reasonable case to fire him. If the jerk was bullying his team and OP did not notice, that would prove my argument even more.
>Or maybe they’re junior.
There are 9 other people. And they weren't asked to stand up for their own opinion, but for their team leads opinion. I do not think this matters much. 9 people not standing up for you as a team lead is a very bad sign, even if they are all juniors.
>Or maybe you’re right and all 9 people unanimously felt OP was in the wrong.
This isn't my interpretation at all. My interpretation is that OP had one opinion the other guy had his and the rest did not particularly care either way.
>Criticise the reported actions, sure, discuss some hypotheticals, but going straight for “you’re a bad leader” goes a bit beyond.
But having to go through your manager to force through a totally reasonable decision that is yours to make is being a bad leader. I do not think that there is any alternative interpretation then that this event at least is a failure in leadership.
I am saying this because I want to tell OP how his situation sounds to a complete outsider. OP was there if the 9 guys all immediately stood up for him and told the other guy that he was clearly in the wrong, then this obviously disproves everything I said and OP knows that I am wrong. But if they did not, then he should reconsider his actions and at least allow for the possibility that this was a failure on part of his leadership.
- One person on the team does not respect him. That is pretty unambiguous.
- His manager puts his own (in all likelihood, based on quite limited information) opinion about the one guy over the opinion of the team lead. The team lead definitely knows the guy better, yet his manager disregards that. Why would he do that if he believed that the team lead was doing good leadership? Questioning the behavior of your subordinates is something you do when you don't trust in their abilities.
- The post mortem. If you are the team lead and you want a post mortem, then you will do a post mortem. "Because I say so", should be enough of a reason. Yet somehow his own manager needed to get involved, to force through the decision of the team lead? This also relates to the point before this.
- The Team. And I think this is the biggest tell. Imagine you are a team lead and you tell 10 people "we are doing X", one guy disagrees. There are still 9 other people, if they trusted the team lead as a leader, they would take his side, especially if X is something as obvious as doing a post mortem. This whole situation can only develop if the 9 people "who like to work with him" refuse to stand up for him at all. If you as a leader have 90% of the people behind you everything you say will be done.
The real question is why the rest of the team is doing nothing. Either it is because they are more afraid to go against the one guy (unlikely) or because they do not think it is worth it to stand up for the team lead. The real thing OP should consider is why his team does not appear to care the tiniest bit about his leadership position. If they did, the one guy would not be a problem at all.
One question remains, why do they love working with him. I do not think they are flattering him, I think they mean it. Often working for a weak leader is easy, because you can set your own rules and you can push your leader around. They probably enjoy that the atmosphere in the team is more relaxed, they get to have more influence on decisions and they can deflect work they do not want to do.
In feedback and promo docs my leadership and soft skills were called out as exemplary and distinctively strong.
If anything it's the opposite. I don't think my technical skills are as strong as some peers at my level. A big part of the difficulty is that the other engineer is more experience in certain technologies than I am. I'm self-aware enough to recognize those cases, and don't try to override him.
If you already don't believe me, and want to think the worst, I won't be able to change your mind.
In another comment I've explained why I think this "OP is the real problem" narrative probably isn't the case, just based on other data points I've had.
> You have a engineer in your team who thinks you are a looser and incompetent. This is why he second guesses you at every point, because he does not believe that you can make adequate decisions
I do think this is broadly correct, though.
> they have very little respect for you as a leader, they love working with you because it allows them to do what they want
This is incorrect. They actively seek guidance from me regularly. As I mention in another post, three engineers joined the team specifically to work with me. I don't have doubts about this.
> The opinion of your boss towards the "problem engineer" seems quite positive
This is wrong too. He's called him an asshole.
> Nobody respect your leadership. Your staff doesn't and your manager doesn't.
This is also wrong. I was promoted recently. My reviews are strong in a tough, calibrated org. My team is widely trusted, a complete 180 from the state before I joined when it was falling apart.
Again, if you're already dead-set on reading the worst, you'll be able to do so. But I came here for actionable advice. You gave judgment, but not advice. What's the point?
I am sure that you will be able to change my mind.
If you read the discussion below there is one aspect I didn't bring up in this post. What does the rest of the team do when you get challenged? Do they stand up for you and defend your decision and your right to make the decision?
You brought up the post mortem. That was your decision to make, not only did you get challenged, but you also had to bring in your manager. What did the rest of the Team do? I have a hard time imagining a scenario, where you make a decision, where everyone but one guy goes against you and you still need a manager involved.
>This is incorrect. They actively seek guidance from me regularly. As I mention in another post, three engineers joined the team specifically to work with me. I don't have doubts about this.
I don't doubt any of that. And they may very well respect you, but that does not automatically translate into them respecting you as a leader.
>What's the point?
I gave you an outsiders perspective. Even if I am wrong about everything, the one thing I am absolutely certain about is that this one engineer sees you as a failure in leadership. And if he sees you as a failure in leadership (and has at least some positive opinions about his teammates, if he doesn't you are in far deeper trouble with him) then he must believe that the rest of your team does not believe in your leadership either. If I am wrong and the rest of the team stands firmly behind you, then you only need to show him that.
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.
There is advice to talk to upper manager or HR. You could do it, but it won’t solve the issue. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be these problems in the first place.
In situations like this, the best solution is expose externally and leave.
Twice so far, though not in as stark terms, and not recently. Once, I told him to knock it off trying to make a peer engineer who was underperforming look bad in front of the team, and instead to inform our manager of cases where he believed the engineer was underperforming, but not to try to embarrass or humiliate him -- the other engineer was extremely distressed by this engineer. He did stop. Another case he seemed to understand in our 1:1, but ramped up writing long slack comments that read to me as passive-aggressive.
There's a very high risk of things blowing up since there isn't a strong groundwork of trust to begin with, and since things blew up with the previous lead who was too direct with him, so I'm wary to do this without the involvement of my manager.
At first when I joined the team we seemed to have a good amount of trust since I was sympathetic to things that happened in the past to him -- he was treated very unfairly from a director who'd since been fired who let blame travel down directly onto this engineer. The director way over-promised and underestimated and caused the team to face tons of criticism. Most of the burden fell on this engineer; his peers were very little help, and the project was way too large. It was doomed from the start. Everyone on the team flamed each other in year-end reviews. The lead said everyone on the team, including himself, should be fired. It was extremely bad.
Eventually as I disagreed with him and saw he really didn't want /anything/ he'd worked on to change, we started to have conflict. I ended up having a lot more responsibilities added, and decreased the rate at which I held 1:1s with all my peers -- I think he felt insulted, and called off our 1:1s completely.
See the no assholes rule.
Paraphrasing here: Life is too short to work with assholes. If you work with an asshole tell your boss to fire them. If your boss won’t do it, quit.
There are plenty of places where you don’t have to work with an asshole.
The manager is spot on, how can passive aggressive comments even annoy you. Should run off like water. You are feeding the troll and complaining about it is not leading. Burnout means you are taking this personally which it isn’t since any lead will get the treatment. If he is really incurable toxic give him enough rope.
He is using meetings as a dominance/humiliation ritual, and disagreement as an insult delivery mechanism. He is in disagreement with the hierarchy, uses disagreement to show defiance because he wants to be the leader. He also perceives he does not have much to lose by doing this because in the worst case scenario he will just go be an individual contributor elsewhere, and in the best case scenario you would leave, your role would be vacant and he may be eligible for it again.
The first thing you will do, is to talk to individual people by name. Do not ask open questions that everyone can respond to, because he will use that opportunity to be toxic. If he does intervene in a toxic way, you will continue addressing the person you were talking to, by name, and not pursue his talking point. This is fair game because you were not talking to him.
Secondly, instead of having long meetings with the entire team about every topic, you will have a general high level meeting with the team, and dedicated meetings for navigating the actual solutions with specific team members. You will not discuss solutions at length in the front of the entire team, and if you do, see the point above. You will also try to have clear agendas and expectations for meetings.
Thirdly, if he wants to initiate a conversation, try to scope it to what he was working on. Until you mobilize him to work on something else or ask for his opinion, other initiatives are not his primary concern. You can ask "tell me how the initiative X is going", or "what are your current priorities at the moment" to frame the conversation, and steer the conversation so that it stays on topic. If he refuses to answer just say "he will revisit your priorities later" and talk to someone else.
Lastly, if he operates outside the direction given by you as a lead, or consensus of the team, document it. And if it has consequences, document them. Create a clear paper trail that shows that he is not an individual contributor that can be mobilized towards a goal and is a liability for the organization.
Until he fixes his attitude, never ask for his advice in terms of "what would you in this situation if you were me", but you may ask others this.
How is he disrespecting you? "Respect" means so many different things to so many people that it is difficult to say what it is about his behavior you find intolerable. Maybe the answer is for you to grow a thicker skin because you won't ever be liked by everyone.
Everyone's different and the way that teams work differ massively from company to company, but this is how I've done it in the past.
First off, doesn't matter if you're the technical lead or the team lead, it's the same role for responsibilities sake. A technical lead is responsible for the deliveries and a team lead is responsible for the actions.
That's your winning hand right there. "Yeah I hear you, but I'm deciding as the lead to do X".
Shit sandwich style you can wrap it with "I love this! Keep these coming! I need to know perspectives and ideas, no bad ideas remember, keep them ALL coming! I promise as long as we're not too toasty with too much going on, I'll listen and I'll keep doing that as long as you're happy that when I have to put my foot down, I can do that".
Then the foot down statement.
Then the "..but seriously, lets get a proper ticket in on this, yes I've decided what we're doing but we should still recognise the full story here so {insert annoying persons name}, write up a full ticket on your perspective here into the techdebt pile and tag me when it's done so I can cross reference it with my Architectural Choices doc."
In every way you're constantly saying "I am king here". It's not up for discussion, it's not debatable, it's not a choice it's a fact.
...finally if you need to revert to the 'At the end of the day I have to decide what I want to end up in court with, and right now I'm thinking this. Again I'm happy to hear different perspectives, but at the end of the day someone has to make these choices as the lead and today that's me."
...now if the annoying person starts to actually play the game and then starts actually feeding potentially good ideas, then great, you start getting them onside with "keep em' comin'!" and an occasional "...see this is perfect, I can't see everything, I can't know everything, I need us to be growing this picking the best choices and having you do this is excellent!".
...and if that starts happening, you might be growing a strong right-hand-man, I've seen people before that were underachieving but potentially capable pull themselves up and become awesome members of the team, truly carve out a niche for themselves. Sometimes they need a kick up the arse and sometimes they just need to recognise that they need to kick themselves up the arse :)
First of all, I'm sorry to hear you're dealing with a person like this. It reminds me of a guy who was on my previous team. Relatively competent. Stuck at Senior. Had a lot of issue seeing (often younger - myself included) engineers getting promoted to Staff, Principal, etc. over him. Knew that he had an incredibly toxic and abrasive personality and thought merits alone should allow him to move up the ranks. He would reign it in sometimes after people complained either to him or to the manager, but he'd go right back to his old ways a few days later. So. Frustrating.
Anyways, my advice is: document. Document specific instances of behavior that you see that is toxic or disruptive to the team.
It sounds like this person needs to go - or someone else needs to start addressing their behavior with them. Either scenario will require that person (your manager, skip level, or HR - or some combination) to have examples of specific instances of behavior that needs to be addressed.
Others have recommended the empathy approach. Talk to the guy. Take them out to lunch/drinks/whatever. If you haven't tried it at least once, I agree it's worth trying. There's always a chance your reading things wrong or don't have the whole picture. But if you have tried kindness and understanding, and things don't change or they only change temporarily... I don't think the "kill them with kindness" approach will work in this case. It's the approach I tried in my situation and all it did was drain me and take away all of my excitement to work on the project he worked on. Because this person will never change and you can't make them change.
Whenever I've been around toxic people like this, I always use the "if everyone's a jerk, you're the jerk" heuristic. Because I certainly can lose my cool and be a jerk sometimes. Not always intended. So in order to ground myself, I ask: OK... who do I have problems with? Just one person? THAT person? Yeah. Anyone else? No... everyone else is pretty awesome! OK... what about them, have they expressed they have problems with more than just me? All but one person on the team!? Huh. Yeah... That seems off. It's far more likely they're the jerk.
Certainly not a hard and fast rule. But it's helped me stay sane through abusive relationships both professionally and personally.
Last point - unless this person reports directly to you, they're not your responsibility to fix. If you've talked with them and expressed frustration with the _behavior_ you're observing, you've already done your part. Your management needs to step up. If they disagree with the state of reality, then figure out why there's a disconnect. That's where documentation is your friend! If you can convince another coworker to do the same and they also can provide documentation that corroborates or supplements, even better. I wouldn't be too afraid of being clear to your manager that this is something that you need fixed in order to feel comfortable and productive at work. It doesn't need to be "it's me or him". Make it about how _you_ need help from your manager. If you can show them that effort has been made on your own to address the situation and it's not working, then any competent manager should work with you both to find some sort of path out of this. If they continue to refuse (especially if multiple team members are expressing the same thing) then I would consider escalating to your skip level and then to HR. Chances are, assuming this person really is a jerk, that these people are already aware of what's going on. If no one seems to care that a bad personality is dragging the team down, then that's a huge red flag on the company culture as a whole and I would gtfo as quickly as I could line a new job up.
Good luck. I hope you can find some relief here. Life is too short to put up with other people's crap.
You don't seem to have gained his respect with your engineering skills.
Publicly challenge (and beat) him in a small engineering contest, otherwise he will never respect you.
Make it time limited, eg. 3 hours to implement a specific goal with clear indicator of what is "better" as a score, ie. to avoid arguments that eg. "mines fast, mine scales". Have a neutral party pick the challenge.
Lmfao at direct and harsh, that's not a leader, that's a boss. Leaders show the way, bosses tell the way, you my friend are neither.
The difference between you and me is that I've got the experience to have seen this play out multiple times, you on the other hand are making baseless assumptions.
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.
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.
As a manager? Coach your report on his soft skills. Software dev is about being a good team member as much as a good individual contributor. If the strongest guy is dominating meetings and dominating the team's direction with his opinion, that's something to work on.
He has to give others space to contribute by not jumping in. And his manager should be coaching this directly. As the EM, you want your whole team to be able to confidently do what he does. Functioning teams have multiple engineers concurrently owning your scope.
If your company isn't toxic, over-working would also be seen as a negative because of the precedent it sets. If this guy wants to be a leader and not a monkey, he has to appreciate that. And senior/staff counts as "leader" here.
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.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I can’t do that. My manager can, but I don’t think he’s strong-willed enough to actually do it.
I can put it in writing in his review, which I plan to do. I don’t want it to be a surprise.
I need way more from my manager. The only way I can get that is through my skip.
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
We are remote. He’s been told at least a few times.
I can do this over 1:1 over remote, but it definitely doesn’t feel the same.
We have a team onsite in a few weeks. I could do it then. I still think it’s more likely than not that things will go sour, especially since the rest of the team will actually be there, and I’ll be letting him know a lot of the team has had issues with him.
The rest of the team is extremely passive and conflict-averse. It’ll be awkward then.
I can try a remote 1:1 since I think there are more ways to keep a cap on this.
The very fact that I have to tiptoe around this makes me realize this guy is super volatile and angry. Even reducing our 1:1 cadence, which I did for all team members simply due to too much meeting load on me, led him to cancel them altogether.
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...
There isn't nearly enough information in OP's post to draw that conclusion.
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?
“Do not reward aggression towards you with attention and empathy.”
Source?
I really dislike this style of framing.
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.
What is the name of this philosophy you espouse? I am assuming it exists because you seem deeply committed.
Seems to apply simple, clear, and rigid moral determinations to a soft and very complex subject.
- You cannot control others, only how you respond and what you allow into your life (Stoicism)
- You can be kind, but you also have to be kind to yourself (psychology)
- Collaboration works only when participants share goals (game theory)
- Everyone contributes to one shared output (systems thinking)
- Respecting your profession and honoring the effort that got you to your position (Aristotelian and Confucian role ethics)
- Success comes from discipline, self-restraint and honoring your responsibilities (meritocratic work ethic)
- Identity (and therefore respect) is not reducible to your role, position, recognition, skill level, or socioeconomic status (Eastern philosophy)
I see, so would “self-assured syncretism” be unfair?
As such, is the definite certainty justifiable or more of a personality choice?
Not picking on you, exactly, trying to find why I’ve been hearing this kind of language used so confidently among more or less equal peers, and what it’s actually doing for people.
Cunningham's Law: "The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
If I am wrong, someone will point it out and I will have learned something new in the process.
That was rewarding, thanks for the chat.
"kill them with kindness"
it's very effective in a lot of cases, with no downside.
best case scenario, they were unaware and re-adjust how they talk to you.
worst case scenario, you know they are just being an asshole and you can go back to hating them.
If it all fails, my go to is patronizing kindness to taunt. Much better than complaining or arguing.
Some toxic people can be good at provocation, victimization and distorting situations. An attempt to improve things over a cup of coffee can be distorted as rumors, slander, harassment, intimidation, threats, etc.
A person that reached adulthood while being toxic throughout their life is probably competent at it at this point. While you were focused in acquiring your skills, they were probably getting better at being toxic. So you are probably not prepared for a direct confrontation with a veteran sabotaging jerk. Do not play a game you have never practiced as the away team because you are probably not going to win.
The more you have advanced your career, the more you have to lose while engaging someone. And in this case you have not much to win, against a person that has less than you to lose. Just using up your time and distracting you from your job is a win for a saboteur.
Anything you say can be held against you, so unless you've talked to a workplace attorney better stay out of it. If the situation is affecting you psychologically then engaging the person can affect you even more. Seek therapy if that helps, or channel your frustration through physical activity.
The best you can do is to limit your interactions to the professional level, and limit the topics to what he is working on. Everything else is your business and not his and you can seek additional collaboration at your discretion.
Honestly, you come across as quite negative yourself.
There's a saying, "If everywhere you go smells like shit, maybe it’s time to check your shoes"
I try as much as possible to stay out of politics and believe in merit. If someone advances their career through merit, I will be the first to celebrate with them.
But at the same time, I do not believe in the power of "let's have a coffee" in a situation like this. There are core beliefs that a cup of coffee will not change.
If someone believes in playing dirty, believes in that basic respect is earned not given, and other rotten beliefs... that person was a bad hire, and needs to have an expedited firing.
Lots of assumptions you're making there.
Better to just have the cup of coffee and see.
You'd be surprised how easy it is to disarm people with kindness, you should try it.
It's not your responsibility to fix it.
Just like if someone showed up drunk at work, showing up with an unacceptable behavior should be seen in a similar lens.
Not about responsibility. Just makes your life easier.
Noone is saying it's acceptable, just offering advice on how to mitigate the situation.
Should is the keyword of your last sentence. In a perfect world sure, but the world is not that.
You never know, you may even become friends. Doesn't hurt to attempt once at least.
Seeking everyone's approval is not a good mindset.
You are not there to win a popularity contest but to articulate what is needed clearly, keep people focused, unblocked and to get things done.
If you worry too much about being liked by everyone your mental health will suffer. You just have to accept some people won't like you.
Also comes across as insecure and less fit for leadership roles.
What source can you possibly be looking for lmao
Yes: haha. Seems like an arbitrary rule stated unambiguously enough that it ought to have a factual basis. But I don’t think it does.
I think it’s an emptily authoritative and somehow acceptable heuristic that works for some and not others.
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
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.
> And giving validation to their belief that they should have "important jobs" just gives them real power to bully you more.
I think this guy's manager said he won't fire or move him. So then if to avoid sabotage you must respect him and give him important tasks then that's what you do. Even if you think it harms the company. Then you show how it harm the company and you win.
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).
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;))
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.
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?
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.
Good advice. This is what I’m planning to do. I didn’t do this in the meeting since he misrepresented how bad this was.
> 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.
This sounds incredibly frustrating. But given you're in the leadership seat, it's worth taking a hard look at yourself asking how you're playing a role in this, especially since it's unlikely people are this difficult for no reason. I am rather a bit skeptical of this account as written.
One hint: he was told he was meant to be the lead. That's a bit of a shitty promise to be given and taken away.
This guy is almost certainly operating from a place of "status injury." He sees you as the person who took his job.
So, some hard questions for self-reflection:
Knowing he felt slighted, did you ever try to build an alliance with him and acknowledge his expertise? Or did you just expect him to fall in line?
Are you showing him respect, or just demanding it because of your title?
Are his arguments over "trivial things" really trivial? Or is it his (unproductive) way of trying to assert the technical authority he feels you're ignoring?
Right now, your manager hears a personal problem ("This guy is a jerk to me"). That's why he's giving you the weak "don't let it bother you" response.
Stop making it personal. Use your leadership skills to actually lead this person. Try to fix the relationship. Give him ownership.
If that fails, you can go to your manager with a leadership problem ("I've tried A, B, and C to leverage his skills, but his behavior is still causing X business risk"). That is a problem a manager has to solve.
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.
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.
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.
I've been in this scenario a couple of times. I see no reprise here
People. Pay. Work.
You'll only get one good thing at any company. One other thing will be decent. The third one will inevitably be nonsense. Choose to stay or leave depending on this rule.
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.
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"
Why the heck would you resign before talking directly to the other employee about the issue?
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!
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.
Your phrasing makes it totally HR worthy to my mind, especially if the only thing justifying keeping him (experience) is not there.
I was going to give you more advice, but actually here the only one that matters : get counceling/coaching help outside the company, with someone specialised in work related topics. You need someone on your side, to listen, give you fact based advices, discuss strategies, challenge you. It's a very stressful situation, get all the help you can!
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.
> if he's that bad the people on his team will leave and his behavior will be that much more obvious.
Often not true: while such people don't do great (programming) work, they are very political adept (which also includes being good at bullying outsiders), so often being a "disciple" of them is very useful for your career. So, while many people may not particularly "like" such a person, they often become "disciple" of him for such a self-interest.
Once my boss told me: “You can’t force people to do something they don’t want to do.” And this guy just don’t want to work well with you. Period.
I learned one approach that sometimes works: Figure out what they want and give them what they want. But with the condition they change their behavior. From your post, it sounds like this guy wants to be promoted.
If I were you, I would talk to him like this:
“Look, you are good technically. You should be promoted. But higher levels here mean more than just code. It means mentoring, working closer with peers, hiring people, training them, helping management. We have a career path in place, let’s make a plan for you.”
In big companies it’s even easier. Use the promotion track. Show him what’s expected. If he wants the title, he has to play the role.
Three things can happen:
He rises to it: He starts acting more professional, helps others, builds trust. You win, he wins, team wins.
He tries and fails: He’s exposed higher up. He has direct reports. He’s in meetings with management. He can’t hide his behavior anymore. Eventually, they’ll act.
He says “no thanks”: Then it’s clear. He just wants to stay where he is and make your life harder. At least now everyone sees it.
This puts the pressure where it belongs. On him, to live up to what he says he wants.
[Edit]: You can also tell him that if he wants the promotion, he has to start acting like someone at that level. That means following the principle: “There are no mistakes, only lessons we learn from.”
Tell him: "There was an outage. OK. Then step up. Take the lead, organize a post-mortem, and work with others to find real measures that prevent it in the future. Not to assign blame, but to help the organization improve."
Maybe you don’t even join the post-mortem, let him own it. Just make clear: this isn’t about finger-pointing, it’s about building a culture where problems lead to better systems.
I’m planning on making it clear we should do this. I’m expecting push-back. I’m just not going to entertain it and rely on my manager to handle scheduling while I take part in technical review. I’m exhausted of having to fight this guy to do what’s right.
It probably won’t be him who writes it but he’ll have to be involved at least as a code reviewer for the AIs. I’m sure he’s going to complain and try to make it look unnecessary. I’m mostly done trying to make things work with this guy. I’ll move up to my skip if I keep getting hassled like this.
“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
Those are wise words.
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.
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.
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.
A few things here.
The first is dead stupid but it tends to work with these sort of people. You need to be very question focused. The "correct" answer to every question you ask from here on out has to be NO. Is the sky purple today... NO. Is really dumb thing a good idea... NO.
> I get pushback on calling for a post-mortem
You're the lead, so just assume that you have cart blanche to just book the meeting. Set it up... If they say NO, just agree and have the meeting with the rest of the team. Let them exclude themselves.
> His feedback to me is not to let it bother me so much.
This is probably good feedback. What if they were more abrasive but amazing at the job??
> expecting conflict every time we're in the same meeting
Call him out on it. In public. Out loud. Dont be nice about it. It's time to tell him to "cut the shit".
Your other job, every day in the shower, or making coffee your ritual is to think of a new and interesting way to say NO. At some point your gonna get good at this (and its a life skill I swear). Have the one liner ready. And if he follows up "we can have a chat about this after the meeting" or "lets take this offline"
> If they say NO, just agree and have the meeting with the rest of the team. Let them exclude themselves.
Sorry, let who exclude whom?
This is off topic, but I am not sure why you insist on saying "they" if even the OP says "he". I do not think you run the risk of offending anyone here.
But the "they"s are especially disorienting, as the context specifically requires distinguishing "them" (the team) and him (the competent jerk), so the pronoun replacement significantly reduces the clarity of your communication.
This. You’re the boss, would you let your grade school kid keep talking back to you like this? You are the authority figure here. I seriously doubt he will begin to treat you any differently unless he has some fear put in him (and a slim chance even if that happens)
I would suggest that to come out on top here that you need to pitch a perfect game from here on out, even if it means following some suggestion from this guy or something. Being correct and being willing to verbalize when you don’t know something or don’t know the ideal answer to a situation is the number one trick to establishing a reputation as a rockstar IMO. That may give you a lot of sway.
Keep a great paper trail both on this guy and to cover your own ass.
I would probably begin building a case to fire him, aka “managing him out”.
I would start by documenting every incident and every fuckup by this guy in detail with links to tickets, slack and commits related to problems he has caused. Meeting notes about his poor professionalism could be used against him. You need that evidence, once you have a pretty good book on him, 5-10 incidents, especially with production downtime or company revenue ramifications, and you will have a good base with which to PIP him.
Make life as uncomfortable for him as possible while remaining professional. What’s the worst thing that happens, he quits? As long as you document the shit out of everything he does wrong, your ass is covered.
Best of luck, I can’t stand obnoxious people at work so I hope you can get him his comeuppance.
I hate this bullshit employee. But, in reading the post, I was not sure the OP was "the boss" as he stated he was "team lead" [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.] So, that's why I advised to better understand what is going on. I've been a "powerless" team lead more than once, and if you are not doing reviews and if the "manager" is not actively involved in making the team better but using input to perform a review, then its really frustrating. So, either he has the levers to fix the problem or he needs to go to his manager and figure out what levers there are to fix this.
> You're the lead, so just assume that you have cart blanche to just book the meeting
You're right. I should just push this. I'm attempting to be collaborative but I'm ending up just being conflict-averse to the detriment of everyone. I'll do this this upcoming week.
> This is probably good feedback.
I'd like for it not to bother me so much. It just accumulates and has festered. I should've been more forceful and insistent sooner. It's been on the verge of being worthwhile to force the issue for a long time; it's an ambiguous case since it's mostly passive-aggressiveness, not plain meanness.
> Call him out on it. In public. Out loud.
I really can't see this turning out well for me. It's easy for me to smirk and laugh, and for me to end up looking like the asshole. I'd be playing his game and losing.
> And if he follows up "we can have a chat about this after the meeting" or "lets take this offline"
This is more my style.
Thanks a ton for this -- very helpful.
> I really can't see this turning out well for me. It's easy for me to smirk and laugh, and for me to end up looking like the asshole. I'd be playing his game and losing.
Your style doesn't jive with this sort of aggressive posturing. Thats fair.
I would advise that you find a strategy and voice that does work for you. You need to have the things you're going to say "loaded up". Spend the first week taking time after the meeting taking an hour to write down all the things you should have said to "disarm" this person. It's less about the delivery and more that you have a message to send ready.
> 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.
| 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.
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.
Ask the QA people on the team if they have problems with him. Get a different manager involved...
If you've already managed to assert your boundaries and they've failed to respect them, then your boss is failing to listen, do their job, and maybe simply there to collect a paycheck and follow the path of least resistance rather than have a backbone.
Try to have them see the light or you'll need to find somewhere else to be for your own sanity. Maybe bring your boss a copy of the No *sshole Rule by Prof. Sutton.
Never put up with excessive toxicity because silence gives consent and your feet vote. Just as there are many other workers, there are many other jobs.
Yes, I am disappointed with my manager, especially given the number of times and the insistence with which I've raised this. It's clear to me both that he's afraid how this will reflect on him to his manager, and he's afraid of how the other engineer will react. He wants to keep the peace, which means me just sucking this up.
I don't want to leave this job unless I've exhausted all other possibilities. With this exception, it's great.
But the thing for your manager is, if you leave because he didn't handle this, that will also reflect badly on him. And it sounds like leaving because of this is a real option for you. You wouldn't just be saying it to blackmail your manager - you're really thinking that you may have to leave because of this.
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.
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.
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
Worst thing is that the team dynamic gets even worse, the guy becomes bitter and impossible to work with, and management punishes you for unprofessional and inappropriate behavior.
I obviously know absolutely nothing about what is really going on.
>I'm tired of the status and perception games and his overall impact on the team vibe and culture.
I have never heard this sentence said by anyone who wasn't deeply invested in status and perception games.
>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...).
Which kinda shows that your manager does not agree with your viewpoint. If you take his words at face value, he is pretty much telling you that you are the problem.
Again, I don't know what is really happening. But if I read between the lines the picture seems to be the following: You have a engineer in your team who thinks you are a looser and incompetent. This is why he second guesses you at every point, because he does not believe that you can make adequate decisions. At the same time other coworkers "love working with you", I am absolutely sure they do, but I guess that they have very little respect for you as a leader, they love working with you because it allows them to do what they want. The opinion of your boss towards the "problem engineer" seems quite positive, which also suggests that your manager does not consider your judgements of your teammates as particularly relevant.
If you take all of this together the picture becomes quite clear. Nobody respect your leadership. Your staff doesn't and your manager doesn't.
I take issue with comments like this, firing off inflammatory criticism based on nothing but guesswork and extremely tenuous “deductions”. There’s like, 8 extremely debatable assumptions here.
Reading between the lines is fair but architecting entire narratives is a stretch. Even then, the narrative lacks logic: why are we arbitrarily trusting what the manager and engineer says “at face value” but not OP? Where on earth is it even remotely implied that OP lets the engineers do what they want?
Repeatedly saying “I don’t know what’s really happening buuut” is not a coupon to let you arrive at such a negative conclusion.
>why are we arbitrarily trusting what the manager and engineer says “at face value” but not OP?
Trust does not matter. The manager might be totally wrong and the guy is getting worse and worse. This does not matter for my argument, which is that the manager puts his opinions above the one of the team lead. And he sees the team lead as part of the problem. Do you think there is an alternative explanation besides the manager not believing in the leadership qualities of OP?
I am also not trusting what the problem guy says, except that OP calls him a competent jerk, which tells me that OP does not disagree that the problem guy is a capable engineer.
>Where on earth is it even remotely implied that OP lets the engineers do what they want?
I wrote it below. If you are the leader of 10 people, 9 of whom trust you and 1 constantly disagrees with you, you can still push through any decisions, because the 9 people will stand up for you and force the one guy to accept whatever you decide.
Imagine having to go to your manager because one guy in your team of 10 does not want to do a post mortem. There have to be 9 other guys who do not care at all about your decisions, else they would have immediately stood up for you, for something as reasonable as a post mortem.
So why do you love working for a leader, but do not care at all when the leader gets criticised for something extremely reasonable. They do not like him because of his leadership abilities. Maybe they like him because he is a nice person or because his lack of leadership gets them something they want.
In the first instance, even if you’re right and the manager thinks team lead is the problem here, it’s quite the leap to go straight to “questions his leadership qualities” over a single interpersonal conflict or difference in viewpoint. It’s plausible, sure. But the manager could just as easily be trying to avoid (needed) conflict.
To your second point, there’s MANY other explanations. We don’t know how the team reacted for a start - maybe they did back up OP. Or maybe, based on the alleged jerk’s aggressive behaviour to the team in the past, they felt scared to speak up. Or maybe they’re junior. Or maybe you’re right and all 9 people unanimously felt OP was in the wrong.
My point wasn’t any of this though, it was mainly: avoid coming to such harsh judgments based on so much extrapolation. Criticise the reported actions, sure, discuss some hypotheticals, but going straight for “you’re a bad leader” goes a bit beyond.
>We don’t know how the team reacted for a start
We know they reacted in a way which forced OP to go to his manager.
>Or maybe, based on the alleged jerk’s aggressive behaviour to the team in the past
If that were the case OP would have mentioned it. Workplace bullying is certainly more important than disagreeing and this would make a reasonable case to fire him. If the jerk was bullying his team and OP did not notice, that would prove my argument even more.
>Or maybe they’re junior.
There are 9 other people. And they weren't asked to stand up for their own opinion, but for their team leads opinion. I do not think this matters much. 9 people not standing up for you as a team lead is a very bad sign, even if they are all juniors.
>Or maybe you’re right and all 9 people unanimously felt OP was in the wrong.
This isn't my interpretation at all. My interpretation is that OP had one opinion the other guy had his and the rest did not particularly care either way.
>Criticise the reported actions, sure, discuss some hypotheticals, but going straight for “you’re a bad leader” goes a bit beyond.
But having to go through your manager to force through a totally reasonable decision that is yours to make is being a bad leader. I do not think that there is any alternative interpretation then that this event at least is a failure in leadership.
I am saying this because I want to tell OP how his situation sounds to a complete outsider. OP was there if the 9 guys all immediately stood up for him and told the other guy that he was clearly in the wrong, then this obviously disproves everything I said and OP knows that I am wrong. But if they did not, then he should reconsider his actions and at least allow for the possibility that this was a failure on part of his leadership.
> but I guess that they have very little respect for you as a leader, they love working with you because it allows them to do what they want.
How did you jump to this conclusion? I was following you all along and here you made a logic jump I don't understand
I think there are four pieces of evidence:
- One person on the team does not respect him. That is pretty unambiguous.
- His manager puts his own (in all likelihood, based on quite limited information) opinion about the one guy over the opinion of the team lead. The team lead definitely knows the guy better, yet his manager disregards that. Why would he do that if he believed that the team lead was doing good leadership? Questioning the behavior of your subordinates is something you do when you don't trust in their abilities.
- The post mortem. If you are the team lead and you want a post mortem, then you will do a post mortem. "Because I say so", should be enough of a reason. Yet somehow his own manager needed to get involved, to force through the decision of the team lead? This also relates to the point before this.
- The Team. And I think this is the biggest tell. Imagine you are a team lead and you tell 10 people "we are doing X", one guy disagrees. There are still 9 other people, if they trusted the team lead as a leader, they would take his side, especially if X is something as obvious as doing a post mortem. This whole situation can only develop if the 9 people "who like to work with him" refuse to stand up for him at all. If you as a leader have 90% of the people behind you everything you say will be done.
The real question is why the rest of the team is doing nothing. Either it is because they are more afraid to go against the one guy (unlikely) or because they do not think it is worth it to stand up for the team lead. The real thing OP should consider is why his team does not appear to care the tiniest bit about his leadership position. If they did, the one guy would not be a problem at all.
One question remains, why do they love working with him. I do not think they are flattering him, I think they mean it. Often working for a weak leader is easy, because you can set your own rules and you can push your leader around. They probably enjoy that the atmosphere in the team is more relaxed, they get to have more influence on decisions and they can deflect work they do not want to do.
> I have never heard this sentence said by anyone who wasn't deeply invested in status and perception games.
100% agree. It’s almost always an engineer who’s used to being respected because they’re an engineer and have 0 soft skills.
In feedback and promo docs my leadership and soft skills were called out as exemplary and distinctively strong.
If anything it's the opposite. I don't think my technical skills are as strong as some peers at my level. A big part of the difficulty is that the other engineer is more experience in certain technologies than I am. I'm self-aware enough to recognize those cases, and don't try to override him.
Seems like your company has an issue with avoiding tough conversations? How much do you trust the feedback you got?
If your soft skills are so good why are you getting bodied by this guy?
If your are such a great leader why are your reports siding with the jerk?
If you already don't believe me, and want to think the worst, I won't be able to change your mind.
In another comment I've explained why I think this "OP is the real problem" narrative probably isn't the case, just based on other data points I've had.
> You have a engineer in your team who thinks you are a looser and incompetent. This is why he second guesses you at every point, because he does not believe that you can make adequate decisions
I do think this is broadly correct, though.
> they have very little respect for you as a leader, they love working with you because it allows them to do what they want
This is incorrect. They actively seek guidance from me regularly. As I mention in another post, three engineers joined the team specifically to work with me. I don't have doubts about this.
> The opinion of your boss towards the "problem engineer" seems quite positive
This is wrong too. He's called him an asshole.
> Nobody respect your leadership. Your staff doesn't and your manager doesn't.
This is also wrong. I was promoted recently. My reviews are strong in a tough, calibrated org. My team is widely trusted, a complete 180 from the state before I joined when it was falling apart.
Again, if you're already dead-set on reading the worst, you'll be able to do so. But I came here for actionable advice. You gave judgment, but not advice. What's the point?
I am sure that you will be able to change my mind.
If you read the discussion below there is one aspect I didn't bring up in this post. What does the rest of the team do when you get challenged? Do they stand up for you and defend your decision and your right to make the decision?
You brought up the post mortem. That was your decision to make, not only did you get challenged, but you also had to bring in your manager. What did the rest of the Team do? I have a hard time imagining a scenario, where you make a decision, where everyone but one guy goes against you and you still need a manager involved.
>This is incorrect. They actively seek guidance from me regularly. As I mention in another post, three engineers joined the team specifically to work with me. I don't have doubts about this.
I don't doubt any of that. And they may very well respect you, but that does not automatically translate into them respecting you as a leader.
>What's the point?
I gave you an outsiders perspective. Even if I am wrong about everything, the one thing I am absolutely certain about is that this one engineer sees you as a failure in leadership. And if he sees you as a failure in leadership (and has at least some positive opinions about his teammates, if he doesn't you are in far deeper trouble with him) then he must believe that the rest of your team does not believe in your leadership either. If I am wrong and the rest of the team stands firmly behind you, then you only need to show him that.
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.
> 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.
There is advice to talk to upper manager or HR. You could do it, but it won’t solve the issue. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be these problems in the first place.
In situations like this, the best solution is expose externally and leave.
Have you brought it up directly with the other person?
Twice so far, though not in as stark terms, and not recently. Once, I told him to knock it off trying to make a peer engineer who was underperforming look bad in front of the team, and instead to inform our manager of cases where he believed the engineer was underperforming, but not to try to embarrass or humiliate him -- the other engineer was extremely distressed by this engineer. He did stop. Another case he seemed to understand in our 1:1, but ramped up writing long slack comments that read to me as passive-aggressive.
There's a very high risk of things blowing up since there isn't a strong groundwork of trust to begin with, and since things blew up with the previous lead who was too direct with him, so I'm wary to do this without the involvement of my manager.
At first when I joined the team we seemed to have a good amount of trust since I was sympathetic to things that happened in the past to him -- he was treated very unfairly from a director who'd since been fired who let blame travel down directly onto this engineer. The director way over-promised and underestimated and caused the team to face tons of criticism. Most of the burden fell on this engineer; his peers were very little help, and the project was way too large. It was doomed from the start. Everyone on the team flamed each other in year-end reviews. The lead said everyone on the team, including himself, should be fired. It was extremely bad.
Eventually as I disagreed with him and saw he really didn't want /anything/ he'd worked on to change, we started to have conflict. I ended up having a lot more responsibilities added, and decreased the rate at which I held 1:1s with all my peers -- I think he felt insulted, and called off our 1:1s completely.
> not in as stark terms, and not recently
What’s stopping you from having a frank talk with him on Monday?
Don't let one insecure coworker convince you that you're the problem. You're clearly adding value and doing the right things.
See the no assholes rule. Paraphrasing here: Life is too short to work with assholes. If you work with an asshole tell your boss to fire them. If your boss won’t do it, quit. There are plenty of places where you don’t have to work with an asshole.
The manager is spot on, how can passive aggressive comments even annoy you. Should run off like water. You are feeding the troll and complaining about it is not leading. Burnout means you are taking this personally which it isn’t since any lead will get the treatment. If he is really incurable toxic give him enough rope.
He is using meetings as a dominance/humiliation ritual, and disagreement as an insult delivery mechanism. He is in disagreement with the hierarchy, uses disagreement to show defiance because he wants to be the leader. He also perceives he does not have much to lose by doing this because in the worst case scenario he will just go be an individual contributor elsewhere, and in the best case scenario you would leave, your role would be vacant and he may be eligible for it again.
The first thing you will do, is to talk to individual people by name. Do not ask open questions that everyone can respond to, because he will use that opportunity to be toxic. If he does intervene in a toxic way, you will continue addressing the person you were talking to, by name, and not pursue his talking point. This is fair game because you were not talking to him.
Secondly, instead of having long meetings with the entire team about every topic, you will have a general high level meeting with the team, and dedicated meetings for navigating the actual solutions with specific team members. You will not discuss solutions at length in the front of the entire team, and if you do, see the point above. You will also try to have clear agendas and expectations for meetings.
Thirdly, if he wants to initiate a conversation, try to scope it to what he was working on. Until you mobilize him to work on something else or ask for his opinion, other initiatives are not his primary concern. You can ask "tell me how the initiative X is going", or "what are your current priorities at the moment" to frame the conversation, and steer the conversation so that it stays on topic. If he refuses to answer just say "he will revisit your priorities later" and talk to someone else.
Lastly, if he operates outside the direction given by you as a lead, or consensus of the team, document it. And if it has consequences, document them. Create a clear paper trail that shows that he is not an individual contributor that can be mobilized towards a goal and is a liability for the organization.
Until he fixes his attitude, never ask for his advice in terms of "what would you in this situation if you were me", but you may ask others this.
How is he disrespecting you? "Respect" means so many different things to so many people that it is difficult to say what it is about his behavior you find intolerable. Maybe the answer is for you to grow a thicker skin because you won't ever be liked by everyone.
You can’t fire or remove people on your own team?
Everyone's different and the way that teams work differ massively from company to company, but this is how I've done it in the past. First off, doesn't matter if you're the technical lead or the team lead, it's the same role for responsibilities sake. A technical lead is responsible for the deliveries and a team lead is responsible for the actions.
That's your winning hand right there. "Yeah I hear you, but I'm deciding as the lead to do X". Shit sandwich style you can wrap it with "I love this! Keep these coming! I need to know perspectives and ideas, no bad ideas remember, keep them ALL coming! I promise as long as we're not too toasty with too much going on, I'll listen and I'll keep doing that as long as you're happy that when I have to put my foot down, I can do that". Then the foot down statement. Then the "..but seriously, lets get a proper ticket in on this, yes I've decided what we're doing but we should still recognise the full story here so {insert annoying persons name}, write up a full ticket on your perspective here into the techdebt pile and tag me when it's done so I can cross reference it with my Architectural Choices doc."
In every way you're constantly saying "I am king here". It's not up for discussion, it's not debatable, it's not a choice it's a fact.
...finally if you need to revert to the 'At the end of the day I have to decide what I want to end up in court with, and right now I'm thinking this. Again I'm happy to hear different perspectives, but at the end of the day someone has to make these choices as the lead and today that's me."
...now if the annoying person starts to actually play the game and then starts actually feeding potentially good ideas, then great, you start getting them onside with "keep em' comin'!" and an occasional "...see this is perfect, I can't see everything, I can't know everything, I need us to be growing this picking the best choices and having you do this is excellent!".
...and if that starts happening, you might be growing a strong right-hand-man, I've seen people before that were underachieving but potentially capable pull themselves up and become awesome members of the team, truly carve out a niche for themselves. Sometimes they need a kick up the arse and sometimes they just need to recognise that they need to kick themselves up the arse :)
First of all, I'm sorry to hear you're dealing with a person like this. It reminds me of a guy who was on my previous team. Relatively competent. Stuck at Senior. Had a lot of issue seeing (often younger - myself included) engineers getting promoted to Staff, Principal, etc. over him. Knew that he had an incredibly toxic and abrasive personality and thought merits alone should allow him to move up the ranks. He would reign it in sometimes after people complained either to him or to the manager, but he'd go right back to his old ways a few days later. So. Frustrating.
Anyways, my advice is: document. Document specific instances of behavior that you see that is toxic or disruptive to the team.
It sounds like this person needs to go - or someone else needs to start addressing their behavior with them. Either scenario will require that person (your manager, skip level, or HR - or some combination) to have examples of specific instances of behavior that needs to be addressed.
Others have recommended the empathy approach. Talk to the guy. Take them out to lunch/drinks/whatever. If you haven't tried it at least once, I agree it's worth trying. There's always a chance your reading things wrong or don't have the whole picture. But if you have tried kindness and understanding, and things don't change or they only change temporarily... I don't think the "kill them with kindness" approach will work in this case. It's the approach I tried in my situation and all it did was drain me and take away all of my excitement to work on the project he worked on. Because this person will never change and you can't make them change.
Whenever I've been around toxic people like this, I always use the "if everyone's a jerk, you're the jerk" heuristic. Because I certainly can lose my cool and be a jerk sometimes. Not always intended. So in order to ground myself, I ask: OK... who do I have problems with? Just one person? THAT person? Yeah. Anyone else? No... everyone else is pretty awesome! OK... what about them, have they expressed they have problems with more than just me? All but one person on the team!? Huh. Yeah... That seems off. It's far more likely they're the jerk.
Certainly not a hard and fast rule. But it's helped me stay sane through abusive relationships both professionally and personally.
Last point - unless this person reports directly to you, they're not your responsibility to fix. If you've talked with them and expressed frustration with the _behavior_ you're observing, you've already done your part. Your management needs to step up. If they disagree with the state of reality, then figure out why there's a disconnect. That's where documentation is your friend! If you can convince another coworker to do the same and they also can provide documentation that corroborates or supplements, even better. I wouldn't be too afraid of being clear to your manager that this is something that you need fixed in order to feel comfortable and productive at work. It doesn't need to be "it's me or him". Make it about how _you_ need help from your manager. If you can show them that effort has been made on your own to address the situation and it's not working, then any competent manager should work with you both to find some sort of path out of this. If they continue to refuse (especially if multiple team members are expressing the same thing) then I would consider escalating to your skip level and then to HR. Chances are, assuming this person really is a jerk, that these people are already aware of what's going on. If no one seems to care that a bad personality is dragging the team down, then that's a huge red flag on the company culture as a whole and I would gtfo as quickly as I could line a new job up.
Good luck. I hope you can find some relief here. Life is too short to put up with other people's crap.
You don't seem to have gained his respect with your engineering skills.
Publicly challenge (and beat) him in a small engineering contest, otherwise he will never respect you.
Make it time limited, eg. 3 hours to implement a specific goal with clear indicator of what is "better" as a score, ie. to avoid arguments that eg. "mines fast, mine scales". Have a neutral party pick the challenge.
This will solve nothing. Best case OP 'wins' ands the competent jerk becomes even more difficult, worst case OP 'loses' and loses any authority.
OP is being too nice. He is the team lead. His job is to lead, ands sometimes leaders have to be direct and harsh.
Lmfao at direct and harsh, that's not a leader, that's a boss. Leaders show the way, bosses tell the way, you my friend are neither.
The difference between you and me is that I've got the experience to have seen this play out multiple times, you on the other hand are making baseless assumptions.
Don't ask my rate, you can't afford it.
Sure, mate - whatever you need to tell yourself.