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.
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’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.
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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).
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;))
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...
In your eyes what WOULD be nearly enough information to draw that conclusion?
Source?
I really dislike this style of framing.
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.
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.
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.
There's a saying, "If everywhere you go smells like shit, maybe it’s time to check your shoes"
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.
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.
Just like if someone showed up drunk at work, showing up with an unacceptable behavior should be seen in a similar lens.
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.
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.
I think it’s an emptily authoritative and somehow acceptable heuristic that works for some and not others.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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"
- 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.
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.
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.
Doubt this is the way to go anyway but it’s definitely not something to say during the meeting.
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
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.
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.
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.
Never give up against him. Push through your ways every single time.
Sooner or later he’ll get the point and he’ll leave.
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.
In situations like this, the best solution is expose externally and leave.
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.
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.
What’s stopping you from having a frank talk with him on Monday?
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.
I don't want to leave this job unless I've exhausted all other possibilities. With this exception, it's great.
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 :)
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
How did you jump to this conclusion? I was following you all along and here you made a logic jump I don't understand
- 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 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?
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.
100% agree. It’s almost always an engineer who’s used to being respected because they’re an engineer and have 0 soft skills.
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 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?
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.
OP is being too nice. He is the team lead. His job is to lead, ands sometimes leaders have to be direct and harsh.
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.