How would I handle that? Get a new job.
Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
#12One of my buddies on the dev team I am on has been going through a very similar situation. He has worked there much longer than myself yet he ends up with most of the drudge work. Instead of working on cool full-stack JS PWAs and SPAs he is stuck putting content on WordPress sites and fixing WP plugins. He has on occasion asked me how I managed to get all the fun stuff despite being so new. My advice to him was as follows:
1) Communication is key, a lot of times management don't realize you hold resentment and a simple conversation could really clear things up. Make your wants known, don't expect them to just be presented to you.
2) Take the time to shine. Push yourself to impress those in charge. Demonstrating value is always a good way to get more responsibility.
3) Try not to take it personally but instead ask yourself are some valid reasons why they have made such a decision. Also try and ask yourself what you could do to help the new hire. It isn't their fault and would probably love the assistance.
In the case of my friend, although he is a fantastic worker, he struggles at times to vocalize his contempt. Instead he will brood. Do not do this. People can't read minds and at the end of the day it is managements job to do what they think is best for the company as a whole. Good luck, hope all ends up alright!
Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
#13It is possible that you are not being intentionally sidelined. This has happened to me, where a company hired a new PM to help us scale, but just took over the parts of my job that I most loved, leaving me with just the drudge work. I was livid. “We have a new guy... who doesn’t understand the product or our customers or our process... and I am supposed to answer to HIM now‽” Some advice I wish I could go back 10 yea…
I found your story intriguing, as I struggled with something similar, and very much know what that feeling you described is.
I would love to know, in hindsight: why did the company decide to replace you on something that you loved doing? Was this a case of under performance and the new person effectively performed much better than you, or something else?
I have been victim of being replaced on something that I loved doing and I was very passionate about (a couple times over my career), and to this day (years later) I still think I was hands down much better than the person I was replaced with at that task, under every aspect: pure delivery performance, communication, sticking to improvements that provided value, maniacal customer support when bugs arose. In other words, I deeply and truly cared, too much actually and fell under the trap you described as “own what you own” (it was a feature I actually patented while working under the company). For the other person, that piece was just “meh, another thing I have to work on and maintain”, which ended up being my attitude when I was moved to something else.
I’ve tried repeatedly to assess the situation from an objective point of view to see if my line of thinking missed some aspects which might have caused my removal, but I just couldn’t find any bias in my reasoning if not of clueless upper management.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
#14It is possible that you are not being intentionally sidelined. This has happened to me, where a company hired a new PM to help us scale, but just took over the parts of my job that I most loved, leaving me with just the drudge work. I was livid. “We have a new guy... who doesn’t understand the product or our customers or our process... and I am supposed to answer to HIM now‽” Some advice I wish I could go back 10 yea…
I found your story intriguing, as I struggled with something similar, and very much know what that feeling you described is. I would love to know, in hindsight: why did the company decide to replace you on something that you loved doing? Was this a case of under performance and the new person effectively performed much better than you, or something else? I have been victim of being replaced on something that I loved…
I don’t think in my case that it was necessarily about me and my performance. Just like I don’t think that the OP’s story is necessarily about him and his performance. When teams grow, they change. There is an all-too-often unspoken assumption that roles will get more and more specialized as the team expands. You can go from being a dev/pm/architect/analyst to being “just a dev” or “just an architect” so slowly that you don’t even notice the de-facto demotion until it is too late.
A metaphor I use with management to prevent this from happening again is “I eat my broccoli so I get to eat my ice cream. Hiring someone to eat ice cream for me so I can focus on just broccoli might make intuitive sense to you, but will have a detrimental effect on me”
Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
#15How does this work from the other side? are there people discussing they should collectively exclude someone? what are the conversations that are taking place. I have never been on the other side, so would like to see a perspective from there.
It's often a matter of convenience. Dealing with overseas people is hard especially if there is a time difference. They probably don't explicitly decide to exclude someone but instead it's too much work to include the person.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
#16Do you want to continue being a manager? Do you want to continue to be a developer? Both? Are you unhappy because you feel rejected or unappreciated? Or do you really miss the work?
They could assume that you want to be a developer and not a manager. They may be intentionally sidelining you, and think that they're doing you a favor. The only way you can fix that is with communication.
Or, they may currently need you as a developer more than they need you as a manager. If it's temporary, you can choose to ride it out, making it clear to them that you want back into management when possible.
TL;DR: You have to talk to them to find out what they're thinking, and why they're doing what they're doing. Don't guess. Ask.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
#17It is possible that you are not being intentionally sidelined. This has happened to me, where a company hired a new PM to help us scale, but just took over the parts of my job that I most loved, leaving me with just the drudge work. I was livid. “We have a new guy... who doesn’t understand the product or our customers or our process... and I am supposed to answer to HIM now‽” Some advice I wish I could go back 10 yea…
I found your story intriguing, as I struggled with something similar, and very much know what that feeling you described is. I would love to know, in hindsight: why did the company decide to replace you on something that you loved doing? Was this a case of under performance and the new person effectively performed much better than you, or something else? I have been victim of being replaced on something that I loved…
Is it possible that management felt that most development work on the thing you loved was done, and your talents were wasted on maintenance? Did they move you to projects at an earlier stage of development?
Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found your story intriguing, as I struggled with something similar, and very much know what that feeling you described is. I would love to know, in hindsight: why did the company decide to replace you on something that you loved doing? Was this a case of under performance and the new person effectively performed much better than you, or something else? I have been victim of being replaced on something that I loved…
I don’t think in my case that it was necessarily about me and my performance. Just like I don’t think that the OP’s story is necessarily about him and his performance. When teams grow, they change. There is an all-too-often unspoken assumption that roles will get more and more specialized as the team expands. You can go from being a dev/pm/architect/analyst to being “just a dev” or “just an architect” so slowly that…
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Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found your story intriguing, as I struggled with something similar, and very much know what that feeling you described is. I would love to know, in hindsight: why did the company decide to replace you on something that you loved doing? Was this a case of under performance and the new person effectively performed much better than you, or something else? I have been victim of being replaced on something that I loved…
Is it possible that management felt that most development work on the thing you loved was done, and your talents were wasted on maintenance? Did they move you to projects at an earlier stage of development?
In a sense, they did, but:
1) The new project was massively less interesting to me than the one I was solving (a completely different field with skills I didn’t possess - think moving from hardcore low level system scalability to designing a new type of UI widget, for example), and I tried to make that as clear as possible without undermining management or jeopardizing my job safety.
2) The project was just 80% completed, whereas I like bringing things to production myself, and handle all the maintenance and support. Especially the things that I design and lead from scratch.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?
#20One of my buddies on the dev team I am on has been going through a very similar situation. He has worked there much longer than myself yet he ends up with most of the drudge work. Instead of working on cool full-stack JS PWAs and SPAs he is stuck putting content on WordPress sites and fixing WP plugins. He has on occasion asked me how I managed to get all the fun stuff despite being so new. My advice to him was as fo…
He has worked there much longer than myself yet he ends up with most of the drudge work. Instead of working on cool full-stack JS PWAs and SPAs he is stuck putting content on WordPress sites and fixing WP plugins
Your friend’s mistake is that he is too professional, doing the work that needs doing and pays everyone else’s salaries, while other more selfish people prioritise getting some more buzzwords on their CV. I have fallen victim to this mentality myself. It may be too late if he has been typecast, he’ll need to reboot by going somewhere else. But it’s a sad state of affairs that being conscientious is a career killer.