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Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

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Re: Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

#11

Post by imetatroll »

jdlshore wrote: post #7

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 b…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

#12

Post by zepolen »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

#13

Post by feydaykyn »

Have you discussed with HR? Toxic employees should be their responsibility too.

As others suggested, take note and proof. Start by copying the exact same content you've published here, and complete it with new toxic behaviour. What will create a body of proofs HR will need and will "expel it" from your head.

I would also meet your manager's manager, this situation has taken too long to resolve and your manager is not doing enough (as far as we know at least). Ask your N+1 whether he has heard of the situation, if he has not your manager is in troubles.

Finally, you have not described how others employees are living through this situation, they may be upset to and be able to help: - they can report the employee behaviour - they can react when the employee is not behaving correctly - they can provide feedbacks, ideas, support?

I wish you all the best, this is a hard situation you're living!

Re: Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

#14

Post by codeduck »

zepolen wrote: post #12

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.

Re: Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

#15

Post by burnt-resistor »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

#16

Post by yobbo »

The devil's advocate would lift a few points. The OP equates disagreement with conflict and sees the main cost as being loss of status and "hurting team vibe". They seem to make a point that their own main contribution is bringing stability (good vibes?) to the team.

It could be the story of a weak or unaware engineer/employee that has been promoted to a level they thought implied some sort of impunity. Because being reviewed or questioned weakens the public perception of them, they experience it as unfair and toxic. Using the word "trivial" to characterise critique directed towards them could be emotionally rather than technically motivated.

Re: Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

#18

Post by constantcrying »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

#19

Post by Gooblebrai »

constantcrying wrote: post #18

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…

> 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

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