Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

| 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.