Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

“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.

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 :)

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.

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.