Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

news.ycombinator.com

71–80 of 139 posts

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

#71

Next time tell him that if he isn't going to provide something constructive to the meeting, that he won't be allowed to join further ones. 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.

Don’t do this in front of the team. This sort of message should be delivered privately.

Doubt this is the way to go anyway but it’s definitely not something to say during the meeting.

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

#72
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think from what I've written, it could be possible to interpret this as the case. At least part of it's true -- I'm not nearly as experienced in some of the technologies this team uses as the other engineer who's been working on the team for a lot longer. I think I'm self-aware about what I know and what I don't, and defer to him in those cases. I do think that plays into why he doesn't seem to have much respect fo…

It sounds as though there is unclarity in roles. You might have a style of avoiding or de-escalating confrontation which could make him believe your call for a post-mortem is a suggestion he can set aside. 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 p…

> My advice would be 1) to not phrase decisions as suggestions,

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.

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

#73
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy clearly is an underperformer that knows he cannot win through merit and instead wants to win by playing dirty. 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 psychopa…

There isn't nearly enough information in OP's post to draw that conclusion.

I disagree - years of behavior pattern plus other people leaving for exactly the same reason is plenty of information.

In your eyes what WOULD be nearly enough information to draw that conclusion?

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

#74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't nearly enough information in OP's post to draw that conclusion.

I disagree - years of behavior pattern plus other people leaving for exactly the same reason is plenty of information. In your eyes what WOULD be nearly enough information to draw that conclusion?

[deleted]

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

#75

Life's too short-- tell your manager you can't work like this. You resign unless something is done about it. If they value you, something will be done about it.

Pretty much everything else about my job is basically my dream job. I don't think the "it's him or me" position will work out, especially given I'm more two levels more senior. I think that would just cause me to lose a lot of trust either way. I'd rather fix his behavior, or have him encouraged to move teams without me threatening to leave.

If you are two levels above the guy, why isn’t management taking you seriously? Have you considered going to your skip about this? Seems appropriate if you’re being ignored.

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

#76
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly, you come across as quite negative yourself. There's a saying, "If everywhere you go smells like shit, maybe it’s time to check your shoes"

I try as much as possible to stay out of politics and believe in merit. If someone advances their career through merit, I will be the first to celebrate with them.

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.

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

#77
a few ideas:

- 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.

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

#78
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, you come across as quite negative yourself. There's a saying, "If everywhere you go smells like shit, maybe it’s time to check your shoes"

I try as much as possible to stay out of politics and believe in merit. If someone advances their career through merit, I will be the first to celebrate with them. 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, an…

Lots of assumptions you're making there.

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.

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try as much as possible to stay out of politics and believe in merit. If someone advances their career through merit, I will be the first to celebrate with them. 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, an…

Lots of assumptions you're making there. 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.

[deleted]

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

#80
First of all, I'm sorry to hear you're dealing with a person like this. It reminds me of a guy who was on my previous team. Relatively competent. Stuck at Senior. Had a lot of issue seeing (often younger - myself included) engineers getting promoted to Staff, Principal, etc. over him. Knew that he had an incredibly toxic and abrasive personality and thought merits alone should allow him to move up the ranks. He would reign it in sometimes after people complained either to him or to the manager, but he'd go right back to his old ways a few days later. So. Frustrating.

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.

Post reply on HN