Comment by jdlshore

Comment by jdlshore 9 days ago

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 best option is to go work for a decent manager, either at the same company or another one. Life’s too short, and you’re not going to be able to fix the toxic employee.

In other words, get someone who can help, or get out. Take your friends with you.

imetatroll 9 days ago

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.

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tacostakohashi 9 days ago

That sounds very familiar to me... I know of a guy like that, who will rapidly jump on and propose and implement half-baked "tactical" solutions to any production incident. As you say, he is valued by management, because he is very responsive, at all hours, and always has some kind of snake oil "fix" to offer for any problem, and generally maintains a bit of a "mad scientist" vibe.
The issue is that, most of his "fixes" are just rearranging deck chairs, increasing timeouts, decreasing timeouts, adding memory, upgrading random libraries, etc., and he's constantly operating in "emergency mode", trampling on other people's work and priorities to get his "urgent" stuff out the door. He also just sort of throws things at the wall - "what if we change / disable X to fix this, would that break any client use cases?"... well, I dunno buddy, you are the one proposing the change, you have access to the logs, you are the genius, why is it _my_ job to evaluate your stream of half-baked ideas to separate the wheat from the chaff?
Ultimately, we co-exist, and I'd even say there are things to learn from him, i.e. being responsive is important and hugely valued. Over time, I've learnt not to get sucked into his urgent, half-baked proposals to save the world, I just say look, if you think that's a good idea, go for it, do it, but... you don't get to force it down everyone's throat and pretend there is consensus, I have my own, different priorities that I am not going to drop for you.

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- actsasbuffoon 9 days ago
  
  I’d go so far as to say that you and this other engineer both fill vital roles on your team. It’s not that you’re right or he’s right; you’re both right.
  I’ve been on teams where I needed to be the methodical engineer who carefully built critical infrastructure and agonized over every decision. I’m currently at a small startup that hasn’t yet reached breakeven, so I’m scrambling like crazy to build things our customers and investors will pay for. That’s what this team needs.
  Thank goodness for both of you. Your team would be worse for it if they lacked either.
  
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  DANmode 7 days ago
  
  Could replace them both with an “overpaid” even-keeled and unemotional engineer who will make sure it fits just right…
  
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- frank_nitti 8 days ago
  
  Great insight and advice I need to take - your description captures my current situation almost to a tee, better than I’ve been able to understand it for myself, so thank you.
  In addition to what you described, in my case this engineer quickly recognizes other highly-effective and/or important people, and aggressively tries to build that reputation by privately messaging and even privately demoing work where the recipient has some stake in the outcome.
  I would onboard him to a project, sharing all of my tools, key contacts and personal insights, e.g.
  “our manager Smith is hinting that there is a big customer interested in X capability, which I’ve discussed with their power user Wilson and product owner Flores informally in recent demos. I think we could use Y approach and want to start prototyping if we get the go-ahead”
  This engineer would start messaging Flores, Wilson and Smith privately and schedule calls about X excluding me and other core maintainers to push the thing forward, often proposing Y in his own words.
  This strategy worked wonders for him in terms of upward movement. He is a diligent and extremely responsive to important people. But the strong engineers from whom he has effectively stolen credit, or even the opportunity to have a seat at the table in critical early discussions, obviously resent it.
  His direct manager is lackadaisical and basically just gets bombarded by this engineer asking for frequent, long 1-1 calls where he shares “his” accomplishments and ideas. I’ve watched this play out in person (we are a remote-only team except for big project-related events) — his manager clearly trying to leave the event after it concluded, keys in hand and facing his car door, everyone else has said goodbye and given space, and this engineer keeps him there talking for no less than 10 more minutes.
  I’ve never met someone so comically ambitious and overzealous to be seen as the MVP He was promoted in record time, much to the frustration of stronger and more critical maintainers.
  I am baffled by the whole thing, and just laugh at this point. My most charitable interpretation of manager’s actions are that they do recognize the dynamic, and just don’t care because ultimately their job is slightly easier for the meantime. But if any 2+ of the critical core maintainers split in frustration, the whole thing will suffer, badly
  ETA: it seems to me that remote-only teams are particularly susceptible to this kind of thing getting out of hand, because the capacity for secret communication is immensely greater
  
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  tacostakohashi 6 days ago
  
  I can see that talking directly to Flores, Wilson and Smith, and proposing other peoples ideas could be grating for others. However, another way of looking at it is, that's just called "taking initiative". There's nothing to stop _anyone_ from talking directly to Flores, Wilson and Smith, go meet with them, take them out to lunch, make friends with them, etc.
  If people think that Y approach is good, and talk amongst themselves about it, but don't actually write it up, pitch it to the powers that be, "sell" it, etc., then people are going to do that for them.
  If Flores, Wilson and Smith are overwhelmed with one on one chats and meetings, then they'll probably push back and organize some group meetings and communications that everyone is in on. Conversely, if _nobody_ is doing that, then that leaves things wide open for _someone_ to do that, and that person is actually adding some value in doing so.
  The person I work with also has a habit of cornering people when they are leaving. If you him "goodnight, see you tomorrow" at 5:30p, and pick up a bag, he will somehow interpret that as an opportunity to broach a whole new topic, and tie you up for half an hour. He does it with senior people too, it can be interesting to watch... hard to say whether it is not picking up on the social cues, or just not caring...
  
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- wqaatwt 2 days ago
  
  > implement half-baked "tactical"
  That’s easy, though. What if he’s actually “brilliant” and very productive but hard to get along with
  
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- imetatroll 6 days ago
  
  Well I wouldn't characterize they guys work as half baked. I am rather shocked by how vast and deep his knowledge base appears to be. I guess the struggle for me personally I no longer feel like I bring anything valuable to the table and since this guy is very aggressive about being the first to answer anything I find myself giving up. I have kids and other duties and I just ... I guess I am getting old.
  
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whateveracct 8 days ago

As a manager? Coach your report on his soft skills. Software dev is about being a good team member as much as a good individual contributor. If the strongest guy is dominating meetings and dominating the team's direction with his opinion, that's something to work on.
He has to give others space to contribute by not jumping in. And his manager should be coaching this directly. As the EM, you want your whole team to be able to confidently do what he does. Functioning teams have multiple engineers concurrently owning your scope.
If your company isn't toxic, over-working would also be seen as a negative because of the precedent it sets. If this guy wants to be a leader and not a monkey, he has to appreciate that. And senior/staff counts as "leader" here.

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golly_ned 9 days ago

This sounds similar to the guy I'm working with. He's great in certain ways and takes his job seriously but can be really grating to work with. (Frankly, I think it probably has something to do with taking stimulants, just based on similarities between him and another engineer I worked with who was open about being on a big dose of stimulants, and who resembles this guy but about 2x worse.)

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golly_ned 9 days ago

Thank you for your advice.

> your manager isn’t doing his job

Yeah, I do believe this and agree. My manager's new, and hasn't gotten much guidance or mentorship. I feel like he depends on me for a lot, and since I don't have a clear answer for him in this situation since I'm actually involved in it, I think he doesn't know what to do. He's said in the past with respect to this engineer's conflict with a struggling engineer on the team -- publicly pointing out that engineer's mistakes and lack of progress -- that he was afraid to have this come up to our director's (his skip's) visibility to avoid making a bad impression.

I can see talking to my skip, and overall I think it'll have a decent chance of him being receptive, and that he has a good amount of trust for me. I think my manager will be understanding about what I've done and why, but it'll put friction and distance between me and him -- so far he's been an incredible advocate for me in everything. Everything except this, which is exactly what I really need him for, since it's affecting my well-being.

The hard part is pointing to specific behaviors that I'd like changed. It's really difficult since it can all be covered up as just doing work and participating in the team -- that's the nature of passive-aggressive behavior like this.

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jdlshore 9 days ago

Based on what you’ve written, you owe it to your skip to have this conversation with him. This issue isn’t just affecting you, it’s affecting the whole team, and I guarantee it’s dragging down the performance of the team as a whole. (Team performance always jumps up after a toxic employee is removed, in my experience, no matter how brilliant or essential they seemed to be.)
Your manager’s fear of looking bad to his boss reflects his inexperience. (Or a dysfunctional organization, but let’s hope that’s not true.) It’s your skip’s job to provide mentoring to a new manager, and to support him in creating a high-performing team, which includes guiding him through using the company’s performance management process to take care of underperforming employees like your toxic coworker.
Since you have a good relationship with your skip, I think a frank conversation about the effect this person is having on the team will go well. You can also share that you’re worried about it blowing back on you, and your manager’s fear of looking bad. If your skip is smart, he’ll use that opportunity to take a more active hand in mentoring your manager without bringing your name into it.

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- golly_ned 7 days ago
  
  I talked to my manager just now. He knows of some cases where engineers have had bad experiences with him, but not others. Some apparently just talk to me but don't raise it to our manager. He still knew he was a problematic engineer, but wasn't getting the same confirmation that I was getting. I gave him the names of two more engineers with recent experiences with the guy he can talk to, one within the team and one outside the team.
  I also gave the feedback to my manager that I don't think he's handled this well. I brought up that he's, each time, mentioned another excuse for the difficult engineer. He agreed, and apologized to me. He was sincere, and apologized more than once. Meanwhile, I apologized for bringing this up again.
  It's discouraging that he didn't have as many other people talking about the guy to him as they have to me. It makes me think I may just have way more problems with him than me, and that I've overestimated how problematic he is; though I also think the other engineers who've complained about him to me are conflict-averse and wouldn't want to raise this to a manager who may pass it on to the difficult engineer. I was also disappointed that my manager said that he doesn't think it's personal, and that that's just how the difficult engineer is to everyone; it's clear to me that that's not the case since I'm living it first-hand.
  It was also hard to get to a concrete, specific, actionable behavior change to request the difficult engineer to commit to. It's easy to say "don't condescend to your teammates". It's hard to say what behaviors that entails.
  
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  jdlshore 6 days ago
  
  It’s surprisingly common for managers to have no clue what’s going on in their teams. Doubly and triply so for skip-levels and higher. The reason is exactly what you’re seeing here: people will complain to each other, but not inform their manager.
  One of the essential but most difficult jobs of a manager is to create psychological safety: the ability for people to raise what’s really on their mind, and to do so with the people who can act on that information.
  I think you made the right call here. Telling your manager you were disappointed with their handling took courage, too. Now they can look into it further, starting with talking to the people you named.
  Maybe they were just going along with you, “oh yeah, that guy’s a real jerk.” Maybe (and more likely) they didn’t raise it themselves because they’re don’t have the senior mindset you do. If your manager asks them directly, they’ll probably get a reasonably honest answer, although it’ll likely be softened a bit.
  > It was also hard to get to a concrete, specific, actionable behavior change to request the difficult engineer to commit to.
  Oh yeah, that’s the hell of these things. You end up playing whack-a-mole, too, because HR wants something more concrete than “don’t be an asshole,” and it turns out you can follow the letter of a PIP while finding plenty of other ways to be an asshole.
  
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johnwheeler 8 days ago

Yeah, fuck your boss. Guys an asshole. He knows how stressful it is for you and either doesn't do something about it because the guy's nice to him, or because he's threatened by you and he knows that having this dickhead around gives him leverage against you. Worst-case scenario: he's just plain incompetent. I guess there is no worst-case scenario. They're all terrible.

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icedrop 9 days ago

This is phenomenal advice. The post itself strikes me as either lifted directly from reddit (experienceddevs or another sub), but your advice is generally great for any reader curious about how to handle this type of problem employee.

From the perspective of a line manager, your statement about not coddling and directly confronting the issue intuitively sound correct. If it's possible to address behavioral issues in this type of high-talent high-friction engineer, it actually doesn't hurt to bruise their ego a little--if anything, doing it respectfully means they listen, and value the feedback more than usual.

Edit: also, took a look at your profile--couldn't tell, what type of org are you VP of eng at? (Private, equity-funded, late-stage, early stage, fintech, biotech, saas, etc.). Curious as the advice rings sound, but I only saw your consultancy work.

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