Ask HN: I'm being pushed out of my job | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I'm being pushed out of my job

21 pointsdoomerdeveloper16 comments

I’m a backend engineer with ~10 years experience currently working at a fast growing startup with plenty of funding, good market fit and a product that I really believe in. I joined the company before the launch and architected, wrote and implemented all the critical parts of our backend. As an early employee I have a stock options plan.

Things have been working almost perfect until a few months ago.

In my last one-on-one review with my manager, he was very upset with me. Partly is because of some technical mistakes I had big responsibility (and fixed in record time), but mostly because he’s been hearing bad comments of my work from a co-worker.

I came to the conclusion that this person wants my job hence why he’s trash talking to my manager, making the case I am messing things up and I’m not a good engineer.

While I’ve done a few mistakes in the codebase, and failed to meet a few deadlines, I also have prevented or fixed bad mistakes made by my colleagues (including the trash-talker), but instead of denouncing them to the manager, chose the path of being a good guy and do my best to help them.

However, all the incompetence of the team is being blamed at me with fury from the manager, and this person who trash talks about me makes a lot of effort to befriend him and boost his ego, which makes him very convincing. I don’t have the personality to pull off this kind of politics game.

Because of this I’m at the lowest point in my company career, I feel very stressed and angry, because I’ve really contributed quite a lot to the success of this company but I’m not getting recognition and everyone in this person’s influence won’t trust me anymore.

What to do in this situation? How can I recover my team’s trust? Should I leave the company?

> but instead of denouncing them to the manager, chose the path of being a good guy and do my best to help them.

There’s your problem.

My advice would be to be very open about this with your manager and let shit hit the fan next time your coworker push something that will break in production and/or create problems.

The sad reality of many environments is that grunt work that keeps the light on is very often not even acknowledged, and it’s usually more cherished the person who fixes the issues instead of the person who prevents them or never causes them in the first place.

I’ve seen this happen over and over again, sadly.

Another extrema ratio: if you’re not satisfied with your manager’s response, go talk to your manager’s manager.

> While I’ve done a few mistakes...

We all make mistakes. If you are in an environment where making a mistake risks your job, or even your morale, maybe leaving is not so bad.

Even so, I've found that situations like that often can be fixed by talking about it openly. I'd try that first -- say everything you said here to your boss and see if he can help resolve it. It might go well, it might go badly, but either way it will tell you whether or not this is a job worth fighting for.

You're in a lose lose situation imo. You have no allies, especially if your manager isn't backing you up or seeing the same problems you are seeing. Regardless of how you feel about your contributions to the company or its future success, at the end of the day you are just a cog in the wheel and will always be viewered as replaceable. But something you didn' tmention is, what is your goal here, do you want to stay at all costs, or try to find justice? I don't think you'll get justice, but I do see a way for you to just bow down your head and stick to your own tasks, make sure you don't make any more mistakes, and ride out your stock options before you leave. If you want something more, you'd need to play the politics game and find allies in power who will protect you and defend you.

Yes, you need to be investigating for your next job immediately!!!!

First of all software employment is contracting. Its a great time to be a junior or principle developer, but its hard finding a job right now as a senior. If you think you about to be squeezed out you are probably already too late and will be unemployed for a while before landing the next job.

Second, I went through the exact same thing less than 2 months ago. All the warning signs were there. Things like shitty junior developers talking trash, management on the sidelines, no internal automation, everything high risk. Just get out. Its just a job and clearly nobody knows what they are doing.

In my case I have a plan B. A back up career in management in an unrelated industry. Always have a back up plan. My back up plan doesn't pay as much and demands more of my time, but its so much more enjoyable. So much so it isn't even a comparison. Really puts the stupidity of the software employer who lacks vision on what software is in a completely different perspective.

I dealt with almost the exact same thing at my last job, but in my case, the power dynamics were split between two offices and I had a defender pretty high up who had watched me get to work and figure stuff out by being down the hall from me every day.

Nonetheless, in the end the buffoon was more than I could take, so I gave notice, and ended up in a different department. Sure enough, he brought in an expensive vendor to implement a replacement for a thing I had been using to handle file server loads for years without issue. A few months later, sure enough, his black box solution started corrupting files on the network, and he was gone soon after. I would have gone back to the IT dept but I was making more as a Python dev by that point.

I have been there myself and gave in my resign on the spot for falsely being accused of something I didn't do.

In my humble opinion it's time to change job my friend; very few managers exist out there as the exception, but the majority of them don't care about you, nor about your contribution in the company.

You are nothing but a machine component for them, that can be easily replaced with anyone, let alone AI services nowadays.

Good luck.

You don't have an HR department you can discuss with? Just be fully transparent and present your own perspective, all of it. If your HR is professional, they will help getting to the bottom if this. Their job ultimately is to optimize the workforce's output. If your manager is jeopardizing your own contribution to the company, he is not doing a good job and HR should make him see that. One ideal outcome would be an open talk with HR, manager, the trash talker and yourself, in which you all clearly define your personal objectives (what do you want to realize / where in the company do you want to be); could even turn out that these can perfectly co-exist.

I hope this doesn't come off as overly cynical, but this is a wildly popular misconception about what HR is for and does. Google "HR is not your friend."

Some companies might have a mediation program to mitigate employee/manager disputes, but the vast majority do not. If OP had lost the confidence of their manager and doesn't see any options to regain it, then there is nothing left but to move on.

If that's so I should never leave my company. My own situation wasn't directly comparable but I was stuck in a role I ended up in; HR helped me out big time. There core focus was: how do we make everyone excel in what they do, accepting naturally that every individual has its own weaknesses.

That's an excellent philosophy and I wish more managers/business had it.

HR exists to protect the business. Do not do this. Odds are very high you will get blown on the door asap after this conversation. OP should be looking for their next job immediately while establishing a robust paper trail in the event they can demonstrate a hostile work environment or illegality at their current employer.

They've got no leverage. They need to protect themselves and derisk.

If it were me in this situation, I'd take a look at my finances first, and consider when was the best time to leave if I had to, (i:e is it worth hanging in there, or is leaving ASAP consequence-free financially). Then do some research into new jobs. If the market is dead you may need to tread carefully. If when job-searching you get some "bites", you can take more risks. Once you have a plan for what to do if you get fired / job becomes untenable, then at that point, go have a frank discussion with your boss. Tell 'em what you told us. "I've done plenty for this company. Now I'm getting trash-talked by a coworker. I'm not perfect but this is unacceptable and I haven't got time or inclination for playing political games. What you gonna do about it?". It'll either (a) blow up in your face, "managed exit" or whatever, but at least you're planned and primed for that, and better off outta there. Or (b) you actually get respect for doing this, coworker gets the fall-out, you go back to happy times. Good luck. :). The moral as always is, particularly in the hyper-capitalist world we live in, today's great workplace may not be tomorrows's. But at least as decently paid tech workers we can save some "partial FU money" and have options other than treated terribly ......

> Should I leave the company?

Yes.

What's the point of a one word comment?

He answered his own question and it is clear that he is suffering in his job. Why prolong it even further?

The reasonable course of action is to just leave.

I'm not disagreeing with "yes," I'm saying that yes and no were probably the two ideas that occurred to them first.

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