4 ms·

(throwaway) I'm a developer at a fairly small company. I never really wanted to be managing people but after some internal drama a bunch of stuff was moved aro

(throwaway) I'm a developer at a fairly small company. I never really wanted to be managing people but after some internal drama a bunch of stuff was moved around and I found myself in charge of the team I had been on while we looked for a permanent manager. One of the devs who now reported to me decided that this was the best time to demand a raise- not just a cost-of-living increase, which are scheduled, but an amount of money that would have made him the highest-paid person on the team by a lot. (He was on the lower end of both seniority and performance.) He was threatening to leave, and after talking to my superiors I basically just said "sorry, you aren't getting that, I don't want you to leave but if you do I will be happy to give you a good reference." That didn't go over great and he emailed the whole C-suite trashing me and telling them essentially what a mistake it was that I got tapped to lead the team over him. The CEO just forwarded the email to me and said "deal with this." We'd had a pretty good relationship before, (or at least I thought we did) but all attempts to sit down with him and figure out how we could work together ended with him just making it clear that he was not going to play ball. He stopped showing up to work for awhile and sent his notice not too long after, and eventually we hired a real manager (which was always the plan) and I went back to writing code. Even though I don't know what I could have done differently I still feel bad and think about it a lot.

qazxcvbnmlp 5y ago
Sounds like you did the right thing and they needed to go.
lostcolony 5y ago
No, that was the correct response. If anything, you should have fired him intentionally yourself when he went over your head. He isn't looking to work with you or the team, he's actively seeking to undermine you; at that point his presence is a negative, not a positive.
- teddyh 5y ago
  > you should have fired him intentionally yourself when he went over your head Is escalating an issue a fireable offense?
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    In many countries it wouldn't have been allowed to fire him. I wonder how it'd been to be a manager, if he couldn't be fired, and he continued contacting the CEO etc saying you (GGP, whirlingdervish the throwaway) weren't any good at your job. I guess eventually I'd quit (if I was in GGPs position and couldn't do much about it), and he'd become the manager in my place, if the plan hadn't been to hire another one.
    - kubanczyk 5y ago
      > In many countries it wouldn't have been allowed to fire him. I'm in one of these countries. If they have a cause that cannot be legally used to terminate an employee, they just look long and hard for any other misdemeanors and fire them as fast as they gather any plausible "evidence". Creative types can also actively put an employee into a checkmate, i.e. a position where no move or any move is a fireable offense. In this case it could be as simple as identifying any part of that email as a defamation.
      - cutemonster 5y ago
        Compare that unfortunate workplace "culture" (until the person eventually leaves / gets fired), with this article about psychological safety: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860743 I wonder if the lawmakers having made it almost impossible to fire someone, then damages the psychological safety in the company, in that the managers have to start looking for mistakes someone did and using it against him/her. I'd guess this sends bad vibes to the whole team. Makes me wonder if this holds countries like, was is France?, back, when it comes to startups and innovation, hmm
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    When done in bad faith, yes. This wasn't "I have an issue, my manager didn't address it", this was "I have an issue with my manager. He's an idiot. You shouldn't have made him manager. You should have made ME manager", etc. There is nowhere to go with that. There is no way to fix that. There is no way to ignore that. And the employee is going to be killing team morale more and more the longer they stay at that company. So your options are to leave the person where they are, killing the team's morale and effectiveness, go to management yourself and ask that the employee be listened to (meaning that now someone as problematic and full of themselves is being put in a management position, which will also lead to the team's productivity dropping to nothing), or you let the person go. Only one of these will leave the team intact.
austinjp 5y ago
Having been promoted to managing a team I was previously a part of, I feel your pain. If it helps, consider that this person might have tried exactly the same ploy with whoever was in your shoes. I'm sure they had some issues going on in their life, and issues with the existing management that you inherited unknowingly. Management stress is real. Part of it comes with maintaining confidentiality, whereas a disgruntled employee will rant and get things off their chest. I won't say it's 100% about the role and not the person, since that's dumb - interpersonal relationships are real and significant. Equally, it's not 100% about the individual. FWIW, and taking your description at face value, I think your response was appropriate and theirs was not.
jariel 5y ago
The thing to realize: this is normal. People are weird - all of us. We get into our own head-space, and we interpret the world differently than others, sometimes objectivity falls by the wayside. Sometimes someone is truly working is rear off advancing the mission, but but that nobody really noticed, or if they did, that it didn't matter because 'hard work' isn't necessarily the only management requirement. They get upset because they didn't get the promotion. Lashing out at 'management' is the easiest, most common thing for any worker to do, often there's a basis for concern, but just as often people don't recognize how inherently chaotic it is the higher one treads. The moment you're in a leadership position, you will constantly be challenged by at least one 'hard case' of some kind or another. Once simple rule to help differentiate: if they are making a fuss about the product, or something that will help the company/team, then there's probably good faith there. If the fuss is always about themselves or their career, that's not good.

qazxcvbnmlp 5y ago

Sounds like you did the right thing and they needed to go.

lostcolony 5y ago

No, that was the correct response. If anything, you should have fired him intentionally yourself when he went over your head. He isn't looking to work with you or the team, he's actively seeking to undermine you; at that point his presence is a negative, not a positive.

teddyh 5y ago
> you should have fired him intentionally yourself when he went over your head Is escalating an issue a fireable offense?
- cutemonster 5y ago
  In many countries it wouldn't have been allowed to fire him. I wonder how it'd been to be a manager, if he couldn't be fired, and he continued contacting the CEO etc saying you (GGP, whirlingdervish the throwaway) weren't any good at your job. I guess eventually I'd quit (if I was in GGPs position and couldn't do much about it), and he'd become the manager in my place, if the plan hadn't been to hire another one.
  - kubanczyk 5y ago
    > In many countries it wouldn't have been allowed to fire him. I'm in one of these countries. If they have a cause that cannot be legally used to terminate an employee, they just look long and hard for any other misdemeanors and fire them as fast as they gather any plausible "evidence". Creative types can also actively put an employee into a checkmate, i.e. a position where no move or any move is a fireable offense. In this case it could be as simple as identifying any part of that email as a defamation.
    - cutemonster 5y ago
      Compare that unfortunate workplace "culture" (until the person eventually leaves / gets fired), with this article about psychological safety: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860743 I wonder if the lawmakers having made it almost impossible to fire someone, then damages the psychological safety in the company, in that the managers have to start looking for mistakes someone did and using it against him/her. I'd guess this sends bad vibes to the whole team. Makes me wonder if this holds countries like, was is France?, back, when it comes to startups and innovation, hmm
- lostcolony 5y ago
  When done in bad faith, yes. This wasn't "I have an issue, my manager didn't address it", this was "I have an issue with my manager. He's an idiot. You shouldn't have made him manager. You should have made ME manager", etc. There is nowhere to go with that. There is no way to fix that. There is no way to ignore that. And the employee is going to be killing team morale more and more the longer they stay at that company. So your options are to leave the person where they are, killing the team's morale and effectiveness, go to management yourself and ask that the employee be listened to (meaning that now someone as problematic and full of themselves is being put in a management position, which will also lead to the team's productivity dropping to nothing), or you let the person go. Only one of these will leave the team intact.

austinjp 5y ago

Having been promoted to managing a team I was previously a part of, I feel your pain. If it helps, consider that this person might have tried exactly the same ploy with whoever was in your shoes. I'm sure they had some issues going on in their life, and issues with the existing management that you inherited unknowingly. Management stress is real. Part of it comes with maintaining confidentiality, whereas a disgruntled employee will rant and get things off their chest. I won't say it's 100% about the role and not the person, since that's dumb - interpersonal relationships are real and significant. Equally, it's not 100% about the individual. FWIW, and taking your description at face value, I think your response was appropriate and theirs was not.

jariel 5y ago

The thing to realize: this is normal. People are weird - all of us. We get into our own head-space, and we interpret the world differently than others, sometimes objectivity falls by the wayside. Sometimes someone is truly working is rear off advancing the mission, but but that nobody really noticed, or if they did, that it didn't matter because 'hard work' isn't necessarily the only management requirement. They get upset because they didn't get the promotion. Lashing out at 'management' is the easiest, most common thing for any worker to do, often there's a basis for concern, but just as often people don't recognize how inherently chaotic it is the higher one treads. The moment you're in a leadership position, you will constantly be challenged by at least one 'hard case' of some kind or another. Once simple rule to help differentiate: if they are making a fuss about the product, or something that will help the company/team, then there's probably good faith there. If the fuss is always about themselves or their career, that's not good.