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Sorry, but this is your fault. As ever, your role as the employee (triply so as a contractor!) is to stay professional and follow directions. Yes, you and your

Sorry, but this is your fault. As ever, your role as the employee (triply so as a contractor!) is to stay professional and follow directions. Yes, you and your manager had very different styles, but we are in a very fortunate position that if you dislike your employer you can just leave. What you shouldn't do, is tell your obviously unstable manager to go read a book on managing, created sarcastic backlog items to mock his micro-managing and directly went against his orders publicly? Your manager was bad, but you should have done your job and politely swapped teams. Instead you're portraying yourself as a poor contractor who only slightly mocked his manager, then blasted the company on a custom built blog.

tankenmate 4y ago
If all you ever do is run away from your problems then all you leave behind you is a trail of problems.
ImPleadThe5th 4y ago
I agree with you that OP did make some mistakes, some of which he rightfully admitted. But at the end of the day the "mature" person in the interaction ought to have been the manager. This looks much worse for Spotify than it does for OP.
dikei 4y ago
Yeah, it's really dangerous to be sarcastic when you cannot see the other party face to face. If you can't read the situation, even light-hearted jokes can be taken the wrong way and sour the relationship.
Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
If everyone just sucks it up then nothing gets solved. Ever been told to do something by a developer and you firmly disagree? I'm not going to give in and do what he says, I'm going to make an argument and hope it changes things for the better. If I just put up with the shit then it's me who has to deal with it in the future when it all falls apart. Giving in to shit management will just reinforce it. Changing teams isn't a solution if your enjoy the team. Standing up for yourself and the team is. Could he have gone about things better? Probably. But your job isn't just to follow directions, especially as a senior engineer.
- GiorgioG 4y ago
  > If everyone just sucks it up then nothing gets solved. That's a naïve way to look at it. As a contractor he should have STFU and done his job. His job is to do the work he's told to do. Now, if the manager hadn't been an asshole, none of this would have been an issue. But when you're dealing with an asshole (in a position of power over you), the last thing you want to do is continue to piss him off. I've been there, done that and when I there was mutual respect and trust between the manager and I, I would push back on things that could be done better. When the manager was an asshole, I just stayed in my lane. My job wasn't to fix the org's problems, my job was to build software and (from my perspective) my primary concern was staying employed. If he wanted to stay at Spotify he just should have kept quiet and switched teams.
  - Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
    So what you're saying is it's fine for a power tripping asshole manager to be a power tripping asshole manager because the victim is a contractor and therefore deserves to be treated worse than a regular employee? The manager was affecting his ability to do his job. I don't think it's fair for anyone to have to put up with shitty managers just because they're contractors. The thoughts and feelings of a contractor are just as valid. It shouldn't just be "put up or shut up". It should be Spotify ensuring their managers aren't assholes.
    - blueflow 4y ago
      When you are going over the line when dealing with an asshole, the company ends up with two assholes. You are not making the situation better. This blog post IMHO makes the author unemployable, they publicly demonstrated they are a high-friction person and even tacked their name on it. Being able to handle social conflict gracefully without escalation is a virtue and they don't have it.
    - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
      > So what you're saying is it's fine for a power tripping asshole manager to be a power tripping asshole manager because… Nobody is saying that. You’ve been misconstruing people’s responses throughout this thread. The bottom line is that both people can be in the wrong in a situation like this. The employee is not entitled to behave poorly because they have a bad manager and the manager is not entitled to behave badly simply because they’re a manager. However, the fact that neither party could do anything other than escalate the situation and even continue fighting battles after being fired is unprofessional behavior.
mugsie 4y ago
> Sorry, but this is your fault. Lolwut > As ever, your role as the employee (triply so as a contractor!) is to stay professional and follow directions. That hasn't been true in many companies for a while now - especially if someone is in as a senior equivalent > then blasted the company on a custom built blog. I mean, the company blasted him with no right of reply on an internal system, not sure what the "custom built blog" has to do with anything This reads like either a: the OPs manager who was in waaayy over his head, and lashed out or b: another manager who is in over their head and just want the smelly developers to do what they are told, and act like mindless cogs for them.
- darkerside 4y ago
  Honest question. Should we expect senior engineers to manage up properly? That means having mature and level headed conversations about where managers can improve in a way that makes both parties feel psychologically safe. I would say yes, and that the author failed to do that here. I would also say the manager was clearly very weak, and that Spotify's bureaucracy may be producing suboptimal outcomes.
  - mugsie 4y ago
    I would say definitely - the OP did fail to manage up properly. I think it is less of a part of the role for a senior engineer - Principal and over it is pretty much a core of your role - but it is something you should be doing. The groundwork for doing it effectively comes from both sides however, and everyone sucks here for that.
  - watwut 4y ago
    > Should we expect senior engineers to manage up properly? That means having mature and level headed conversations about where managers can improve in a way that makes both parties feel psychologically safe. I don't think we should expect miracles. But, based on this article, it seems to me that author was nowhere near that line. The mocking jira ticked seems like open hostility. You can be immature in reactions and still better then that.
- secondcoming 4y ago
iamsaitam 4y ago
You forgot to use compassion.
cybrexalpha 4y ago
I cannot agree. The post makes it clear that the author was hired as a senior engineer ("…He expected more from a senior engineer…"). Senior engineers are expected to present the needs of the team beyond immediate work items, and so it was the author's duty to raise these issues.
- 300bps 4y ago
  Senior engineers are expected to present the needs of the team beyond immediate work items Literally nobody is arguing against this. What people are arguing against is how he went about doing this. By his own words, he comes across as immature, overly emotional and unprofessional. Also, “Legendary Software Developer” is his title on LinkedIn. I know some people that wouldn’t hire him for that alone.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >“Legendary Software Developer” That pretty much falls squarely into titles and bios that are going to make me turn the virtual page very quickly.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    Suggesting to their leader that they read a chapter about managing not just to one manager, but to two managers, wow! That tells me so much about this person’s personality: Immature, self-important, a problematic personality and likely difficult to be around. I suspect at that moment this contractor sealed his eventual fate. I know if I was his manager I would have probably chosen to not renew his contract at that moment and would be counting the days before I could get rid of him. Then I read this: > Also, “Legendary Software Developer” is his title on LinkedIn. And know I would have never hired him in the first place so problem would have been solved before it occurred.
    - baobabKoodaa 4y ago
      > Suggesting to their leader that they read a chapter ... I know if I was his manager I would have probably chosen to not renew his contract at that moment and would be counting the days before I could get rid of him. I'm genuinely surprised that people like you and OP's manager exist. You'd want to get rid of someone because they gave a book recommendation that you disliked? Jesus. I get how the book recommendation was a bad move, but holy crap, it's nowhere near bad enough to "choose to not to renew his contract".
bluepizza 4y ago
The manager failed to properly manage a difficult person. Both of them seem to be quite hard to work with. I would put most of the responsibility on the manager - he is supposed to handle these situations, and get the most of people, including difficult contractors. But the contractor should have been smarter about the reality of being a contractor. You can’t afford to be this annoying if you don’t have job stability. Everyone seems to be in the wrong here. Hopefully both sides learned and grew from this.
weego 4y ago
I agree, reading it, and as it's the best possible interpretation being the OPs point of view, everything just screamed of 'senior developer in name only'. The manager clearly wasn't the best, but none of the scenarios were unworkable or unreasonable. If anything it's your fault for being unreasonably focused on churning code when the business needed an experienced head to help guide things. Refusing interns because it's be a distraction, refusing to properly estimate, basically refusing anything but focused coding time has is place in some job roles but clearly they're not senior ones.
- sofixa 4y ago
  You and i clearly read the wrong article. OP said an intern couldn't be handled in parallel to the existing work, which could be postponed. OP refused to waste the intern's time by not having the time to help them. OP said they aren't in a position to be able to deliver an estimate, yet. That never happens to you? And the PM needing the feature was okay with that, why is it a problem for you and the shit manager? OP was unhappy wasting time with repeated meaningless updates, which was also unproductive. They didn't refuse to provide them nonetheless.
atleta 4y ago
> our role as the employee (triply so as a contractor!) is to stay professional and follow directions. Not really. Your job is to advance the business of your employer/client. While staying professional, of course. Moreso, because by being a duche it's pretty hard to convince anyone, so it's a prerequisit for doing your job of advancing the business. (Unless you're so good/so much in demand that they will manage around it.) But in general caring about the business interest of whoever pays you, means the exact opposite of following orders. Now, if you're not unfortunate it doesn't mean fighting around management styles, but something more related to your direct area of expertise.
- comprev 4y ago
  Your job as a hired contractor is to advise the client of ways to advance their business. If they don't listen, or do listen but don't like your advice it's a tough pill to swallow. I had a client once who listened but declined every single suggestion to improve things - including the most basic "Perhaps stop sharing the same root password to all servers and each developer has their unique login?" It's rare but some businesses just don't want to change if their current legacy processes have made them so wealthy.
  - atleta 4y ago
    Advising is one method for advancing the (or helping the client to advance their) business. Unless you are hired specifically for an advisor role, it's not your job per se but a tool. Though I agree, it's a very important one. Something I keep trying to convince basically everyone around me to use whether they are contractors/entrepreneurs or employees. (And not just developers.) Yes, sometimes clients don't listen. That may even be the default for a new relationship. But as a first attempt you should, I think, try to convince them. I'm definitely against the "I told them, they didn't listen, but after all, it's their decision/their problem" approach. But sometimes even that doesn't work. In those cases I think one should lay out the options (including the one the client wants to go with), enumerate all the pros and cons of each, make a suggestion again ("based on this I would go with....") but then let the client make the final call. Just be sure that they really understand the compromises and then evaluate the consequences when it's time. That can work wonders. After being "right" a few times ("well, it turns out that you were right and we should have done this instead of that") they will listen by default. Better yet, pick up and learn the thought process. Now I quoted right, because it's not even necessarily true: just because their approach failed (or seems to have failed) doesn't mean that yours would have worked better ;). But, of course, since you are the professional, it's more likely and the lesson really is just that.
aperson_hello 4y ago
I agree, but mostly only because they were a consultant. Imho - the consultant's job is to 1) get things done, 2) be the blame magnet for shitty decisions and 3) get paid well to do 1 and 2. It's not to integrate or change the company. If they were an employee, that's a very different story! Though all this is from a US perspective, so take that with a grain of salt.
- d-trieu 4y ago
  My Swedish perspective is that contractors are generally treated like an employee that doesn't get invited to company parties. I guess it's different at bigger companies like Spotify.
ajkjk 4y ago
Wtf no it isn't. People should stick up for themselves. Don't be part of a shitty system. Better to have it blow up on you because you said the wrong thing than keep quiet and let it stay shit.
- Clubber 4y ago
  >Better to have it blow up on you because you said the wrong thing than keep quiet and let it stay shit. Unfortunately, the way this guy went about it, airing dirty laundry for the world to see (and potential employers) basically made him unemployable. There are plenty of good people out there that don't bring that kind of baggage.
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    No it doesn't make you unemployable. Any reasonable person will not care that you did this, or even will take it as a sign that you're a good person. What is up with all these whipped people in this comment section who don't understand that quality people respect others for sticking up to bullies? This attitude is enabling abuse by defending keeping it private.
    - Clubber 4y ago
      >No it doesn't make you unemployable. Any reasonable person will not care that you did this, or even will take it as a sign that you're a good person. Nobody who knew about this episode would ever hire that guy. Too much baggage, too high maintenance. He'd never make it through a simple HR screening if that popped up. I mean I'm sure someone would eventually hire him for something, but he's definitely on people's radar now I suspect. Most people want to get work done and not deal with this type of bullshit, plain and simple. >What is up with all these whipped people in this comment section who don't understand that quality people respect others for sticking up to bullies? This attitude is enabling abuse by defending keeping it private. Both seemed like bullies to me. Corporations hire people to solve problems and save money. They don't care about personal crusades.
      - 4y ago
matwood 4y ago
The manager was bad, but the OPs approach was just as bad. I think too often people get caught up in trying to dunk on other people (creating fake tickets is passive aggressive bs), and not focused on whatever real goal they want to accomplish.
yessirwhatever 4y ago
I'm curious if you're actually a programmer or working in programming in any capacity? One thing here to understand is that you won't really be able to see OP's perspective if you haven't worked in this for at least a few years. Though I agree that there could've been a better way to handle it (OP states it), your tone sounds almost like you’re that bad manager. As a manager you’re as much a cog as anyone else, and you need to be accountable downwards and upwards. A good company understands that. Ideally it should’ve been that OP just quietly switched teams or found another job. But I’m glad that this got posted. I don’t want to work at a company that I don’t have an opportunity to criticize their internal structures with valid rational reasoning. Being fired is ok, but being marked as bad cultural fit is clearly a retaliatory move, which is not just bitter from the company but also from the HR department at Spotify, especially that no one asked OP’s colleagues. This seems like a thing in Swedish medium/big tech companies, at least from what we read about Klarna last month.
- moritonal 4y ago
  It used to be very easy to link my profile to my LinkedIn but it does seem that links broken, but yes, I am a quite senior dev having worked in both startup & corporate as an employee & as a contractor. Maybe I should have beeen more obvious, but the way I phrased OP's actions was to show how the Manager saw it, and sold it to HR. The crux of this is that the dev was enjoying the benefits of being a contractor but wanted the perks of being an employee. A contractor is meant to be a simple resource for a company (although it's is absolutely Spotify's fault for abusing the contractor position with things like teaching Interns as a contractor (which I think is illegal in some countries?)). To be more clear, my stance is that the employee would make a great employee, but is a bad contractor which is why Spotify blacklisted them (although it'd be interesting to know if they could apply as an employee now).
nailer 4y ago
> created sarcastic backlog items to mock his micro-managing and directly went against his orders publicly? FTA: "I made another mistake in creating a parody ticket to the ones he created. I think I called it something like "Scalability", without any description, like his tickets. He sent me a private message asking about it. I realized I had gone too far and explained that I wanted to illustrate the vagueness but that I had done it in an unhelpful way. I apologized to him. "Apology accepted" he replied." That doesn't seem great but also isn't particularly harsh.
Aeolun 4y ago
I dunno man, I did almost these exact same things, and I was neither fired nor banned for life. I was just ignored. Besides that, everything this person said is correct. I’m inclined to say the manager is in the wrong here. > to go read a book on managing To go read a book on why adding more people to a late project makes it later. If your manager cannot understand you when you try to summarize, and is not willing to take your word for it, what are you left with? Either way, this should never have escalated to HR. And certainly not to a lifelong ban, that sounds like a broken process to me.
windows_sucks 4y ago
I agree. If you can't rely somewhat on previous experiences to guestimate roughly how long a task will take, you're not a senior eng. I mean, to illustrate the point, if you call any general contractor in your area and ask how long a new kitchen cabinet build takes, you'll probably get a price range and a time range, depending on several factors. They probably won't say "I literally cannot even fathom an answer to your question until I inspect the condition of the dry wall, wood prices and availability, etc.". This is because the people who want the thing built will use time and price etc as an input to decide if ironing out the little details is worth it.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I mean, he did, at some point give out the general estimate: ‘months’, which seems reasonable ballpark’ish, and then the manager got upset anyway (presumably because it wasn’t an answer he wanted to hear).
  - watwut 4y ago
    The request was "I need the time anyway. Provide it in a spreadsheet by end of day." And in following dialog manager shows surprise, but then ends up with "just put something in". To which op responds "I cannot stand for an estimate of something I don't know. Can't you then just put something in".
eptcyka 4y ago
I have to disagree that suggesting ways to improve (via reading a book) are necessarily egregious signs of horrible misbehavior. Creating sarcastic backlog items, if done once, can be seen as a joke, even if a bit tone-deaf. There obviously might be more to this story than what's being portrayed, but if we are to take the blog post at face value, this isn't a fireable offense in my opinion. They could be reprimanded, but I don't understand the fierce blaming directed at the origin author.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
Not many big-tech companies in Sweden though. It's hard to get fired because of conflicts with one person who isn't actually that important anyway.
gnull 4y ago
> As ever, your role as the employee (triply so as a contractor!) is to stay professional and follow directions The company is your employer, not the manager. If you see that the orders you get are harmful, it's your responsibility to raise an alarm. And I don't see the things the manager says as directions. He's trying to make his wishes sound as if the team and the post author decided to do it themselves. Total coward. EDIT: The employee can't be responsible for disobeying orders if he got no orders.
m-p-3 4y ago
> and follow directions Ultimately yes, but a manager who takes decisions without considering the input of their subordinates is shortsighted and oblivious to their challenges. Saying that it's a "team decision" while no one else in the team was even aware of that decision and the process behind it is dishonest at best. In my opinion, that shows that the manager was doing a poor communication job with his subordinates and ensure that the decision process was understood, and that led to frustration on both sides.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
>tell your obviously unstable manager to go read a book on managing Haha. Isn’t them reading a book how we all got into this mess in the first place. Rarely see this sort of thing from managers who worked up from individual contributors.
LightG 4y ago
Nope. Sometimes you have to put the manager on blast. Make tf sure that everyone knows what happened. Then leave or get sacked all guns blazing to the promised land. The only question is whether you get sacked or leave in time. The clock's ticking. Otherwise this lame manager continues uninterrupted.
cosmiccatnap 4y ago
Dude, he did nothing wrong and you are gass lighting him. He tried to do his job and the manager was trying to do his job too... You clearly didn't read it.
rk06 4y ago
I also want whatever you are smoking. The manager didn’t realise that he was being a burden, refused to listen to his team and his team members. And then, instead of resolving things peacefully, slandered his report to others, so OP’s contract can be terminated. Only thing OP could have done was recognise the toxic nature of manager and leave first. But that is a lesson usually learned the hard way
deleted 4y ago
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cspike 4y ago
You are absolutely right that my actions escalated the situation, and that I shouldn't have done them. One of the lessons from this painful situation is to leave sooner.
- moritonal 4y ago
  I've realised my comment sounds rough and very blunt, but my summary comes from how the Manager (who does sound very stressful) might have perceived what happened, and explained it to cover their behind. I'm sorry you went through all that stress, and I agree it's a smart move to remove your last name from the blog so it's not the first thing future hiring-manager's find.
dangerface 4y ago
Managers need people that can tell them the truth no matter how upsetting the truth is. Companies fail when bad managers expect their employees to just smile and say yes sir while the ship is sinking. It's not until their ankles start to get wet they wonder why no one told them about all the holes in the ship.

tankenmate 4y ago

If all you ever do is run away from your problems then all you leave behind you is a trail of problems.

ImPleadThe5th 4y ago

I agree with you that OP did make some mistakes, some of which he rightfully admitted. But at the end of the day the "mature" person in the interaction ought to have been the manager. This looks much worse for Spotify than it does for OP.

dikei 4y ago

Yeah, it's really dangerous to be sarcastic when you cannot see the other party face to face. If you can't read the situation, even light-hearted jokes can be taken the wrong way and sour the relationship.

Philip-J-Fry 4y ago

If everyone just sucks it up then nothing gets solved. Ever been told to do something by a developer and you firmly disagree? I'm not going to give in and do what he says, I'm going to make an argument and hope it changes things for the better. If I just put up with the shit then it's me who has to deal with it in the future when it all falls apart. Giving in to shit management will just reinforce it. Changing teams isn't a solution if your enjoy the team. Standing up for yourself and the team is. Could he have gone about things better? Probably. But your job isn't just to follow directions, especially as a senior engineer.

GiorgioG 4y ago
> If everyone just sucks it up then nothing gets solved. That's a naïve way to look at it. As a contractor he should have STFU and done his job. His job is to do the work he's told to do. Now, if the manager hadn't been an asshole, none of this would have been an issue. But when you're dealing with an asshole (in a position of power over you), the last thing you want to do is continue to piss him off. I've been there, done that and when I there was mutual respect and trust between the manager and I, I would push back on things that could be done better. When the manager was an asshole, I just stayed in my lane. My job wasn't to fix the org's problems, my job was to build software and (from my perspective) my primary concern was staying employed. If he wanted to stay at Spotify he just should have kept quiet and switched teams.
- Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
  So what you're saying is it's fine for a power tripping asshole manager to be a power tripping asshole manager because the victim is a contractor and therefore deserves to be treated worse than a regular employee? The manager was affecting his ability to do his job. I don't think it's fair for anyone to have to put up with shitty managers just because they're contractors. The thoughts and feelings of a contractor are just as valid. It shouldn't just be "put up or shut up". It should be Spotify ensuring their managers aren't assholes.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    When you are going over the line when dealing with an asshole, the company ends up with two assholes. You are not making the situation better. This blog post IMHO makes the author unemployable, they publicly demonstrated they are a high-friction person and even tacked their name on it. Being able to handle social conflict gracefully without escalation is a virtue and they don't have it.
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    > So what you're saying is it's fine for a power tripping asshole manager to be a power tripping asshole manager because… Nobody is saying that. You’ve been misconstruing people’s responses throughout this thread. The bottom line is that both people can be in the wrong in a situation like this. The employee is not entitled to behave poorly because they have a bad manager and the manager is not entitled to behave badly simply because they’re a manager. However, the fact that neither party could do anything other than escalate the situation and even continue fighting battles after being fired is unprofessional behavior.

mugsie 4y ago

> Sorry, but this is your fault. Lolwut > As ever, your role as the employee (triply so as a contractor!) is to stay professional and follow directions. That hasn't been true in many companies for a while now - especially if someone is in as a senior equivalent > then blasted the company on a custom built blog. I mean, the company blasted him with no right of reply on an internal system, not sure what the "custom built blog" has to do with anything This reads like either a: the OPs manager who was in waaayy over his head, and lashed out or b: another manager who is in over their head and just want the smelly developers to do what they are told, and act like mindless cogs for them.

darkerside 4y ago
Honest question. Should we expect senior engineers to manage up properly? That means having mature and level headed conversations about where managers can improve in a way that makes both parties feel psychologically safe. I would say yes, and that the author failed to do that here. I would also say the manager was clearly very weak, and that Spotify's bureaucracy may be producing suboptimal outcomes.
- mugsie 4y ago
  I would say definitely - the OP did fail to manage up properly. I think it is less of a part of the role for a senior engineer - Principal and over it is pretty much a core of your role - but it is something you should be doing. The groundwork for doing it effectively comes from both sides however, and everyone sucks here for that.
- watwut 4y ago
  > Should we expect senior engineers to manage up properly? That means having mature and level headed conversations about where managers can improve in a way that makes both parties feel psychologically safe. I don't think we should expect miracles. But, based on this article, it seems to me that author was nowhere near that line. The mocking jira ticked seems like open hostility. You can be immature in reactions and still better then that.
secondcoming 4y ago

iamsaitam 4y ago

You forgot to use compassion.

cybrexalpha 4y ago

I cannot agree. The post makes it clear that the author was hired as a senior engineer ("…He expected more from a senior engineer…"). Senior engineers are expected to present the needs of the team beyond immediate work items, and so it was the author's duty to raise these issues.

300bps 4y ago
Senior engineers are expected to present the needs of the team beyond immediate work items Literally nobody is arguing against this. What people are arguing against is how he went about doing this. By his own words, he comes across as immature, overly emotional and unprofessional. Also, “Legendary Software Developer” is his title on LinkedIn. I know some people that wouldn’t hire him for that alone.
- ghaff 4y ago
  >“Legendary Software Developer” That pretty much falls squarely into titles and bios that are going to make me turn the virtual page very quickly.
- kcplate 4y ago
  Suggesting to their leader that they read a chapter about managing not just to one manager, but to two managers, wow! That tells me so much about this person’s personality: Immature, self-important, a problematic personality and likely difficult to be around. I suspect at that moment this contractor sealed his eventual fate. I know if I was his manager I would have probably chosen to not renew his contract at that moment and would be counting the days before I could get rid of him. Then I read this: > Also, “Legendary Software Developer” is his title on LinkedIn. And know I would have never hired him in the first place so problem would have been solved before it occurred.
  - baobabKoodaa 4y ago
    > Suggesting to their leader that they read a chapter ... I know if I was his manager I would have probably chosen to not renew his contract at that moment and would be counting the days before I could get rid of him. I'm genuinely surprised that people like you and OP's manager exist. You'd want to get rid of someone because they gave a book recommendation that you disliked? Jesus. I get how the book recommendation was a bad move, but holy crap, it's nowhere near bad enough to "choose to not to renew his contract".

bluepizza 4y ago

The manager failed to properly manage a difficult person. Both of them seem to be quite hard to work with. I would put most of the responsibility on the manager - he is supposed to handle these situations, and get the most of people, including difficult contractors. But the contractor should have been smarter about the reality of being a contractor. You can’t afford to be this annoying if you don’t have job stability. Everyone seems to be in the wrong here. Hopefully both sides learned and grew from this.

weego 4y ago

I agree, reading it, and as it's the best possible interpretation being the OPs point of view, everything just screamed of 'senior developer in name only'. The manager clearly wasn't the best, but none of the scenarios were unworkable or unreasonable. If anything it's your fault for being unreasonably focused on churning code when the business needed an experienced head to help guide things. Refusing interns because it's be a distraction, refusing to properly estimate, basically refusing anything but focused coding time has is place in some job roles but clearly they're not senior ones.

sofixa 4y ago
You and i clearly read the wrong article. OP said an intern couldn't be handled in parallel to the existing work, which could be postponed. OP refused to waste the intern's time by not having the time to help them. OP said they aren't in a position to be able to deliver an estimate, yet. That never happens to you? And the PM needing the feature was okay with that, why is it a problem for you and the shit manager? OP was unhappy wasting time with repeated meaningless updates, which was also unproductive. They didn't refuse to provide them nonetheless.

atleta 4y ago

> our role as the employee (triply so as a contractor!) is to stay professional and follow directions. Not really. Your job is to advance the business of your employer/client. While staying professional, of course. Moreso, because by being a duche it's pretty hard to convince anyone, so it's a prerequisit for doing your job of advancing the business. (Unless you're so good/so much in demand that they will manage around it.) But in general caring about the business interest of whoever pays you, means the exact opposite of following orders. Now, if you're not unfortunate it doesn't mean fighting around management styles, but something more related to your direct area of expertise.

comprev 4y ago
Your job as a hired contractor is to advise the client of ways to advance their business. If they don't listen, or do listen but don't like your advice it's a tough pill to swallow. I had a client once who listened but declined every single suggestion to improve things - including the most basic "Perhaps stop sharing the same root password to all servers and each developer has their unique login?" It's rare but some businesses just don't want to change if their current legacy processes have made them so wealthy.
- atleta 4y ago
  Advising is one method for advancing the (or helping the client to advance their) business. Unless you are hired specifically for an advisor role, it's not your job per se but a tool. Though I agree, it's a very important one. Something I keep trying to convince basically everyone around me to use whether they are contractors/entrepreneurs or employees. (And not just developers.) Yes, sometimes clients don't listen. That may even be the default for a new relationship. But as a first attempt you should, I think, try to convince them. I'm definitely against the "I told them, they didn't listen, but after all, it's their decision/their problem" approach. But sometimes even that doesn't work. In those cases I think one should lay out the options (including the one the client wants to go with), enumerate all the pros and cons of each, make a suggestion again ("based on this I would go with....") but then let the client make the final call. Just be sure that they really understand the compromises and then evaluate the consequences when it's time. That can work wonders. After being "right" a few times ("well, it turns out that you were right and we should have done this instead of that") they will listen by default. Better yet, pick up and learn the thought process. Now I quoted right, because it's not even necessarily true: just because their approach failed (or seems to have failed) doesn't mean that yours would have worked better ;). But, of course, since you are the professional, it's more likely and the lesson really is just that.

aperson_hello 4y ago

I agree, but mostly only because they were a consultant. Imho - the consultant's job is to 1) get things done, 2) be the blame magnet for shitty decisions and 3) get paid well to do 1 and 2. It's not to integrate or change the company. If they were an employee, that's a very different story! Though all this is from a US perspective, so take that with a grain of salt.

d-trieu 4y ago
My Swedish perspective is that contractors are generally treated like an employee that doesn't get invited to company parties. I guess it's different at bigger companies like Spotify.

ajkjk 4y ago

Wtf no it isn't. People should stick up for themselves. Don't be part of a shitty system. Better to have it blow up on you because you said the wrong thing than keep quiet and let it stay shit.

Clubber 4y ago
>Better to have it blow up on you because you said the wrong thing than keep quiet and let it stay shit. Unfortunately, the way this guy went about it, airing dirty laundry for the world to see (and potential employers) basically made him unemployable. There are plenty of good people out there that don't bring that kind of baggage.
- ajkjk 4y ago
  No it doesn't make you unemployable. Any reasonable person will not care that you did this, or even will take it as a sign that you're a good person. What is up with all these whipped people in this comment section who don't understand that quality people respect others for sticking up to bullies? This attitude is enabling abuse by defending keeping it private.
  - Clubber 4y ago
    >No it doesn't make you unemployable. Any reasonable person will not care that you did this, or even will take it as a sign that you're a good person. Nobody who knew about this episode would ever hire that guy. Too much baggage, too high maintenance. He'd never make it through a simple HR screening if that popped up. I mean I'm sure someone would eventually hire him for something, but he's definitely on people's radar now I suspect. Most people want to get work done and not deal with this type of bullshit, plain and simple. >What is up with all these whipped people in this comment section who don't understand that quality people respect others for sticking up to bullies? This attitude is enabling abuse by defending keeping it private. Both seemed like bullies to me. Corporations hire people to solve problems and save money. They don't care about personal crusades.
    - 4y ago

matwood 4y ago

The manager was bad, but the OPs approach was just as bad. I think too often people get caught up in trying to dunk on other people (creating fake tickets is passive aggressive bs), and not focused on whatever real goal they want to accomplish.

yessirwhatever 4y ago

I'm curious if you're actually a programmer or working in programming in any capacity? One thing here to understand is that you won't really be able to see OP's perspective if you haven't worked in this for at least a few years. Though I agree that there could've been a better way to handle it (OP states it), your tone sounds almost like you’re that bad manager. As a manager you’re as much a cog as anyone else, and you need to be accountable downwards and upwards. A good company understands that. Ideally it should’ve been that OP just quietly switched teams or found another job. But I’m glad that this got posted. I don’t want to work at a company that I don’t have an opportunity to criticize their internal structures with valid rational reasoning. Being fired is ok, but being marked as bad cultural fit is clearly a retaliatory move, which is not just bitter from the company but also from the HR department at Spotify, especially that no one asked OP’s colleagues. This seems like a thing in Swedish medium/big tech companies, at least from what we read about Klarna last month.

moritonal 4y ago
It used to be very easy to link my profile to my LinkedIn but it does seem that links broken, but yes, I am a quite senior dev having worked in both startup & corporate as an employee & as a contractor. Maybe I should have beeen more obvious, but the way I phrased OP's actions was to show how the Manager saw it, and sold it to HR. The crux of this is that the dev was enjoying the benefits of being a contractor but wanted the perks of being an employee. A contractor is meant to be a simple resource for a company (although it's is absolutely Spotify's fault for abusing the contractor position with things like teaching Interns as a contractor (which I think is illegal in some countries?)). To be more clear, my stance is that the employee would make a great employee, but is a bad contractor which is why Spotify blacklisted them (although it'd be interesting to know if they could apply as an employee now).

nailer 4y ago

> created sarcastic backlog items to mock his micro-managing and directly went against his orders publicly? FTA: "I made another mistake in creating a parody ticket to the ones he created. I think I called it something like "Scalability", without any description, like his tickets. He sent me a private message asking about it. I realized I had gone too far and explained that I wanted to illustrate the vagueness but that I had done it in an unhelpful way. I apologized to him. "Apology accepted" he replied." That doesn't seem great but also isn't particularly harsh.

Aeolun 4y ago

I dunno man, I did almost these exact same things, and I was neither fired nor banned for life. I was just ignored. Besides that, everything this person said is correct. I’m inclined to say the manager is in the wrong here. > to go read a book on managing To go read a book on why adding more people to a late project makes it later. If your manager cannot understand you when you try to summarize, and is not willing to take your word for it, what are you left with? Either way, this should never have escalated to HR. And certainly not to a lifelong ban, that sounds like a broken process to me.

windows_sucks 4y ago

I agree. If you can't rely somewhat on previous experiences to guestimate roughly how long a task will take, you're not a senior eng. I mean, to illustrate the point, if you call any general contractor in your area and ask how long a new kitchen cabinet build takes, you'll probably get a price range and a time range, depending on several factors. They probably won't say "I literally cannot even fathom an answer to your question until I inspect the condition of the dry wall, wood prices and availability, etc.". This is because the people who want the thing built will use time and price etc as an input to decide if ironing out the little details is worth it.

Aeolun 4y ago
I mean, he did, at some point give out the general estimate: ‘months’, which seems reasonable ballpark’ish, and then the manager got upset anyway (presumably because it wasn’t an answer he wanted to hear).
- watwut 4y ago
  The request was "I need the time anyway. Provide it in a spreadsheet by end of day." And in following dialog manager shows surprise, but then ends up with "just put something in". To which op responds "I cannot stand for an estimate of something I don't know. Can't you then just put something in".

eptcyka 4y ago

I have to disagree that suggesting ways to improve (via reading a book) are necessarily egregious signs of horrible misbehavior. Creating sarcastic backlog items, if done once, can be seen as a joke, even if a bit tone-deaf. There obviously might be more to this story than what's being portrayed, but if we are to take the blog post at face value, this isn't a fireable offense in my opinion. They could be reprimanded, but I don't understand the fierce blaming directed at the origin author.

bayesian_horse 4y ago

Not many big-tech companies in Sweden though. It's hard to get fired because of conflicts with one person who isn't actually that important anyway.

gnull 4y ago

> As ever, your role as the employee (triply so as a contractor!) is to stay professional and follow directions The company is your employer, not the manager. If you see that the orders you get are harmful, it's your responsibility to raise an alarm. And I don't see the things the manager says as directions. He's trying to make his wishes sound as if the team and the post author decided to do it themselves. Total coward. EDIT: The employee can't be responsible for disobeying orders if he got no orders.

m-p-3 4y ago

> and follow directions Ultimately yes, but a manager who takes decisions without considering the input of their subordinates is shortsighted and oblivious to their challenges. Saying that it's a "team decision" while no one else in the team was even aware of that decision and the process behind it is dishonest at best. In my opinion, that shows that the manager was doing a poor communication job with his subordinates and ensure that the decision process was understood, and that led to frustration on both sides.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

>tell your obviously unstable manager to go read a book on managing Haha. Isn’t them reading a book how we all got into this mess in the first place. Rarely see this sort of thing from managers who worked up from individual contributors.

LightG 4y ago

Nope. Sometimes you have to put the manager on blast. Make tf sure that everyone knows what happened. Then leave or get sacked all guns blazing to the promised land. The only question is whether you get sacked or leave in time. The clock's ticking. Otherwise this lame manager continues uninterrupted.

cosmiccatnap 4y ago

Dude, he did nothing wrong and you are gass lighting him. He tried to do his job and the manager was trying to do his job too... You clearly didn't read it.

rk06 4y ago

I also want whatever you are smoking. The manager didn’t realise that he was being a burden, refused to listen to his team and his team members. And then, instead of resolving things peacefully, slandered his report to others, so OP’s contract can be terminated. Only thing OP could have done was recognise the toxic nature of manager and leave first. But that is a lesson usually learned the hard way

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cspike 4y ago

You are absolutely right that my actions escalated the situation, and that I shouldn't have done them. One of the lessons from this painful situation is to leave sooner.

moritonal 4y ago
I've realised my comment sounds rough and very blunt, but my summary comes from how the Manager (who does sound very stressful) might have perceived what happened, and explained it to cover their behind. I'm sorry you went through all that stress, and I agree it's a smart move to remove your last name from the blog so it's not the first thing future hiring-manager's find.

dangerface 4y ago

Managers need people that can tell them the truth no matter how upsetting the truth is. Companies fail when bad managers expect their employees to just smile and say yes sir while the ship is sinking. It's not until their ankles start to get wet they wonder why no one told them about all the holes in the ship.