4 ms·

Ask HN: Quiet Quitting as Tech Lead

6 points by theodnfms 3y ago

Long story short: I got promoted to tech lead, certain coworkers were jealous and started to undermine me much more than usual, boss got transferred, new boss trusts the coworkers that have been sabotaging me (because they are from the same country mostly). I'm now an overqualified secretary taking meeting notes and asking these coworkers want they want to do. I have zero authority and no support from management. My enthusiasm for the job went from 500% to zero now. I resent my coworkers for wasting a good opportunity to have a tech lead that wanted to do right by them. I decided to quiet quit and do the minimal amount of work necessary to collect my payment. Not picking up fights, not caring about the technical decisions and secretly hoping everything crashes and burn. I now take pleasure in seeing my coworkers make obvious mistakes and look bad with the new boss. Better yet if they cause an outage and the new boss has to join a call at 2am on a Saturday. Usually, I'd have quit already but I want to make them suffer a bit more. I do not see any way to revert this. it's over for me... but maybe I'm seeing this through the wrong perspective. Can someone a positive spin on this?

thiago_fm 3y ago
One of the most important aspects of being a Tech Lead is managing your relationships within the company, having people trust you, and being a good listener. It seems like you cannot align yourself with the team's desires, much less even accept solutions that didn't come from a person other than you. Work is done as a team. As a Tech lead, if anybody on the team proposes a good idea that is possible to implement, your goal should be to help them drive that idea forward. Sorry for the harshness below, but hopefully it helps you to reflect. Based on what you've written, it looks to me that you still have an IC mindset, thinking about yourself, and as you can't deal with the situation, your solution is to "quiet quit" (Please humanity, stop coming up with those stupid expressions). Authority is overrated. What did you expect? The team to blindly and quietly follow your instructions? Do you believe they are dumb?
- theodnfms 3y ago
  > One of the most important aspects of being a Tech Lead is managing your relationships within the company, having people trust you, and being a good listener. One of the most important aspects of being an IC is to manage your relationships within the company, having people trust you, and being a good listener. > It seems like you cannot align yourself with the team's desires, much less even accept solutions that didn't come from a person other than you. It seems like my coworkers cannot align themselves with their tech lead's desires, much less even accept solutions that didn't come from a person other than themselves. > Work is done as a team. As a Tech lead, if anybody on the team proposes a good idea that is possible to implement, your goal should be to help them drive that idea forward. Work is done as a team. As an IC, if your tech lead proposes a good idea that is possible to implement, your goal should be to help them drive the idea forward. > Based on what you've written, it looks to me that you still have an IC mindset, thinking about yourself, and as you can't deal with the situation, your solution is to "quiet quit" (Please humanity, stop coming up with those stupid expressions). Based on what you've written, it looks to me that you still have a shit poster mindset, thinking about your own traumas as absolute truths, and as you can't deal with a different perspective, your solution is to "shitpost" and can't even accept new expressions exist. > Authority is overrated. Underrated you mean? > What did you expect? The team to blindly and quietly follow your instructions? Not having witnessed a single minute of how I behaved with them, you extrapolate to me being a dictator, right? > Do you believe they are dumb? Do you? Tell me more about them from your perspective, if you will. Please. To be honest, I knew this comment was coming when I submitted this post. It's such a HN classic.
gardenhedge 3y ago
I would do the following: Do reviews of what the others are coming up with and approve/reject in a decision log. If you reject something and it gets implemented anyway, ensure you have the name of someone who has approved it. The presence of this log will give you authority over time.
dataminded 3y ago
If it is resulting in measurable negative outcomes (outages, lost sales, delayed delivery), time to have lunch with your bosses boss and get yourself a promotion.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  I like this idea in general. However it’s hard to find work right now. If things are not obviously worse than they were the poster won’t have a strong hand. Definitely start interviewing but wouldn’t quit until you have an offer (unless financially independent). Then play this Johnny Paycheck classic on the way out :) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjEauGiRLo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjEauGiRLo
  - cableshaft 3y ago
    Or the version that's in Office Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i2eK8pkueM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i2eK8pkueM
- csomar 3y ago
  This can backfire if these coworkers/boss do have more leverage than you. They can convince the ultimate boss to fire you. They are making these mistakes because they want to "own" the product (ie: essentially get him replaced) and can find this as an opportunity to do that. Instead, OP's focus should be on finding a new job, as fast as possible.
iandanforth 3y ago
Been there, regret that. Your time is precious, don't waste it on companies like this. Unless you can't quit, do so immediately and find anything else to do with your time. Of course if you're really just using your paid time to work for different work, no worries, that's a decent strategy as well.
__d 3y ago
Nope. The situation sounds pretty bad, but the right thing to do is to put in a reasonable amount of work (like, more than minimum, but don't overdo it) while you search for a new job. Staying longer seems likely to only damage your reputation, your learning, and ultimately your self-confidence. I think you need to leave, ASAP.
quickthrower2 3y ago
> boss got transferred is following that boss an option? a short term one (because a company that lets this happen is probably culturally bad)
MPlus88 3y ago
[dead]

6 points by theodnfms 3y ago

thiago_fm 3y ago

One of the most important aspects of being a Tech Lead is managing your relationships within the company, having people trust you, and being a good listener. It seems like you cannot align yourself with the team's desires, much less even accept solutions that didn't come from a person other than you. Work is done as a team. As a Tech lead, if anybody on the team proposes a good idea that is possible to implement, your goal should be to help them drive that idea forward. Sorry for the harshness below, but hopefully it helps you to reflect. Based on what you've written, it looks to me that you still have an IC mindset, thinking about yourself, and as you can't deal with the situation, your solution is to "quiet quit" (Please humanity, stop coming up with those stupid expressions). Authority is overrated. What did you expect? The team to blindly and quietly follow your instructions? Do you believe they are dumb?

theodnfms 3y ago
> One of the most important aspects of being a Tech Lead is managing your relationships within the company, having people trust you, and being a good listener. One of the most important aspects of being an IC is to manage your relationships within the company, having people trust you, and being a good listener. > It seems like you cannot align yourself with the team's desires, much less even accept solutions that didn't come from a person other than you. It seems like my coworkers cannot align themselves with their tech lead's desires, much less even accept solutions that didn't come from a person other than themselves. > Work is done as a team. As a Tech lead, if anybody on the team proposes a good idea that is possible to implement, your goal should be to help them drive that idea forward. Work is done as a team. As an IC, if your tech lead proposes a good idea that is possible to implement, your goal should be to help them drive the idea forward. > Based on what you've written, it looks to me that you still have an IC mindset, thinking about yourself, and as you can't deal with the situation, your solution is to "quiet quit" (Please humanity, stop coming up with those stupid expressions). Based on what you've written, it looks to me that you still have a shit poster mindset, thinking about your own traumas as absolute truths, and as you can't deal with a different perspective, your solution is to "shitpost" and can't even accept new expressions exist. > Authority is overrated. Underrated you mean? > What did you expect? The team to blindly and quietly follow your instructions? Not having witnessed a single minute of how I behaved with them, you extrapolate to me being a dictator, right? > Do you believe they are dumb? Do you? Tell me more about them from your perspective, if you will. Please. To be honest, I knew this comment was coming when I submitted this post. It's such a HN classic.

gardenhedge 3y ago

I would do the following: Do reviews of what the others are coming up with and approve/reject in a decision log. If you reject something and it gets implemented anyway, ensure you have the name of someone who has approved it. The presence of this log will give you authority over time.

dataminded 3y ago

If it is resulting in measurable negative outcomes (outages, lost sales, delayed delivery), time to have lunch with your bosses boss and get yourself a promotion.

mixmastamyk 3y ago
I like this idea in general. However it’s hard to find work right now. If things are not obviously worse than they were the poster won’t have a strong hand. Definitely start interviewing but wouldn’t quit until you have an offer (unless financially independent). Then play this Johnny Paycheck classic on the way out :) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjEauGiRLo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjEauGiRLo
- cableshaft 3y ago
  Or the version that's in Office Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i2eK8pkueM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i2eK8pkueM
csomar 3y ago
This can backfire if these coworkers/boss do have more leverage than you. They can convince the ultimate boss to fire you. They are making these mistakes because they want to "own" the product (ie: essentially get him replaced) and can find this as an opportunity to do that. Instead, OP's focus should be on finding a new job, as fast as possible.

iandanforth 3y ago

Been there, regret that. Your time is precious, don't waste it on companies like this. Unless you can't quit, do so immediately and find anything else to do with your time. Of course if you're really just using your paid time to work for different work, no worries, that's a decent strategy as well.

__d 3y ago

Nope. The situation sounds pretty bad, but the right thing to do is to put in a reasonable amount of work (like, more than minimum, but don't overdo it) while you search for a new job. Staying longer seems likely to only damage your reputation, your learning, and ultimately your self-confidence. I think you need to leave, ASAP.

quickthrower2 3y ago

> boss got transferred is following that boss an option? a short term one (because a company that lets this happen is probably culturally bad)

MPlus88 3y ago

[dead]