Backstory -- I joined my current team a year ago. It was falling apart. The team members hated each other and were trying to get each other fired. The team lead who’d joined a quarter before had quit to join another team largely due to conflict with one difficult coworker.
Then I joined as the lead. I helped to stabilize the team over the last year. It’s grown from four to ten engineers. Three engineers joined specifically to work with me.
Yet the entire time I’ve been on that team, that one difficult coworker has been criticizing and fighting almost everything I’ve done. That coworker was relatively inexperienced, yet was told by a previous director that he was meant to be the lead of this platform. Hence the fighting with the other lead from a year ago. And with me over the past year. It’s burning me out bad.
It mostly comes across in passive-aggressive comments, and in trying to argue and prove he is right about trivial things, with every bit of disagreement. It used to come up in terms of aggression towards his peers. That stopped when me and my manager intervened. Yet continues with me. It's clear he doesn't respect me as lead, and makes that clear in team meetings.
It makes everything harder. Even in an incident that caused a global outage for three hours, and where we didn't have alerts and had to get told by our users we were down, I get pushback on calling for a post-mortem since his work was involved. Now I have to back-channel to my manager (who wasn't in the room), and still face the . Just the friction alone that he adds in getting anything done makes doing the right thing often not worth it.
I'm at a loss. My other teammates love working with me. I was promoted last year. I'm two levels above this guy which means my company trusts me. I'm frankly wishing I could leave the team but it's difficult to transfer since I'm in something of a specialty and there aren't other positions at my level in the company.
My manager's been resistant to doing much of anything. I think he's tired of me bringing it up. He says that the engineer "gets along with [junior engineer who never disagrees with him]". He says the difficult engineer is improving and sees him trying. His feedback to me is not to let it bother me so much. He asks me what he should do to change his behavior (he's the manager, not me...).
I really just want to be able to come in to work and do my job without dealing with an asshole trying to one-up me or "score points" against me all day and without expecting conflict every time we're in the same meeting. I'm tired of the status and perception games and his overall impact on the team vibe and culture.
The first is dead stupid but it tends to work with these sort of people. You need to be very question focused. The "correct" answer to every question you ask from here on out has to be NO. Is the sky purple today... NO. Is really dumb thing a good idea... NO.
> I get pushback on calling for a post-mortem
You're the lead, so just assume that you have cart blanche to just book the meeting. Set it up... If they say NO, just agree and have the meeting with the rest of the team. Let them exclude themselves.
> His feedback to me is not to let it bother me so much.
This is probably good feedback. What if they were more abrasive but amazing at the job??
> expecting conflict every time we're in the same meeting
Call him out on it. In public. Out loud. Dont be nice about it. It's time to tell him to "cut the shit".
Your other job, every day in the shower, or making coffee your ritual is to think of a new and interesting way to say NO. At some point your gonna get good at this (and its a life skill I swear). Have the one liner ready. And if he follows up "we can have a chat about this after the meeting" or "lets take this offline"
Have you (or higher ups) pointed out his immaturity and behavior are likely the exact reasons he wasn’t selected to lead the team, and if he continues on this path he is ensuring he will never advance at the company? That could do one of two things… get him to shift his attitude or find a new job where he can advance.
Do you have the power to get rid of him? Competent or not, this behavior sounds toxic to the team and likely isn’t worth it. Assuming what you said is accurate, as we’re only hearing the story from one perspective.
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.
Publicly challenge (and beat) him in a small engineering contest, otherwise he will never respect you.
Make it time limited, eg. 3 hours to implement a specific goal with clear indicator of what is "better" as a score, ie. to avoid arguments that eg. "mines fast, mine scales". Have a neutral party pick the challenge.
It could be the story of a weak or unaware engineer/employee that has been promoted to a level they thought implied some sort of impunity. Because being reviewed or questioned weakens the public perception of them, they experience it as unfair and toxic. Using the word "trivial" to characterise critique directed towards them could be emotionally rather than technically motivated.
In situations like this, the best solution is expose externally and leave.
As others suggested, take note and proof. Start by copying the exact same content you've published here, and complete it with new toxic behaviour. What will create a body of proofs HR will need and will "expel it" from your head.
I would also meet your manager's manager, this situation has taken too long to resolve and your manager is not doing enough (as far as we know at least). Ask your N+1 whether he has heard of the situation, if he has not your manager is in troubles.
Finally, you have not described how others employees are living through this situation, they may be upset to and be able to help: - they can report the employee behaviour - they can react when the employee is not behaving correctly - they can provide feedbacks, ideas, support?
I wish you all the best, this is a hard situation you're living!
Try to have them see the light or you'll need to find somewhere else to be for your own sanity. Maybe bring your boss a copy of the No *sshole Rule by Prof. Sutton.
Never put up with excessive toxicity because silence gives consent and your feet vote. Just as there are many other workers, there are many other jobs.
>I'm tired of the status and perception games and his overall impact on the team vibe and culture.
I have never heard this sentence said by anyone who wasn't deeply invested in status and perception games.
>He says the difficult engineer is improving and sees him trying. His feedback to me is not to let it bother me so much. He asks me what he should do to change his behavior (he's the manager, not me...).
Which kinda shows that your manager does not agree with your viewpoint. If you take his words at face value, he is pretty much telling you that you are the problem.
Again, I don't know what is really happening. But if I read between the lines the picture seems to be the following: You have a engineer in your team who thinks you are a looser and incompetent. This is why he second guesses you at every point, because he does not believe that you can make adequate decisions. At the same time other coworkers "love working with you", I am absolutely sure they do, but I guess that they have very little respect for you as a leader, they love working with you because it allows them to do what they want. The opinion of your boss towards the "problem engineer" seems quite positive, which also suggests that your manager does not consider your judgements of your teammates as particularly relevant.
If you take all of this together the picture becomes quite clear. Nobody respect your leadership. Your staff doesn't and your manager doesn't.
Never give up against him. Push through your ways every single time.
Sooner or later he’ll get the point and he’ll leave.