Comment by jdlshore | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdlshore | Hacker News Reader

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> rage outbursts, screaming during work hours and inappropriate e-mails... is the kind of thing HR (and the rest of the company) is having trouble dealing with.

This is a major red flag. It's either a symptom of the underlying issue, or the root cause itself.

1) It could be a symptom of the underlying issue, which is typically stress-related. "Shit rolls downhill" approach to management, unrealistic deadlines, fear of mass layoffs, etc.

2) Much more rarely, but it does happen, it could just be someone with an abusive personality. Those sorts of people are capital-T Toxic to your organization and will definitely result in your best people leaving. You want them gone, yesterday.

Start by assuming positive intent and looking at option 1 rather than option 2.

I provide consulting for organizations about engineering teams and culture and it seems like you might benefit from that. I'd be happy to have a free call with you if you'd like to talk further. My contact info is in my profile.

> 1) It could be a symptom of the underlying issue, which is typically stress-related. "Shit rolls downhill" approach to management, unrealistic deadlines, fear of mass layoffs, etc.

Yep, there were some talks among engineers about the possibility of them being laid off and replaced by another team. But that's far from the case, as they've been repeatedly told that's not going to happen, have all gotten raises, stuff like that.

I could go with the unrealistic deadlines, which is something half of the team complains about, but the other half complains of the opposite. It's hard.

The whole team agrees that they're under-performing, though, which might be the reason for the fear of being laid off.

The "shit rolls downhill" thing is exactly the kind of thing all the previous managers did. I'd like to think that they stopped doing that, but that has left some scars on the team.

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> 2) Much more rarely, but it does happen, it could just be someone with an abusive personality. Those sorts of people are capital-T Toxic to your organization and will definitely result in your best people leaving. You want them gone, yesterday.

The worst ones were already removed, but they seem to have caused lasting damage. We should see how it goes.

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> I provide consulting for organizations about engineering teams and culture and it seems like you might benefit from that. I'd be happy to have a free call with you if you'd like to talk further. My contact info is in my profile.

Thanks, I'll definitely talk about it with our CEO and CTO.

In a dysfunctional situation (which, sad to say, it sounds like you could have), the first thing to go is trust. And when that happens, management statements are no longer believed. Ironically, the more you say about not planning layoffs, the more that can be taken as proof that layoffs could happen.

Similar with the scars from previous management and toxic employees. That history isn't quickly forgotten, even if the perpetrators are gone. That sort of abuse can be self-propagating: it becomes a learned behavior that turns victims into new abusers.

The good news is that you can recover, but it takes time and effort.

> That sort of abuse can be self-propagating: it becomes a learned behavior that turns victims into new abusers.

That makes a lot of sense. Come to think of it, we started having those problems after a string of very aggressive or very anxious managers.

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