Ask HN: Toxic employee that has a founder ear
We are a medium-sized startup that is going through some difficult times. Most difficulties are not due to a lack of funding though. It's a people problem: there is a couple of old-timers who essentially have CEO's ear and behave like small children. Yelling and swearing at meetings, forcing certain people to be fired, that kind of stuff. Basically they are untouchable; their engineering skills are mediocre at best but they think they're really important for company's success, and they made our CEO believe that as well. In reality, the whole engineering team has serious morale issues due to that irresponsible behavior.
Did anyone experience anything similar? Any tips on how to handle this situation?
15 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 50.9 ms ] threadLet me repeat this again: QUIT NOW. Save yourself the pain. You have already lost because you work for an idiot. Don't throw good money after bad.
Toxic.
I was watching/listening to Christine Porath talking about this dynamic yesterday. Watch "How incivility shuts down our brains at work" [0] to understand how incivility destroys your performance, motivation in startups and robs your cognitive resources.
[0] 8.24min, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoT-nmSdAOs
In RL? I dunno. I say this because the dynamics b/w employer and employee isn't equal. When I choose to work with ppl, the no-arsehole rule applies. This type of situation you describe is probably #1 problem pg describes in non-technical problems that destroy startups.
What I do know is defusing situations is important. You cannot reason with ppl who are aggravated. I suspect reasoning isn't on your perps minds. This (overt attention seeking, interrupting) could be seen as a tactic to garner resources.
Whilst those who are listened to should hold some responsibility, the main problem is the perons listening and not paying attention.
Just like any potentially rotten relationship, don't believe you can change it - move on.
If it was just you, quit now. If they can "force people to be fired", you have no chance. But if "the whole engineering team has problems with these guys", can you get them to sign a letter of complaint? I mean a physical letter with physical signatures on it. Obviously the whole thing should be organised off email/Slack etc, as you can't assume confidentiality.
The letter should basically imply (but not baldly state) that there is a risk of the team quitting en masse if this is not dealt with. This will obviously destroy the company. You have to be willing to do that in order to make the power imbalance work here.
Your demands need to be specific and actionable. I don't think that you can ask that they be fired, but you need to enumerate the toxic behaviour and call it out so it can be monitored.
(I'm sure someone on HN will turn up to defend the right of employees to be toxic and for organisations to not have codes of conduct ...)
The guy was on my team. He acted totally inappropriate toward women, made horrible homophobic and lewd comments all the time, insulted the brand and brand creative, intimidated and antagonized others, etc. Toward me he acted officious and friendly, but was not aware that I observed his actual behavior several times from a room adjacent to the open floor plan.
When I talked to the founder/CEO about it I realized she was not willing to discuss any deficiencies in his conduct. I was also at the office late one night and she IM'ed him (seemingly while intoxicated) and flirted with him extensively. I was also pressured by the founder to promote him into some sort of leadership role.
After seeing how he intimidated people (particular junior developers, QA team, etc.) I felt he was not well-suited for a leadership role. He also stirred up trouble and did his best to create a clique and make fun of several people on the team who challenged his technical opinions.
I documented all these concerns with HR and encouraged the harassment victims to make an official complaint about one of the incidents. I explained that it was a tough situation because of the founder's loyalty to him, and that while I was hoping he'd find another job I was sure it would reflect poorly on me if he quit.
The most surprising thing was how his approach (arrogance, hyper-confidence, indignation, loud speaking voice) made nearly all the non-technical people in the organization convinced he was a world class technologist. In reality he had pretty poor technical judgment and many fairly counter-productive prejudices which he was convinced were best-practices. His disdain for QA led to most of the embarrassing bugs the company had suffered, often because of his boorish intimidation of the QA team and disregard for process.
Occasionally he'd show me his code and seem to be seeking approval. He was actually quite insecure and so I tried to give him whatever positive feedback I could. He also claimed to have gotten the past two VPEs fired and threatened to do the same to me.
I realized the situation was bad but figured it wasn't worth playing games to try to "win" when the founder had pretty poor judgment about his conduct and character.
Overall he cost the company millions in lost productivity, and I recently realized he is now the VP of Engineering there. The company has peaked and is now in a mode of loss-mitigation and likely fairly small existence as a going concern that would probably have been better off as a small business and not a VC funded growth machine.
Lessons Learned:
- Decide what is worth fighting for: While being good at politics is a useful skill, is the company worth it? Do you want to win to be part of something you ultimately don't respect?
- Life is too short: If you or others on the team are experiencing stress and burn-out, think of all the other jobs and teams you could be working on that would leave you feeling inspired and productive at the end of the day.
- The founder may not deserve your help: Bad judgement in one area likely indicates bad judgment in a host of areas. This happens to be the one you are most aware of. When a company gets angel funding it gains a salesperson, and so on through each round. So just because this company has capital does not mean it deserves it, only that each salesperson wants to find the next buyer.
- Take what you can: If you do respect some people on the team, get to know them and prepare to bring them wherever you go next. Talent is scarce, and the relationships you make will help you populate your next team with great people.
- Last point: If you work with a founder you can't have a frank conversation with (either because he/she is aloof, busy, or otherwise) consider leaving. Too much is at stake to waste your life working to help build the dream of someone who is so out of touch.
I've seen this several times and I cannot get my head around it. It is easily one of the most dissapointing things I've encountered professionally. As much as I can figure knowledge workers are just a market for lemons and it's all luck of the draw if you have to deal with one or not and no amount of proof you put forward will convince others that someone is a lemon. Doubly true if the person you're trying to convince has invested their ego in them at all.
Do you have any influence at all with the CEO? Can you manage-up?
It's lonely at the top. He may be completely unaware of your perspective and how to solve the team morale issue.