I'm experiencing unfair treatment - Is going to HR a good idea?
Hi,
I've been receiving unfair remarks and treatment from my manager. Apparently he has decided I'm "underperforming" because he noticed I show up a few minutes late to meetings and don't post enough on Slack. I've also had two of my 2 tasks delayed, missing deadlines. He has suggested "monitoring" me twice a week, as in having two 1:1 meetings with him - going through my task list on Monday and again through it on Friday. I find this suspicious because I'm already tracking everything I do within the project's task tracker together with other colleagues on this project and we have 2 weekly meetings with progress made on every task where he's also invited to attend. The overview has always been there for him and I've always documented my work.
His remarks also go beyond the professional realm, calling me out as "too emotional", can I mention this to HR or is it not a good idea? This is the way he conducted the performance review as well, making statements like these that were not documented on paper. (I went to my skip manager to report him and did not believe me either that he made such remarks)
Thought about going to HR and presenting my version of the story, as I find his accusation/statements of not performing ridiculous. He is producing unnecessary stress which is counterproductive to me performing the tasks efficiently.
What do you think? Has this ever happened to you? What's the best way of defending yourself in this situation or how could I best protect myself? Could this get even worse?
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Discussion
(3 comments)- 3
a month agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroShort answer: No
Longer answer: Oh god, please no
Full answer: Sorry to hear you're going through this. The harsh reality is that HR exists to protect the company, not you. This is kind of sad as I'm sure there are some legitimately wonderful people who work in HR, but given how their incentives are structured, they can do pretty messed up things to employees.
It seems like you have a somewhat decent relationship with your skip as you have already gone to them. My suggestion is to create a paper trail of your manager's bad behaviors (Slack chat screenshots, 1 on 1 doc notes) and go back to your skip. Without hard proof, it's all a game of "He said, she said", and people are inherently allergic to drama, especially managers who see it every day. If you want results, generate cold, hard proof.
In the meantime, I recommend showing up to meetings exactly on time (even 1-2 minutes early) and posting more in Slack. Address the feedback and see how the manager reacts. This will give you signal on how serious they are, and again, if you can generate a paper trail that you're addressing their feedback and they're still negging you for it, this shows that they're not acting in good faith.
Getting peers to vouch for you is another way to protect yourself and create a stronger case for your skip. For example, if everyone on the team starts noticing you are literally the 1st person to join every meeting and your manager is still complaining at you for it in Slack/meeting notes, that's good evidence.
Lastly, the "too emotional" is a messed up thing for a manager to say, especially if you're a woman. That term carries a lot of baggage, especially for marginalized groups in tech.
- 1a month agoMid-Level Software Engineer [OP]Taro Community
my skip manager also did not believe me when I mentioned the description I got from my manager as "emotional", he dismissed it saying "I don't believe he said exactly that" implying I had interpreted what he said as "emotional", but those were his (manager's) exact words during performance review.
- 3a month agoAI/ML Eng @ Series C startup
Alex's advice is spot on. Being proactive/working well with others is a good defense in itself. There are ways to be proactive about your fate without playing full-on offense, such as covering all your bases like Alex mentioned
You're definitely not alone in disliking this manager person. And you're not the crazy one (in case anyone tries to gaslight you)
