How can I navigate a toxic work culture with a low EQ engineering manager while maintaining my motivation and professional integrity?
I'm struggling with my engineering manager's low emotional intelligence. The product he has been building for two years is barely generating revenue, and the outlook for the next six months doesn't look promising either. Recently, he insisted we fix a small bug on a Saturday night, suggesting we'd have to give a party if we didn't do it immediately. After we fixed the issue and pushed a production release late at night, other developers praised the effort on Slack. However, instead of acknowledging our hard work, he responded with a :expressionless: emoji the next morning.
This behavior has been demotivating and has affected my own emotional well-being. I want to avoid reacting negatively and lowering my EQ to his level, but I'm finding it difficult to navigate this culture.
Additionally, the team leads receive high ratings because people appreciate the timely pay, despite the lack of substantial work. These leads earn significantly more than senior engineers, yet they lack skills and are easily influenced by those who are close to them and act as yes men.
Our product is plagued with a lot of technical debt and frequent changes. In two years, our team built a fintech product that was supposed to generate significant revenue. However, we only have one merchant and two lenders, and our 20,000 customers generated just 30K INR in revenue last month after 1.5 million INR in transactions. The cash burn for this product is incredibly high, running into crores. I don't see this changing within the next year due to fierce competition and the difficulty of acquiring customers with good credit scores.
Given this environment, I am concerned about the sustainability of our efforts and the future of the team. The founder might shut down the product within a year due to the lack of revenue, and I'm unsure what will happen to the leads and the team. I want to keep an attitude that is unfazed by negativity and develop a thick skin while focusing on high-level engineering efforts. How can I effectively navigate this situation and maintain my motivation and professional integrity?
Discussion
(3 comments)- 5
2 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroReally sorry to hear this - Just seems like a messy situation all around. For the future (and for folks who are curious), use the resources here to find a good engineering manager: [Masterclass] What Software Engineers Should Look For In Their Engineering Manager
Anyways, here's my advice:
Look Outwards
Unfortunately, the best move to make in these scenarios is usually just to change managers, either by switching teams internally or changing companies. Based on what you mentioned, this decision might be made for you in coming months as the product will probably be shuttered and the team will be disbanded. Anyways, to help with the job search, check this out: [Course] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer
Set Up Another Manager
This is sort of rare as manager and tech lead quality are often the same, but if your tech lead is good, you should effectively treat them as your manager. Set up a weekly 1 on 1 with them and get support/mentorship through them. Deprioritize what your manager tells you to do while prioritizing what your tech lead says. I've seen this "secret manager" tricky work a surprising amount of the time (I was the "secret manager" a couple times myself).
Push Back
This is the last resort (as it's not likely to work), but you can try it if you think you can form a coalition around you. Follow the advice here: "My manager and I don't see eye-to-eye. How can I improve this relationship?"
- 52 months agoSenior Software Engineer at Intuit (Ex-Netflix)
I like Alex's idea of a "secret manager" and I did the same for a little bit in my current role.
If this is a large enough company, I would try and switch teams or quiet-quit (or actually quit) and look outward. From my observations in the question, it looks like a startup based in India.
Having bad leadership can take a significant mental toll. I would recommend use the resources available on Taro and look outward.
- 4
2 months agoSoftware Engineer at MicrosoftI’m really sorry you are going through this and I hope you can find a way out quickly.
I agree with Alex that the most obvious solution would be to look outside and that there’s a high chance your product gets deprioritized. So, the best time to look for a new job is while you’re employed.
I like to have a mindset where I can make the most out of a situation even if planning to leave. What are the opportunities you can work on so you can make your resumé more attractive? Also can you work with your lead as Alex suggested? This way you will still be growing, getting mentorship and adding value to your CV while looking externally.
