Work Drama in Trichotomy

NDS's Fledglings

I just passed my 7th year anniversary of working at New Hip Company last November, but I switched teams a year ago before that, so it was like starting up from scratch again.

But before I switched teams, I found myself being the mentor to a bunch of younger engineers, and when I left the team or they left the team, I still scheduled regular 1-on-1 meetings to keep up the mentoring sessions. But it has gotten more and more difficult to track - there are only so many lunches and coffee breaks you can take in a month.

Luckily many of them left New York (one went to Texas - I’m guess his new wife wants to go?, one moved to Australia, one to the Bay Area Headquarters, one to Waterloo for grad school), so I am only left with 3 regular meetings these days. And some of them are so advanced now they don’t really need mentorship… the meetings are like social calls.

They have different goals; some just want to coast (basically do only want is required of them), some are ladder-climbers, some wants to safe the world (she left to go to school to study renewable energy) some just want to be liked, it took a while before i realize everyone’s implicit assumptions about what is important to them. It is quite satisfying to help the development of engineers; I never liked teaching, but mentoring and tutoring is a completely different experience.

I found myself using the phrase “when I was your age…” a lot.

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Politics

There a are many different types of engineers with different focus. Some just care about getting a functionality delivered, some care about the long-term maintainability of a project, some care about flexibility adaptability, some have a singular vision of how to implement a project and has no ability to deviate from that.

In my old team, there was a mix of these engineers, which would be fine except they all have strong opinions and minimal ability to adapt to each other. So that resulted in a lot of conflicts.

I’m knowledgeable, empathetic, and unambitious, which helps a lot to get the respect from everyone, so that even when I disagree with them, they understand it’s because we have genuine difference of opinions. I haven’t needed to tell anyone they were stupid - I merely helped the realize that fact. But because I myself got along with everyone, I didn’t know about these interpersonal conflicts at all.

I had tried being the Team Lead for my first team for a year (that team was great - everyone was on top of things and cooperative), but even then I didn’t enjoy doing leadership work, so I asked to be replaced. Actually, one of my fledglings I had specifically groomed so he could replace me so I didn’t have to be TL there (he was quite happy at the time). I switched to my second team, and not in a TL position, but found myself being asked to do TL work. So I ended up being the “de-facto” TL at that team. That team is a lot harder to lead than the other, because the team mission was not as clear, and there were lots of strong personalities and interpersonal conflicts.

When the new position in technical infrastructure opened up, I switched teams.

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Crucified

I was contacted by HR just after I switched to technical infrastructure team, to ask about the experience working under my first Team Lead. It came out of nowhere, and they asked about far-flung topics from how inclusive his team meetings were, whether we were treated fairly, to our behaviour during off-sites, if he has a relationship with anyone working under him. I had no idea why.

Then I got word that he resigned suddenly, under abrupt circumstances. My co-workers who worked under him speculated he was going to be slapped with an HR violation of some sort, and decided to resign instead. My co-workers, even those that didn’t like him, were not happy about that. And we never found out why he was investigated in the first place. One of my co-workers said she had complained to HR about someone, but then HR started an investigation on somebody else she didn’t complain about. So maybe that was the start? None of us - even his good friend from Brazil - could get in touch with him now.

It was all very mysterious, and it smells like it’s a case of an HR investigation getting incidental findings.

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