New Team Lead Dealing With A Confrontational New Hire

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Hey folks, we're going to experience devs. This one is a topic about a new team member that is uh seemingly problematic uh kind of early on. And so this Redditor was saying that they're uh a new sort of team lead, but they've been in IC for, you know, close to a decade kind of thing. So not a they're not a new developer. And um there's a new team member and the uh piece of information they added in was that for whatever circumstances right uh this this person and their manager were not part of the hiring process for the new team member. This can happen for you know a million different reasons but uh that's a little bit of background. So they kind of have this team member that they didn't really get to interview and check out before they came to the team.

And so this person is feeling like, you know, um they listed a couple things like the person from day one seems a little bit confrontational, like uh maybe hard to get along with. Um they were saying it doesn't really seem like they're attending meetings, so they're not really present. Uh they're taking a long time to reply to messages even though their status shows green like they're available. Um they I don't have it right in front of me right I think they might have said something along the lines too of like their their throughput, but overall this person, this this new team lead is kind of getting a a bad feeling um about this new team member and they're saying, "Hey, like should should I be bringing this up with my manager? Like, how do I approach this kind of thing?" And I thought it'd be a good topic.

Um I like talking about these things as a manager because I think that they're very real. I think that they're helpful for people to to think through because you may have been on either side of this in your career. Um, and if not yet, maybe in the future, right? If you're still early in your career, maybe maybe you haven't had an experience like this. But I think that this is a a sort of normal thing, right? Like I know as software engineers, we're we're focused on software, right? We think about code. We think about building things. And I try as much as possible in my videos and the content I put out to talk about the fact like we're people. Like there's going to be all sorts of people uh things that we have to kind of deal with, right? We work with people.

And so instead of I don't know like trying to navigate all this stuff like in an avoiding way like oh if we if we can I don't know pretend like these things don't happen and just focus on all this other stuff then that's the software engineering part but it's like this kind of thing is like built into being people and working together and so I I don't want to say that to to put you off from working in software development. are thinking like, well, that means, you know, this kind of stuff sucks cuz I don't want to have to deal with people that, you know, I don't get along with. But it's like, it's just life. And I think the more that we experience these things and the more that we go through them and learn from them, like the the more that we can adjust for things in the future, right?

Like, so I think this is it's a challenging situation, right? I'm not trying to to minimize that either. So, it's a challenging kind of situation to be in because you have someone new. You're in the middle of like trying to onboard them, ramp them up, and you're already kind of building this resentment like, "Come on, man. Like, you can't even attend the meetings and like you can't even respond to messages. Like, I know you're there or or are you there, right?" This person said, "I think they might even have a mouse jiggler." like they're they really don't think that this person is uh like cut out for this, right? And so their question around should they bring it up with their manager, I think the answer is yes. Um and I say that as an engineering manager, right? Like I I want to be able to have a feeling of how the team is operating.

Obviously, that's my responsibility to be working with individuals on the team as much as possible. I will always have blind spots as a manager. I don't want to sit here and pretend like as much as I talk about software engineering stuff, I'm I never want to come across like I'm trying to say I know better than others or I that I am better than others. I I'm absolutely not perfect. I'm always trying to learn. Uh, and a lot of the stuff I'm talking about, honestly, it's helpful for me, too, just to be able to kind of think through things and articulate them because it makes me process them, too. Process them. Process them. You let me know which one's Canadian or not, cuz I don't know. Um, I've been told that one of those is Canadian uh, compared to the other, which is more American. But I say both, I think.

So, I don't know anymore. I think I've always said both. So as an engineering manager, the more sort of like information feedback I have from from people on the team, the more that I have to work with. And that doesn't mean just for clarity, at least for me, that doesn't mean if I have one person on the team that tells me, hey, look, I think Bob on the team sucks, I'm not like, therefore Bob is a terrible person. No, it's it's signal for me to go, okay, well, there's something there's something here, right? Um whether it's 100% true that Bob is crappy and terrible or you know one of the the minimum sets of truth here is like at least the person talking to me about it has an observation or an interaction with this person that uh that isn't as as good as they'd like.

And that's signal enough for me to start going, okay, like let me pay attention to this in particular. It doesn't mean that I'm now trying to hunt down Bob and put him on a pip and say, you know, Sally on the team said you suck and now I'm I'm out for you. Like, nope. And it's not that the inverse where I'm like, oh, that means Sally is a total whiner and I got to get rid of her. Like, it's not it's not like that. It's just a signal because like I said, as an engineering manager, I have blind spots. This person needs to figure out how to go on the highway. Guys, it's an on-ramp. I don't understand. Okay, we survived. I need water. Water with caffeine obviously. Okay. Um, so yeah, it's for me it's signal as an engineering manager. Now, what I do with that is going to depend on the situation.

Um, sort of the dynamics of the team. Is this a repeat thing? Is this the first time I'm hearing it? Is this um a repeat from the person reporting it? Uh maybe they they do this with everyone, right? Or um I've had three people now tell me about Bob. Like there it's not like a like a strict rule system. It's just we have to think about the context that this is coming in. But point is that having some signal for me is appreciated. And my what I lean into personally is not automatically assigning like people suck or someone's a whiner. Oh my god, what is going on here, man? That was the dumbest I've seen in a long time, buddy. This person, just for context, this person is in front of me and they wanted to merge into the lane to our left and they stopped on the highway.

They came to a complete stop so they could try to merge to the left. And this person behind me doesn't have lights on. We got to get out of here. Unreal. It's not even Monday, man. What are we doing? Okay, so I do think it's important to bring this stuff up with your manager. I think how you approach it is where you can start um doing some introspection. And over time, the more of these types of scenarios you've experienced, the more the more like different kinds of people you've had to work with and navigate challenging things, the I think the more that you learn about them and the more that you can communicate this kind of stuff, right? I think when we look at things surface level, it's very easy to make assumptions because we're we're observing the um I don't know like potentially side effects of things happening.

So, we get a a single view of what's going on. For example, this person has a green status, but they're not responding to messages, so they're ignoring me. Okay. Are they is that is that what it means? Right. Um don't know. Is it that they're using that time for their focus time and they've carved that out for themselves and they're saying, "Sure, like my Teams or my Slack or whatever is connected, but I I'm using this time for me, right? I oops, I didn't block my calendar, but I'm, you know, I'm taking this time and I'm I'm working on stuff and I'll respond when I can." Does that mean they're ignoring you? Does that mean they're being shitty? Does that mean they have a mouse jiggler? I don't know, could be all those things, but like we don't know. So, we often assign something we're thinking to it, right?

Like we have a bias. And I think this gets kind of kind of dicey when you are building resentment for someone because we will automatically lean into the things that that are more negative. Right? You're not going to start being frustrated with someone, building resentment, and then going, "Oh, but you know what? Like probably a good reason for that." Like, no, as humans, like we we generally don't. So, it's one of those things to try and practice when we're going through these things. Um, for example, people moving slower on stuff, right? Just a sort of a classic thing, new new team member, they're going slower than you'd like uh for for the throughput. This could be any number of things, right? Could be they were hired in uh and they don't know the programming language, the tech stack, and they were told by whoever hired them, hey, like here's the expectation, right?

In this situation, this uh team lead, this engineering manager weren't part of the hiring. Did they have an opportunity to have the same expectations with this person? I'm I'm I'm making an assumption here, but I assume not. So, we have that. Um, was there, you know, maybe this person thought that they had more time for onboarding, that they'd get more support. Uh, maybe, um, I'm again, I'm totally making these things up just to give you examples of like what could be going on in these types of situations. Maybe this person is moving slower on their deliverables because they were assigned someone to help out with them and that person's not giving them the support. And they're trying. They're reaching out. They're seeing what they can do.

Uh maybe this person's already reaching out to the manager and being like, "Hey, you know, Timmy was assigned to to help me on board, but like I really can't get a hold of Timmy." and the manager is now trying to help on board this person and and like they're trying to juggle all of that and it's not being effective and then you have the observation that this person's going slower than than you'd like. Right? There could be all sorts of different things going on here. It could be that this person started work and based on how things went and the timing, maybe they have some personal stuff going on in their life and they're they are or are not talking to your manager about it, right? And they're not sharing that with the whole team because maybe there's um something going on at home for them.

Maybe there's something with uh family members and they're not they're legitimately not as active as that they would intend to be normally at work and oops. Okay, we didn't do a good job at least communicating like expectations around this person's ramp up period. Maybe we leaned too much into trying to be, you know, private to give them some some privacy and respect there. And we we could have maybe set some clear expectations with the team like hey this person's on boarding but like uh you know um I don't know how you would phrase it depending on what it is but you know letting the team know that they need a little bit of extra time or whatever and just kind of setting that clear expectation. I don't I don't think in situations like that you're going to have a team that's like oh so like I can't remember the people's names I was making up Bobby or something.

Bob um like oh they're already not going to pull their weight like people don't generally jump into that kind of thing but when the expectations are left open then people start making assumptions. So there's all sorts of different reasons that things could be happening. The one that the one that stands out to me in this example is like this person seems like they're butting heads. And I say this person, sorry, I mean um the team lead with this new person. They're saying the new person uh is butting heads a lot. And to me, this one's interesting. I know this this team lead said they've been in software engineering for like a decade. that that is a you know obviously a decent chunk of time. So I'm sure they've worked with different personality types but like sometimes people clash, right? Like it's it's part of it.

And so understanding how people work and how they operate, it takes effort from both sides when you have people with very different personality types that work different ways to to understand that about each other to be able to work effectively. It does not have to be a, oh, like your personality type is not one that I like, therefore you're a piece of and we're never going to be able to work together. It does not need to be that way. Even though sometimes it really feels that way with people you're working with. Looks like there's a big accident up here. Holy cow. What's going on? Oh, not a big accident. Looks like a fender bender. There's two fender benders. Holy cow. That's why it looked like a big accident. I thought I saw more flashing lights. It's just two separate small accidents. Um, so yeah, I think personality types clashing is a very common thing.

Um, I would say in my time at Microsoft in particular, and it's not unique to Microsoft either. This was a thing that I did a lot at the startup I was at before. Um, but at Microsoft it from a a people management perspective, I spend a lot of time a lot of time coaching people around like working with people that have different ways of working, different personality types. It's it's a hu like I don't know if people realize this like it to be honest I think I think some people go through their software engineering careers just kind of either thinking people suck or it's you know things are broken just because I don't know like other people suck and we can't get along and uh I don't I don't think that's the case. I think it, you know, creates friction obviously, but we're all like we're on the same team trying to work together, right?

Like we're all there to move things in the right direction, right? And even when it's on different teams, you're doing stuff across teams and you have, you know, people that have conflicting views and things like that. You're at the same company. You ultimately have the same goal, right? Um it's it's tricky. I'm not saying it's a trivial thing, but like we have to we have to get better at these things and that takes time, practice, and like and willingness to accept that yeah, we work with people. And instead of running away from these types of things or just saying like, I guess sucks and that's how it is, I think we need to look at it with a different lens, which is like things will not always be perfect and there will always be people that we don't see eye to eye with, but we can always get better at working with those types of people.

Always. By the way, I I was just thinking about this uh totally unrelated to what I'm talking about, but in case you're ever curious, I've had people say like uh for these videos are like, "Oh, you're like you're distracted by the camera." I just realized that when I'm looking at the rearview mirror, I wonder if people think I'm talking to the camera, which is interesting. I talk to the camera if I'm stopped. Um, and most of the time I don't even mean at red lights. I mean like parked. Um, so if you see me and it looks like I'm looking at the camera like this, I'm actually looking in my rearview mirror. Just as a heads up. Or if I'm looking in my side mirror, that's a side mirror. That's my rear view. I don't look at the camera.

So yeah, instead of approaching these things like uh in an avoidant way or just saying it can't improve, I think trying to understand that people work differently, understanding how it is they work, understanding that you you're going to have to adapt your communication patterns and styles to work with different people. And if we all do a little bit of that, and not everyone will, which is unfortunate, but if we all try to do a little bit of that, then we improve from all different sides. So, especially for someone that is more senior, I would strongly encourage you that when you you should bring this up with your manager. But um what I would try to do is um not hyperfocus on just trying to set this person up for failure, if that makes sense. Um I don't I don't think that that's necessarily a fair approach.

That might be your observation, and that's why I want you to challenge yourself a little bit. I want you to talk more about the facts instead of your assumptions, if that makes sense. Okay? So, instead of going I'm just going to maybe exaggerate the scenario a little bit. Instead of being like, "Hey, I see their status is always green, but they don't respond to my messages, so I think they probably have a mouse jiggler and they're not actually at their computer." That to me, that's a stretch because like what what are we trying to tackle there? Like as a if you're telling me that and I'm the engineering manager, are you trying to tell me that you're suggesting I investigate if they have a mouse jiggler or or should we focus on like maybe what the root of the problem is, which is you have

an expectation that may or may not have been made clear with this person or other people on the team that when you are sending messages that you have some kind of like SLA in your mind for a response. response. Maybe other people on the team have just historically been doing that and like it's never been an issue or it's rarely ever an issue. But maybe this new team member, maybe they don't communicate that way over instant messenger. Maybe maybe you see instant messaging as a thing of like, I sent you a message, drop what you're doing because I know you saw the notification. And that just might not be how they operate. So when you're bringing this stuff up with your manager, try to focus on like take a step back from just like making the assumptions about things. Okay? So let's talk about not attending meetings, right?

like, "Hey, I know this person just started. Um, instead of trying to go into like, uh, I think they suck because they're not attending meetings and that's really problematic." You could raise it as a as a point in general and not like attack them with it, right? So, you could say, "I've noticed that I don't know if like so and so has the meeting invites or if you're aware if they have conflicts or anything, but um you know, they're they're part of this project or whatever and like they're on the invite, but they haven't really been attending and I can't seem to get a hold of them." And like approach it with curiosity, right? I think maybe that's a way that I would frame that. Sometimes when I'm talking through these things, I'm trying to think of like the terminology or language that I would use.

And I think what I'm arriving at is like approach it with curiosity instead of accusatory. Um, unless you have like I'll take a step back. Unless you have like overwhelming evidence that someone is like being malicious or or doing things that are offensive to other people, like they're truly crossing a line and maybe that has to go to HR or something like um then I would lean in with more curiosity if possible. And I say that because it's it's very easy to make assumptions and then assign meaning to them. And I I think that can skew a lot. And I think that's why resentment builds up because we make an assumption about whatever is going on and then we stack more things on top of it. But if we were genuinely trying to approach things with more curiosity, I think that we would often lean into uh helping more.

Right? This person's not attending the meetings. Okay? So, you as the team lead, what's going on here? Um, are you are you just kind of sitting there going like getting like doing nothing except getting frustrated by it and then spiraling making assumptions or did you try to approach it with curiosity and you're you reach out to the person? You say, "Hey, just wanted to check like I don't know if you got the invite for this or if it's in your calendar, but like uh we have these meetings. Here's here's the value of them. Here's why I think you know you should be present for them. here's what uh I'm hoping you can contribute or what we can contribute to you and like therefore you know there is an expectation that you're there so this can be successful right instead of going well oh they're they're

just a a shitty team member not showing up because I also see that they don't respond to my messages like and you compound these problems like I I mean it genuinely I challenge you to act with curiosity. Try it. It's not easy. I understand it's not easy, but I challenge you to act with curiosity because I think that more often than not, if you approach things with curiosity, um, you more default to being helpful. And I I think that's important because it shifts your framing a little bit. I'm not I'm not saying that's a rule. I'm not a psychologist or anything like that, but that's my my belief or my experience is that when you try to be curious, you shift to being helpful. So I would bring it up with your manager or for this person, right? for their manager. I would try to focus on um you know facts instead of uh you know uh jumping to your conclusions.

I would um if if you're concerned that like maybe some of the things you're not sure how to communicate like to you it's like this feels pretty impactful and like I'm not sure just saying they don't respond to my messages is like is good enough. Um talk to your manager about the impact that you or others are feeling from it. I think that can be helpful too, right? Because if you go in there and you're like, "They don't respond to my messages or they um they don't answer my code review comments or whatever." Uh I think it can be helpful when you're trying to communicate these things to talk about the impact that you experience from it. for example, um they're, you know, this new team member is working on this project and they're not responding to my messages at all because I'm the one leading this project or responsible for these parts of it.

Uh it's making it really difficult for me to be able to deliver on on my parts or to keep things coordinated and here's what I've been trying and I'm not having success with it. like can we talk about that? Right? You're you're shifting to like how can we work towards solutions? Like here's the what I'm experiencing. Here's the challenges. Here's what I'm trying. How do we work towards solutions versus just like stacking things up to go attack someone? Now I can't speak for every engineering manager obviously but I would say for me at least if I had someone coming to me talking this way and trying to sol like trying to solution things if I'm like interestingly it seems like someone else is at the root of all of these again it's signal for me it makes me go okay like maybe there's more I have to pay attention to here but at least At least I can focus on helping my team member at that point in time.

You you will know your engineering manager better than I know them because I don't know your engineering manager. Um unless it's me, right? Unless you report to me right now and you're listening to this, then I don't know your manager. But um you know, you'll know your manager better. And if you feel like you don't know your manager at all, then please work on that. But um you might have to shift your communication. Right? I'm telling you all these things in terms of how I would like to be approached as a manager and I need to recognize and call it out that that is a bias of course. So if you're listening to what I'm saying and you're like my manager would never or doesn't do things like that or has a different approach like okay I'm framing it up one way. This is just perspective.

This is my opinion on it. And my hope is that you can hear the things I'm saying and figure out ways to tailor that to your manager. If you're like, if I just try to, you know, work on solutions to help me get through something and my manager is not going to read between the lines, it would never do something about this other person. Okay. Like, yeah, maybe be a little bit more direct. maybe make the conversation more about that person and the impact that they're having on you and others versus trying to uh arrive at solutions for the challenges you're facing. But you will know your manager better than I will. So something to consider. But at the end of the day, I think the thing that still stands regardless for me is that I would uh I would find a way to bring this up with your manager.

And then I would try to find ways to be curious as much as possible versus assuming and building resentment. Uh, final thing I'll leave you with is that do this kind of stuff sooner rather than later because if you wait and you wait and you wait, the resentment builds and builds and builds and then it's like it blows up, right? It's like 6 months in, it's like, why are we still dealing with Bob? Bob is the worst. Oh my god, Bob has, you know, made the whole team the most terrible experience. These wipers, man, they got to stop. Um, and then your manager, like your manager finally realizes there's like a problem. And then it feels like it's too late. Like if I would have known sooner, I could have done something more effective. Um, and the same thing happens for feedback for the person.

Um, if you wait a long time to give someone feedback, uh, I've I've told these stories before where I've waited too long and you can tell the person is like completely completely destroyed from it. They're like, why would no one tell me sooner? Because people don't mean to be malicious. They just want to do a good job. So, those are my thoughts. If you got questions, leave them below in the comments. Otherwise, you can go to codekmute.com and submit stuff anonymously. I will see you in the next one. Take care.