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My manager is acting strange

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Mid-Level Software Engineer at Quant Trading firm10 days ago

I'm at a small quant firm and I started working for a new manager a few months ago. Our relationship has had its ups and downs, but last week it suddenly got really weird. He avoided me throughout the entire week. When I'd come up to ask a question he wouldn't even look at me. Then we had our 1 on 1, he was asking me about specific results of my recent projects, which was a bit unusual. It felt like he was digging for reasons to punish me around the next performance cycle, but I can't be sure about that. He also seemed nervous at the end of it, and when I was talking during team standup too.

This week, I'd say, was a bit less weird, but he ended the 1 on 1 very early. I could understand that on it's own, but combined with other things, it makes me stressed. My performance has been great so far, and it might be that he just doesn't like me and it doesn't impact my reviews that much, but I don't know if I want to keep working in such dynamic, and if I want to have a manager who is on my back waiting for me to make a mistake.

In the past I tried talking to him and asking what am I doing wrong, referring to these non verbal signals. He seemed to have gotten anxious from me asking, said everything is fine and our relationship seemed to have improved after that. I'm afraid that if I ask him again because of what's happening now, he will just avoid me even more and it will make things worse.

I'm just stressed out and would appreciate any advice or perspective I could get. Should I switch teams? Thanks.

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(5 comments)
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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    9 days ago

    Sorry to hear about this - It's a rough situation. The worst case scenario is that they're setting you up for a PIP or something like you alluded to.

    There's a couple routes to take here:

    1. Introspect - Is there anything you could have done better over the past few months? Maybe you messed up somewhere and didn't realize?
    2. Talk to others - In particular, ask for feedback from other people. If an engineer is genuinely having performance problems, it's usually more than just the manager who notices. Time to break out those awkward 1 on 1s.
    3. Talk to your skip - Mid-levels usually don't have a relationship with their skip, but if you do, talk to them and try to figure out what's going on, both with your manager and with you (i.e. does your skip have feedback for you).

    Lastly, is your company going through financial turmoil? If so, a likely scenario unfortunately is that managers have just been given a higher stank rank percentage and they have a quota of people to fire. This makes it really awkward for managers who actually care about their reports (i.e. they aren't psychopaths) as they need to cut people who they like.

    • 1
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      Mid-Level Software Engineer [OP]
      Quant Trading firm
      8 days ago

      Thank you for a detailed reply. I did mess up when my code change caused major issues in production. However at the time my manager didn’t seem very upset about it.

      An interesting detail is that I have a ticket which documents my manager telling me to test the change a certain way, which I did, but then we all agreed that the lacking testing process caused these issues. I didn’t point that out back then because this wasn’t very professional to say I just did what my manager told me to. Do you think this changes my situation in any way?

    • 0
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      Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
      7 days ago

      Do you think this changes my situation in any way?

      It's good to have a paper trail if someone tries to blame you for this. I would even screenshot this to be safe.

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    Tech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
    9 days ago

    Sounds like you asked him verbally -- some people have a really hard time giving negative feedback that way. Could you add "performance check-in" in your 1:1 agenda doc, and ping him to review that ahead of your next meeting.

    I also agree with Alex about chatting with others: ask senior folks on the team for feedback, your skip-level manager. And delicately check if the manager's behavior has changed for everyone, or just for you.

    • 0
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      Mid-Level Software Engineer [OP]
      Quant Trading firm
      8 days ago

      Thank you for this tip.