I’m working in an environment where gaslighting seems to be a common tactic to manage people. I don’t recall experiencing anything like this prior to joining the tech world, where I’d worked for more traditional companies. Does anyone else experience this? What drives it? The insane amount of money to be made by startups founders and their earliest employees? Is this a managerial tactic that people are taught by VCs? By incubators? Does the tech work just attract more sociopaths?
wtf are you talking about? name names and give examples
I had a manager that employed this tactic, but haven’t otherwise seen it in 15+ years working at tech companies.
Use Emails.
I definitely saw it at startups. Too early to tell if I'll see it at Bloomberg. Sometimes people accidentally make promises they can't keep. That isn't necessarily gaslighting, but I've definitely seen actual gaslighting.
#1 Idiots aren’t likely to be good at gaslighting #2 Not every interaction is by email, Slack, and so forth - so many things are not recorded #3 People who gaslight avoid putting important things in writing
So true re: people who gaslight avoiding putting important things in writing. I was at an Ed tech startup (a whole other mess of an industry) where my manager would deny all accountability and responsibility of any wrong-doing. For example: on Monday, he would tell us Project A is absolutely #1 priority that needs to get done yesterday. We would tell him the pros and cons of prioritizing Project A (e.g., Project B and Project C would not get done). He would insist on doing Project A and get annoyed that we would even bring up alternative views. Then on Wednesday, he would blame us for not getting Project B or Project C done. When we bring up that we have discussed the trade-offs w him earlier on Monday, he would deny ever having heard this or ever having told us that Project A was a priority. We had to resort to taking avid notes and sending them to him (and ourselves) after every meeting or encounter with him. It was utterly exhausting. Leadership loved him though. The turnover on my team ended up being so high that eventually my manager got fired.
This is a perfect example of what I’m experiencing
This is why one should generally avoid startups. It helps to join one led by people with SWE experience at top companies, because they won't stand for this kind of BS
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Wtf is this gaslighting ?
Gaslighting is a process of slowly making people doubt themselves and their memories of events.
And how can one do it to someone else ? Examples would be useful.. it seems like you folks think it is a very common and easily applicable tactic..while to others (including me) it seems completely implausible that a person can do it to you, unless you are a highly gullible idiot (in which case they can probably do 1000 other things to you too)