I have seen a lot of posts about toxic work situations and I wanted to share my recent experience (including lessons learnt) . I was interviewing early this year and I had 2 job offers from 2 promising startups. Nextdoor was one of them. As soon as the recruiter and hiring manager heard that I had another offer they made me an exploding offer (24 hour expiration). I just recently learnt it is a pressure tactic and a huge red flag. However at that time I was naive and fell for it and chose to join Nextdoor. There were red flag behaviors right from the beginning, pings about non urgent work after 10pm and complaints to the manager if I didn't respond to them immidiately. Demands to work weekends even after I had completed my work for the sprint, micromanagement through constant pings about status updates etc I pushed back against these and this made me a target for bullying. Not going to go into too many details but the bullying included weekly threats to fire me for being "too slow" followed by reminders that I was on a work visa. I escalated to HR which didn't prove too useful. I requested a team change but the HR was mostly trying to convince me that I had misunderstood my manager (about him wanting to fire me) and at one point even telling me I should always assume the best of intentions from my manager (lol). I had seen enough, it had just been 6 months since I had last interviewed so i got onto the job market and within a couple of weeks had another offer for a higher TC. Sent in my notice and seem to have caught everybody by surprise (so the threats to fire me were empty threats). They attempted to change my mind but it was too late by then. There was a lot of hand wringing from the leadership and suddenly they were worried other engineers might follow me out and were all ears for any feedback I had lol. The HR also said she will be "retraining" the manager during the exit interview. I feel great and can finally enjoy the holidays in peace and get back to a job I actually like! Lessons learnt : 1. The only solution to a toxic situation is team change or leaving the company asap. Doesn't matter if it's been less than a year. 2. HR will probably not be able to help you if you escalate but I believe it's still important to do so (when it is safe) and document it. Bullying gets worse if the victim doesn't pushback. 3. Having a good empathetic manager is very important to one's career. Happy holidays and best wishes for those of y'all looking to get out of a similar situation!
Vote with your feet. Glad you were able to get out of there.
Good for you OP. Happy holidays!
hi OP. would be great if you can share your thought on the question below.. what if your manager is empathetic, but he fails to increase the engineering scope of your team i.e. your team are always doing operation work that your sister team hate shall you leave the manager or not?
Harder to answer this as I have never been in this situation. But I would speak to the manager about your goals and if that doesn't help talk to your skip. If you are not happy with the scope of your work moving to another team is definitely an option.
i see I have seen many chill teams at Amazon, but I feel they are chill because there is literally no engineering work for those teams. They just do operation and everybody had good wlb so they are chill.
hi OP. My thought is below if a manager is empathetic or not depends on the pressure too. Personality is not the only factor. If the manager is building a new product with huge impact and tons of engineering challenges, he or she is under high pressure and can be a bit ruthless even if hr or she doesn't mean to.. However, it is much easier for a manager to be empathetic if he is just responsible for a product with no visibility.
I have over the course of my career worked for 2 managers with ambitious projects. I enjoyed working for them, they were great at managing expectations with various stakeholders and shielding their engineering team from pressure while delivering on an aggressive timeline. Empathy doesn't mean lack of ambition. Ruthless leaders try to manage by fear and in my opinion that doesn't work with engineers who are generally smart and ambitious themselves and I think my experience is an example of this.
@OP, what race was your manager? Some parts of the world have awful management styles Have not heard much about Nextdoor on Blind but sounds absolutely awful and an overall must-avoid
Totally agree with all the points. Happy holidays OP
Ugh this sounds familiar. Point #3 is so important.
Well said good advice, but my friend I wish you get the offer and let them suffer by not replying after work hours not working in weekend stand up for the toxic work situation and let other engineers see wow someone is saying clearly no work in the weekend, and when you feel they will just manage you out slap them with the offer. Always people make the psychopaths life hard and miserable before you leave if you can destroy him do it you will save the humanity.
Haha I could have done that but being in the middle of it all took an emotional toll on me and I didn't think I could handle anymore drama. I just wanted to be out. Even the conversations with the hr were pretty nerve wracking because I had never done something like that before.
I would take OP with a pinch if not a truckload of salt.
Don't be so salty
I’m sorry you had a bad experience with Nextdoor. Can I know what was the other start up you had offer from and what was the pay Nextdoor offered you?
The other offer was from self driving startup Aurora. TC not sure mostly because I don't know how to calculate it when options are involved. But on hindsight Aurora's offer was probably a little higher. Why are you asking? Do you have offers you are comparing?
Point #3 is what people really have to understand. It doesn't matter how much Leetcode you do, if you have a PhD or went to a top school, if you get hired onto a team with a poor manager it can stifle your career. Life is not formulaic. 1 + 1 does not always come out to 2 when we're talking about what's fair and unfair in the events of life. You can do everything right, and still fail. And you'll see people who seemingly did it all wrong, and yet they succeed. There's something more to it all. But thanks OP for sharing your experience. Growing wise, you are. Merry Christmas.
hi. what if your manager is empathetic, but he failed to increase the engineering scope of your team i.e. your team are always doing operation work that your sister team hate shall you leave the manager or not?
In a situation like that, I think it's about evaluating what's best for you. When it comes to working for corporations, don't allow yourself to remain in a situation that's making you unhappy or stagnating your progress out of some sense of loyalty or respect towards a manager. It's not personal, it's business. If the manager and team are going in a direction that doesn't align with your vision for your career, then do what you must. Remember, your billion dollar annual revenue corporate employer would never allow you to keep your job if for some reason your vision and goals didn't align with their expectations, they would fire you. As human beings, we're personable and sympathetic towards one another. Sometimes at work, one can incorrectly allow their feelings for their manager or teammates to define their feeling towards the corporation as a whole. Do what's best for you, but don't burn any bridges. Explain yourself on the way out the door, and go on to a position, team or organization that matches what you want out of life and your day to day work. Don't feel a single iota of guilt. Act within your best interests. We're talking navigating corporate life here, not families or kids. Be shrewd, but kind.