Community post

Dealing with difficult people

I’m having a bit of a problem and I’m not sure what to do about this because it could cost me my job, which is the last thing I need. I’m rather hacked off with my line manager at work, our Head of technology. Let’s call him Bob, not his real name of course but I’d rather not use his real name. Sounds a bit dramatic perhaps? But that’s my choice!

I’m a month away from completing my probation with this lovely company. Everyone is sublime, lovely, friendly and happy to help you as much as they can. Admittedly very few of them understand what it is we do on the Tech department, it’s a unique set of skillets after all.

I joined the company as what we call in the industry, a “Full Stack Developer”, which basically means you work on databases, back-end systems and front-end UIs etc. The whole caboodle. There are less roles these days perhaps for specialist front-end developers than there was because of AI and other reasons. So after being made redundant, I took a change of tack and decided to work with something new or that I hadn’t used in years; but could pick up quickly again.

The programming language is Ruby on Rails. I was honest with my initial interviewer thatI hadnt worked with Ruby recently (a non technical man) and then took a second interview with the tech team as it was, passed the tech test without any problems and got on very nicely with the interview panel. I was buzzing and when offered the job, ecstatic because they’re a cool company.

They hadn’t employed the Head of Tech and were on the brink of offering Bob his job.

Two weeks later Bob and I started on the same day and all was fine.

The thing is, as we’ve started to settle in I’ve come to realise that Bob is highly opinionated on various things and if I do anything a bit differently, even just a bit, he becomes quite aggressive; makes me feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.

Today I quit.

No I didn’t - but we were having a heated debate on the use of AI and the way in which I did something, he didn’t agree with that it’s left me thinking, is this the way all code reviews will go. His ego will always kick in, he’s just been doing Ruby for twenty years blah blah.

I posted a goodbye message to the team on Teams and turned my computer off. I wasn’t going to continue the conversation. Nobody talks to me like I’m an idiot. It was coming up to 5pm and I’d been working since 8am.

Bob is like this a little bit with other people. He’s obsessed with his own favours system, like he’s the most important person in the room and instructed us, his team to turn people away when they come to us for help. Sure enough we’re not tech support and maybe things need some kind of triage.

So what do I do?

Have a frank conversation with him. He might be unaware that I’m upset. I mask it of course in the interests of remaining professional
Talk to the HR team

We’re both on the same probation by the way.

I am getting better at Ruby. I love the language. I do use AI as an alternative to Google for putting stuff together, especially when we’re up against it.

I’m just really angry with him and hate asking him for help because if I don’t quite follow what he’s explaining he gets wound up.

It’s worth pointing out that he’s Polish and there is sometimes a bit of a challenge understanding what he’s getting at.