Has anyone here left a role purely because of "bad vibes"? I'm considering it after a strange leadership dynamic.
Posted by rayreaper@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 67 comments
Looking for some experienced perspectives.
I’m a lead software engineer with 10+ years of experience managing teams across startups, enterprises, and everything in between. About a year ago, I joined a startup to help scale and support their engineering team. I was hired directly by the Engineering Manager, who was leading a small team of five engineers. The plan was to have a slow onboarding, spend the probation period learning the team, product, and codebase, then gradually transition into the lead role.
This pace actually appealed to me, especially after burning out in a previous contracting role where I was constantly dropped into chaos. It felt like a welcome reset.
But here’s where it gets weird:
After 6 months, there was no sign of any leadership transition. I didn’t push it, things were busy, and I assumed responsibilities would be gradually handed off. By month 9, nothing had changed, so I brought it up in a 1:1. That conversation was... tense. The vibe felt almost territorial, as if I was trying to stage a takeover rather than follow the original plan.
Now, I’m technically acting as the team lead, but my manager remains heavily involved, which is great, but rather than supporting me in my role he’ll take any opportunity to make passive-aggressive comments or be critical over minor things in front of the team, but rarely offering constructive feedback in private. My feedback behind close doors is mostly inexistent. It feels less like leadership handoff and more like sabotage or resistance.
At this point, I don’t think I can "win" here. He’s still my manager, and it seems like he’s unwilling to support me and I worry he's setting me up to fail. So now I’m wondering: is this something worth pushing through, or is this just one of those “off vibes” situations where leaving is the smarter move?
MagnusChirgwin@reddit
Hey u/rayreaper I appreciate your post, good for you for reaching out. There's alot of great advice here already.
I can't tell you what to do but I'd love to share stuff that's helped me and see if you gain some perspective that's helpful for you. You say you burned out before, I've been there as well. I had headaches, vertigo and anxiety for like 6 months after a crunch all of which I repeated one more time before listening to my body seriously.
I've also been that manager...and I'll tell ya if that manager is anything like me he's full of fear and insecurity, like a tremendous amount. Deep. Fucking. Fear. Fullblown emotional avoidance. It's not his fault, whatever he's been through he's learned that this is his way to protect himself from hurt. But that doesn't make the behaviour necessarily ok for you.
I'll ask you a sincere question: How are you with setting boundaries? What happens in you if you take a minute, close your eyes and visualize sitting down with your manager and telling him how you feel, how his behaviour makes you feel and then expressing what would be helpful for you? What comes up?
Big love
thatVisitingHasher@reddit
I once had a job for about a month. About three weeks in, I got a random IM from a team member on the West Coast. A service went down. We debugged and fixed the issue in about 30 minutes. At 9:30 p.m., my boss called me, telling me I'm not allowed to talk to anyone outside our organization. Every communication needs to go through him. I called up my old boss and asked for my old job back. Put in my notice the next day. I won't work for a boss who doesn't allow me to talk to anyone but him.
kronik85@reddit
the team member wasn't part of your org? a client? another company who is on the "team"?
I'm confused
Szinek@reddit
Big corp, different internal organisations. No confusion here
praenoto@reddit
inexperienced dev here - I don’t understand how they could be both a team member and a member of a different org. is that common?
Beautiful-Salary-191@reddit
I was in a similar situation, if the 1-1 didn't resolve this conflict there is no way to fix this. Find another opportunity but don't rush it...
TheTacoInquisition@reddit
Technically there is a way, it's just a bit of a gamble. Taking to THEIR manager can be productive....or potentially end your career with them.
Sometimes the skip level was the one to actually want you on board, and efforts to stall you, or make you look like a poor performer who can't be promoted as intended, are not welcome from your manager.
But a gamble, since they might be in cahoots and looking for a reason to label you troublemaker
rfpels@reddit
Actually yes I did. And after the fact I headed from someone that worked at the same outfit that those vibes were indeed warranted.
Head_Let6924@reddit
Yes I turned down an 18k bonus to stay at a company. Sometimes I regret it but then remember how upper management and politics used to be. Way better in new role with awesome relaxed work environment.
Normal_Fishing9824@reddit
You've had loads of good advice but I've not seen it said. This is not just "vibes." You've covered concrete examples of your manager acting passive aggressively, undermining you etc.
Vibes would be where you have a feeling it's not right without concrete examples.
I'm either case go with your gut and start looking.
TheOnceAndFutureDoug@reddit
On the one hand, every layoff has been a surprise. On the other hand, every one of them has be preceded by a bad feeling I couldn't shake but chose to ignore and every time I'd wished I'd followed my gut.
Material-Smile7398@reddit
This seems off to me, is there anyone above him that you could ask for advice on what the plan is? without throwing him under the bus.
rayreaper@reddit (OP)
Just the C-level, there aren’t any technical directors or decision-makers, so my manager is basically the most senior technical person here. There are some adjacent technical folks, but honestly.... not sure I trust them enough.
Antagonyzt@reddit
Talk to someone C Level. They will care. And if they don’t then at least you have your confirmation that it’s time to leave.
HobbyProjectHunter@reddit
Agree. Escalate it, say you’re not being heard and that this a cry for help. The response from C-staff or this manager will tell you whether you should continue to swim in these waters. Or hop aboard the boat to other shores.
twnbay76@reddit
Bad manager. Really bad. Switch teams internally if you can. Go to your skip level.
unicorndewd@reddit
I was at a job for less than a week, and I could tell i was going to hate it. Quit ok Friday, and took another option I was already interviewing for (usually try to line up 3 about the same time for competing offers and fallbacks—different market now though).
National-Bad2108@reddit
Trust your gut, the vibes are off and your manager is not willing to help you in your career. I was in a very similar situation and I'm happy I quit - although now the job market is so bad I don't have another job and I'm not happy about that.
Weigh your pros and cons wrt leaving now, but know that you are not in a good place for you and should get out whenever it makes financial sense to do so.
secretAZNman15@reddit
Companies are still human environments (not matter how much we don't want to think so). Some people mesh well with some companies and not others. Same deal as in relationships.
aventus13@reddit
Is your manager the same Engineering Manager who was hiring you? If so then it definitely sounds weird. Otherwise, it might be that you direct manager wasn't aware of this unofficial arrangement. By "unofficial" I mean that if it wasn't written in your job offer or contract then you're partially to be blamed. You should be accepting job offer for a specific role, even if at a later stage to get you fully onboarded.
rayreaper@reddit (OP)
Yeah, there’s only one Engineering Manager, the team is quite small, just seven of us including myself, the EM, and five developers. So yes, the same EM who hired me is also my current manager.
My contracted title and responsibilities are explicitly "Lead Software Engineer", so I naturally wanted to step into that lead role. When I tried to do that, my EM started getting stand-offish, which really threw me off.
One thing I forgot to mention: when I brought this up in a 1:1, my manager started what felt like a "renegotiation" of my contracted responsibilities. It turned into a bit of a debate about what "Lead" actually means in this context, which didn’t leave me with a lot of confidence.
DjBonadoobie@reddit
I was going to comment elsewhere that it sounds like you two may have different definitions of "lead", and I think this comment kinda confirms that.
To your OP question, yes, I've left when vibes were bad. It was kinda similar in the public passive aggressive comments (and sometimes just straight aggressive). The difference was this was an overbearing CTO that tried hiring an EM, castrated them, then micromanaged them out of the company and ultimately me ending up siloed as a solo dev on a project that he was the only reviewer on. I think I lasted 4 months there before I started interviewing elsewhere, and quit before I hit 6mo. I was surprised that when I quit he hit me up asking if we could talk about it, like he was going to try and talk me out of it, I simply refused politely, as I had 0 interest in talking with that man ever again for the rest of my life.
Stock_Blackberry6081@reddit
They may see you as a tech lead but not an engineering manager or team lead. It’s become common for companies to split the lead role into several duties that different team members handle. I think it sucks. Developers should be managed by developers.
selekt86@reddit
This sounds like a situation where the manager is insecure of his value. If he was a good manager he’d be spending his time on building leaders but it sounds like he’s not. If you want to go the political route - make him feel appreciated and gradually start getting on his good side. Keep your head down and continue to praise dear leader. If it’s an insecurity issue, he will warm up. If it’s something else he won’t and you know your answer.
Prior-Acanthaceae182@reddit
I have and it was the best decision ever. My team started small and it was a project with a rough legacy code that hadn’t aged well and a new project made by contractors with a lot of questionable decisions that didn’t bother understanding the business requirements and did their own thing, the split brain between both projects made it a difficult gap to bridge but it was manageable.
Then they hired an architect with silver tongue, his solution scrap everything and start from zero, in a language of his choice never mind that we tripled the team with people with the expertise to solve the problems at hand, let’s train everyone in this new stack and forget the clients and production code.
I disagreed early and the relationship was frosty and toxic afterwards, every single thing had to be an ego trip where it was a contest, I immediately started looking elsewhere, but also made it into a game he proposed something I would agree just for the lols of seeing him change his mind because I had agreed with him, he needed it to be something he had to win, they demean your experience or efforts and try to make every simple process difficult, I left and I found an amazing team where my work is valued and I feel respected.
Are there disagreements sure, but they are solved professionally with direct feedback and it’s a great change of pace.
TLDR. A good professional environment is night and day, look after yourself first.
BeenThere11@reddit
Leave yes
techie2200@reddit
I've left most of my jobs after "bad vibes". Usually after a change in management where you can feel something is shifting (usually new management getting mandates from higher up that put undue stress on them, which trickles down to the team/IC level).
One job was great until the CEO decided to take a more active role in managing the company. Suddenly we're not getting clients (when he's involved in the meetings) and the dev team "isn't profitable enough" so he calls in a consultant for 3 months @ over $200k to find out we're the most profitable team in the company at over 40%. Which he could have known if he just listened to the CTO and dev leads.
A different job I'd left after 5 months. In the first 3 months things were already a bit sketchy since I got interviewed by 2 managers as it wasn't clear which of their teams I'd be on while interviewing, but it was going to be under one of them. When hired, I got chucked to a third manager I'd never met, but we got on well. Then that manager quit and the new guy was the most corporate boot-licking person I've ever worked for (ex. Didn't believe in bonuses since "they become expected over time" and aren't good motivators; Thanked the company profusely and talked about how amazing they are in a rambling linkedin post for allowing him to take time off to go to his family's home country for his grandma's funeral; etc.).
Third one, I ended up surviving three rounds of layoffs. During which my original manager (great guy) was laid off, then my new manager quit, then they reorg'd the company so my third manager was no longer managing me, and finally I was working directly under the CTO who gave me feedback that he wanted to work with me to increase my impact in the company and then he fucked off and didn't meet with me until performance evaluation time and told me I need to make a bigger impact (meanwhile I was running an entire section of our product's development and constantly working with all the teams who touched it).
icanttakethisshit19@reddit
I had a similar experience. I joined a team and the whole vibe felt so off. My manager was supposed to hand off things to me but never did, and actually got increasingly jealous as time went on. I tried different things - I pushed through there, I backed down there, nothing worked. I constantly doubted my own sanity. The manager would also do little passive aggressive things like talking shit behind my back, taking team photos but purposely exclude me, etc. It was just super weird. I thought I could push through because the market was bad, but then I was laid off within a year. Sorry for the rant, I’m just trying to say to trust your gut and plan accordingly.
Any-Abalone-8994@reddit
OP I was once in a very similar situation as you. I felt so conflicted whether it’s the environment is not right and not setting me up for success. Or is it I lack certain ability that makes it not the obvious decision to actually give me the role they promised. After lots of self-reflection and talking to a ton of older and more experienced friends (20+ years in the industry, head of Eng / CTO at small to medium companies). The conclusion is pretty situation - the framing that they hired you in is sus. They didn’t give you the trust and support you deserve from day 1. It’s unlikely this will change - imagine if you knew this is what you would be getting into, would you have joined this company at all?
HoratioWobble@reddit
Once had a guy join, see my code base and quit the same day 😂
I'm not proud of that code base, but still it's a funny situation
ramenAtMidnight@reddit
How do you think the proper transition looks like? And how does the "good" end state look like? It's always good to be explicit on what you want, before jumping, because the same thing might happen again.
These are good starting point. The first point is you're already doing the tech lead work. Does it mean you still lack official title and/or compensation?
The guy is involved but not in a supportive way. What exactly does support mean? Does he lack advice on how to manage the folks in your team? Or is he dodging managerial work like writing roadmaps, aligning with company's strategy etc.? Be explicit on this, and make it an important criteria when looking for new job.
If you're keen for some personal opinion, I would say compensation should be the most important point. If they promised a salary bump as you transitioned into lead role, then you should absolutely push for it (while prepping for interview). There's zero point staying if you already met expectation but still doesn't receive proper compensation. The manager's behaviour/willingness to sponsor you is irrelevant if this is the case.
That said, be very specific about your "line" when applying for a new Lead/Staff+ role. Only take a job if your line is not crossed. At this level, it's a massive waste of time and energy if you choose the wrong company.
randothers@reddit
You can never win against a butthole boss whose highest motivation is job security. They will do anything and everything short of illegal to protect their territory. Start looking for another job but be sure to have a candid conversation with someone above him - Co founder /ceo, whoever. Don't leave without ratting him out.
Master-Guidance-2409@reddit
i left my last job because of the passive aggressive bullshit as well, coming from our director who needed to sign off on every single thing yet never had time daily to be part of the team meetings/decisions and would constantly change scope because he forget previous decisions. extremely low team morale because his person would be overly critical over nothing, so people learn to STFU and engage as little as possible to prevent being targeted.
even though we had multiple "senior" devs, we were all doing the role of junior with 0 autonomy over any part of the system for the sake of "security" and "quality". even our dev manager was basically just a title since he had very little say so.
i held out for about a year as well trying to make it work, and giving back so we could improve team dynamic and get better performance and velocity but since this person was a director level position there was nobody to "enforce" change on this person and get alignment.
sorry bud, i would say to reach to someone above him, but if thats not possible then maybe its best to move on. the worst part for me the toxic behavior. that shit will wear you down overtime; specially when you can't address it properly because of rank.
El_Gato_Gigante@reddit
To me, this is a red flag for a start-up, especially a series a or b. Start-ups need to get their people on-boarded and producing as fast or faster than possible. I personally would be worried the founders and board aren't taking it seriously.
bluesquare2543@reddit
nobody wants to pay for IT or dev experience teams
rayreaper@reddit (OP)
Yeah, I think this was definitely a red flag, and honestly, I ignored it. I should’ve known better, that’s on me. Looking back, I probably wanted it to work out so badly that I brushed off things I shouldn’t have.
El_Gato_Gigante@reddit
Don't beat yourself up. Picking a start-up is hard and surviving a start-up is harder.
You have a paycheck for now, so you have the option to stick around and decide what you want to do.
Antagonyzt@reddit
I just left a lead dev position for almost the exact same reason.
Adorable-Emotion4320@reddit
Maybe there is something you can do to shape responsibilities between the two of you, so that he feels less threatened?
Obviously if you are 'leading the team' and his sole role is 'leading you leading the team' it just becomes a pissing contest. You need to formally spell out who does what, make a raci, who does sprints, who does roadmaps, people management vs project/product management, technical leadership etc
robertbieber@reddit
Have I ever left a job because the vibes were bad? No. Should I have? Oh yes, a couple of times
gomihako_@reddit
One of these is not like the other.
Syntactico@reddit
Does it hurt trying to push through? In my experience, some friction is common when transitioning leadership.
rayreaper@reddit (OP)
Yeah, I agree, transitions like this are never smooth. What gets me is that it was my manager’s idea in the first place, and the reason for my hiring, (why even hire me in the first place?) but now he’s the one pushing back on it. Just feels off, especially since my success kind of depends on him.
CodeNiro@reddit
Does he feel like you're better than him? Sometimes, even when it's not your intention, managers get jealous when an underling performs better. Or maybe you disagreed with him publicly on something that made him feel dumb without you realizing?
My first 2 years were exactly how you describe it. I was practically the lead but did not have the title; just the responsibility. Twice my manager brought up if I can do his job, one time it was in public and out of nowhere. The whole team just looked startled.
You never know, could be fragile ego.
TeaFella@reddit
It may have been an empty promise to get you to join or , possibly, your manager is not willing/capable of letting go due to their own issues or inexperience in transitioning responsibilities.
NyanArthur@reddit
Oh boy I'm heading into a team lead role under an engineering manager soon. It's not a startup but an established company.
What should I expect? Any tips?
gfivksiausuwjtjtnv@reddit
On average, technical leadership while the EM handles more people management. But there’s so much variation that who knows
HistoricalMix3984@reddit
Yeah man I got a job at an American company paying nearly double my previous salary and quit after 3 days. They were all utterly fucking insane.
AdministrativeHost15@reddit
Maybe somebody higher up is encouraging competition. Don't quit until you're sure you've lost.
RelationshipIll9576@reddit
This is likely holding you back far more than you realize. And staying does nothing but slow you down.
Your manager has made it clear that they are not smart enough nor mature enough to grow leaders. This is not where you want to be spending your time.
Extract what you can from things while you look for something else.
PizzaCatAm@reddit
He is micromanaging, a bad leader.
thephotoman@reddit
Once. I ran screaming back into arms sales because I couldn't sleep at night knowing what I was doing.
tl;dr: private prison bullshit. They got off on the cruelty. The weapons manufacturers were just like, "We'd rather our stuff go unused, but it sends the message of, 'Don't touch the boats' quite clearly."
Qwertycrackers@reddit
Yeah, I did. Turns out I dodged the biggest bullet possible. The company turned out to be on the brink of disaster.
tikhonjelvis@reddit
Do the vibes feel bad in general—not just to you, but to other folks on the team—or is there an acute problem with your role and manager?
If it's the former, I'd just leave. In fact, I just did that a couple of months ago, after working at a place for just six months. I've tried to improve matters for unhappy teams in the past and, even with leadership support, I only had partial success while getting emotionally drained. Without management support, it's a sure path to burnout.
If it's more of an issue around your job and manager specifically, it sounds like there are probably some specific steps you could take to try to understand and change the situation. I haven't been in that exact situation myself, so I'd use it as a chance to experiment: can I define and negotiate a better role for myself in these circumstances? I'd be willing to push more than usual because, if it doesn't work out, I'd be back to just leaving... which is exactly the same outcome as if I don't try anything at all, modulo a couple of months. (Of course, a couple of months can be so miserable that it isn't worth even trying, but you'd probably know that without needing to ask!)
There's a reasonable negotiation strategy: you were hired to do something pretty specific, you have the skills and background to do it, but the current role and team are not positioned to support you. How can you be more effective? I would literally start by asking that open-ended question to your skip-level manager. Things aren't working out and you want to find something that works better for you and lets you work better for the company. You don't have to be explicit about leaving if they can't figure something out or about working poorly with your immediate manager; your skip level is a professional, and they'll be able to read between the lines.
Think of it as playing to your outs. If you don't do anything, you leave and find something new. If you try something, either it works out—and you both improve your current role and learn how to negotiate this sort of thing for the future—or it doesn't, and you just leave anyhow.
wachulein@reddit
What would be the role of that EM in the case team's leadership is transitioned to you? Maybe there is no room to grow below those C-levels.
Fspz@reddit
When I was younger, I put up with asshole colleagues and managers and tried really hard to be a people pleaser to the biggest assholes imaginable, the result? it took a toll on my mental health and I regret every second of it.
Unfortunately it wasn't until my late twenties that I realized this sort of behavior isn't normal, and people are generally nice and easy to work with. I made a promise to myself to never subject myself to such shitty people ever again and I highly recommend you do the same. If you have enough buffer and it's bad in there consider quitting right away, if not start job hunting and slow quitting.
rayreaper@reddit (OP)
I started my career working with a few egotistical assholes too. Luckily, in the past few years, I’ve found some solid teams that I’ve actually enjoyed being part of. There are always going to be a few bad eggs, but you learn to avoid them. Working with professional, mature, experienced people honestly makes all the difference.
KaleidoscopeSenior34@reddit
I would start looking for a job. Market's tough but hopefully the section 174 rework signed yesterday by Trump will fix that soon.
apartment-seeker@reddit
It's going to fix inflation and lower the interest rates? And it's going to cause him to reverse course on the tariffs bullshit? And it's going to do any of that in a time period you would label "soon"?
KaleidoscopeSenior34@reddit
No but it allows software engineering R&D to be fully deducted. You're right about the other headwinds but the market really did go to shit after this went into effect in 2022.
PredictableChaos@reddit
Based on your post and a couple of follow-up comments, it reads to me as he is probably insecure about giving up the technical decisions and is afraid you'll get the credit for any success after that.
How has the team been performing? If you were to look at it from a +1 or +2 level up view, have you had any mishaps operationally? Were there any missed targets/goals that the EM had committed to? Or has the company not been growing/scaling as they were expected to vs when you joined? Just trying to see if there is other politics at play potentially.
rayreaper@reddit (OP)
I haven’t seen much pushback or involvement from leadership around timelines. Things actually feel pretty relaxed, which I’m not complaining about, but it does seem a bit unusual. I don’t think there’s a strong understanding of how long features should take, and to be honest, I wouldn’t say the team’s been performing super well. Some features are taking a long time to ship. At this rate, we’ll probably get 2 or 3 major features out before we risk running out of cash. (That’s still years away, but hopefully it gives some perspective.)
annoying_cyclist@reddit
Have there been any company changes since you were hired? Losing a key customer, scaling back hiring plans, cancelling projects, things like that? When you were hired, were you (and him) clear on what the eventual division of labor between EM and lead would be?
Could be that your manager wasn't ever truly bought into handing off his responsibilities to a lead but was asked to do so by his management, or that he was in theory/at the time he hired you but changed his mind when it came time to do so, or that he has misgivings about how you approach things, or that you and him have different ideas on what your respective roles should be. The latter two you can in theory work through if you have a good relationship, but it sounds like you don't. You could look for a way to get what you want without making the manager feel threatened (maybe there's a work stream/product opportunity you've noticed that could use some focused attention from a senior person?), though this is easier said than done. You could get comfortable as an IC and try to position yourself to become a lead if/when the company grows. My read is that you're probably not going to get to do what you were hired for, unfortunately.
rayreaper@reddit (OP)
There haven’t been any negative changes to the company that I know of, if anything, we’ve been growing and landing some big customers. That said, I don’t know if any decisions were made behind closed doors that might’ve affected my role.
I thought we were aligned on what my responsibilities would be, but looking back, my manager is fairly inexperienced, and maybe I was a bit naïve to assume things were clear-cut. I’m acting as the lead now, but I think you’re right, it’s going to be an uphill battle to fully step into that space. Honestly, I’m too long in the tooth to want to fight that fight, when there's other opportunities to do so.
Illustrious_Stop7537@reddit
😂 Yes, I've made that rookie mistake! 🙈 Had some issues with the team's resident grump 😒 but turned out they were just a creative genius who was also secretly allergic to positivity. Worth it in the end though, kept my sanity intact 💯. What kind of "bad vibes" are you dealing with?
dxonxisus@reddit
this is absolutely a bot going off the weird reply cadence and all of the r/AskReddit spam responses in the last day
Prior_Section_4978@reddit
No, you have nothing to gain by staying there. You should start looking for another job ASAP.