For these years, I have not got a single dollar raise or promotion. My salary has been the same from the day I joined in 2019.
Last year, performance review meeting was different. When mass layoffs were happening, manager brought another engineer on the team. I came to know that this engineer had known him in the past, could be friends. Even though, there was no need for another engineer on the team. My manager told me to train this engineer with same skill-set like you. I am a nice person so I brought this engineer up to speed. From the time this engineer has learnt everything that I have known, my manager has stopped talking to me. My 1:1 meetings has not happened for last few months. I am getting cold shoulder treatment from everyone else on team. This engineer who I taught has been assigned lead role and giving me directions for last few months. The whole situation has become toxic for me.
How to handle this situation best?
This is top 5 tech companies in Canada. If this is the kind of culture promoted here, how are other companies doing?
Have you openly spoken to your manager about your concerns? How it doesn’t feel fair? How you feel you’re being treated? There’s a chance they have no idea. Maybe they’re not that experienced and are just working things out themselves. Or if they seem like the wrong person, is there someone above them you can voice your concerns about?
Last time I had an employer I had feelings of being treated unfairly and voiced it and they gave me a big raise and a bonus, and they expressed how they respected me that much more for voicing it. (I did also come to them with a job offer from another company that had a larger dollar amount associated to it.). N=1 here and no guarantees of course, but it’s very worth attempting to communicate.
Being on the other end as a business owner myself now, I realize how easy it is to think everything that happens at the company and how it operates is deliberate and intentional. That is very often not the case. The invisible hand reaches over and forms companies just as it does the economy, eg one person makes a decision and introduced a structure or process 5 years ago and it just hasn’t been revisited despite the fact it should have.
If they don’t seem interested after some good attempts at being transparent and honest, you’re possibly a place that doesn’t value their employees, and it’s worth looking elsewhere to find a place that better aligns with your values.
1. Empowering others frees yourselves and build teams. Never stop empowering others. You will be more successful in the long run. If the environment is competing you against your peers, leave the environment. A good environment allows fostering good people and working conflict free with multiple good people. Empowering others is part of that.
2. When you are developed by your manager, you go through stages. First it is hands-on (1:1, training, help, guidance, ...) but later it becomes completely loose (more responsibility, punishment if you do something wrong). As a manager you end-goal is independent people which do not need hands-on 1:1 meetings. Are you in that situation maybe?
3. "Cold Shoulder from the rest of the team": Something happened what you have not figured out. Figure it out.
4. Regards the lead engineer position: Ask yourself: Does he deserve the job independent from your own pride? Do you belief that the only differencing factor is your manager's preference ... that sucks but is not necessary toxic. Friendship often translates in trust. Maybe your boss also relies on his friend on leading the team now while he does other things.
As to whether it's the standard Canadian culture, I'd say from personal experience and what I've seen with friends/family it is more common in the crown corps and tech oligopolies (i.e., Bell, Telus). So when you say Top 5, I'm not surprised the manager did this and got away with it.
That, and I know I'll be accused of Québec bashing, but when a company in Montreal is franco-dominated, there is a tendency to be, let's call it nepotistic, so that a member of the "family" calls the shots for the "outsiders", regardless of ability, understanding or basic competence. It's not always been my experience and the top companies don't do it but, it definitely happens more than it should. Especially those doing work for the provincial government or directly with schools/healthcare facilities.
Source: the child of Mediterranean immigrants born and bred in Montreal, with experience in startups, SMEs and one of the Big Telcos
You owe nothing to that company, at the end of the day you're just one name in someone's Excel file, the whole "family at work" trend is something awful that should not have been born, so you better get out of that.
Good luck!
In any case, for your personal growth, it is helpful to understand why things have gone wrong between you and the manager (or the whole team).
One of your theories seems to be that the manager brought in a friend to boot you out. That would explain his behavior, but not that everyone else on the team is giving you the cold shoulder.
I am purely guessing at this point, and I don't want to offend you - but it is possible that you have upset the whole team. Either slowly through your behavior, or there was a meeting, or something else. This may have been fully unintentional by you, and you do not seem to be aware of it. For your next job, it'd be helpful for you to understand what has gone wrong!
Your text reads like you're not a native speaker? I'm not either ;) If you move between cultures, there may be things that are acceptable in your own culture, but not in the culture you moved to. E.g. the way to disagree or discuss things. Maybe that's the area where this misunderstanding has come from?
You could try to approach a team mate, or the manager, and ask openly about the situation. Tell them you sense something is wrong, you don't understand what you have done wrong, but you'd like to fix it.
What did I do? I continued to be the same top performer. I killed every task assigned to me and developed valuable IP in my spare time. I helped recruit and train new hires. I also wrote a very detailed email to my manager and exec team detailing my contribution, my vision for the next two years and my request for a significant raise. At the same time, I updated my resume and LinkedIn profile. I low-key began posting about my side projects and researching other positions in my career progression path.
After some time, my management team came back with a minimal raise - a token amount - and a promise to review it again in the new year. Concurrently, I was crushing my interviews at another firm and quickly received an offer for a position well-suited to my skills and interests at approximately 75% more than my previous salary. The new equity package is also a significant improvement. I accepted the offer, and now I'm crushing it for someone else.
I harbor no hard feelings against my previous employer - how they were operating wasn't personal, just business. Likewise, I'm sure they appreciate that my leaving wasn't personal, just business.
- Never stop 1:1s without explanation.
- Never stop 1:1s without transition. Every employee needs continual 1:1 meeting time. This is for them, not for you.
- Directly communicate about changes like the ones mentioned here. The information vacuum will be filled: any info you leave out will be created with gossip / assumptions.
>This is top 5 tech companies in Canada.
Choose one. No top 5 tech company would ignore a golden hen, and if they do, they will certainly feel it when you are gone. If your replacement is "up to speed" doing everything you were doing after a short training period - then this also waters down your claims of the above. I would honestly get an interview with a recruiter and see where you land on the engineer spectrum.
Top engineers in any organization that size will be known to management.
Some thoughts: Maybe your salary was very high when you came on originally? Did you negotiate it up a lot? Is your compensation equity-based and that part has picked up a lot vs your salary? In all big companies, there is an annual raise that corresponds to inflation - this is almost mandated at all companies so unless you had a sub-par performance review OR your comp package included something other than salary - it would be almost unheard of to have a salary frozen for 3 years, given even benchmark inflation was very high last year.
There are definitely some things not lining up here but giving you the benefit of the doubt:
Interview at the 4 bigger tech companies and see what you can get for an offer. If you get an offer, you use that as leverage to get a raise at your current job - or you take it. If you don't get an offer, then you stay put and have a meeting with your manager first, and if nothing comes of it or if you get blown off, then have a meeting with HR without your manager present. If neither of those things work, you can always adjust your output accordingly (9-5 mindset) since there seems to be no difference between high output and average for your role.
I raised concerns about my stagnation and brought up issues with the team and also confronted about the new team members getting personally trained on the product by me without showing me a roadmap for myself to get to the next level. He was acting smart i felt, and then eventually decided to move on.
Once i quit, i was offered ridiculous sums of money to withdraw my resignation however, i didn't accept the counter offer and left the place. Post my resignation, a lot of people resigned from that team, and subsequently that manager was fired (i came to know after i had left the org).
Schedule a 1:1 with you manager. Don't reveal the agenda, but be polite and just say you want to discuss some things.
During the meeting get the answers to your questions. This time you can be direct (but still polite). If your manager is beating around the bush / sugar coating, your initial senses were probably right.
>My salary has been the same from the day I joined in 2019.
Have you not pushed for one at all? If you don't even get an inflationary raise, you shouldn't stay for one year, let alone three.
It's easy to sacrifice one's happiness in an effort to validate one's effort. I saw myself becoming a cancer and also recognized that I had done all I could to to course correct and the organization has moved on, so it was time for me to move on too.
Don't be somewhere that doesn't want you. Breaking up is hard, but if the relationship isn't working it's best for all parties.
Bonne chance, mon gar.
Something doesn't add up here, it seems like hot-shit-new-grad-itis. Where you throw yourself in a role as a relatively junior person and wildly overperform, but then over time you slow down the unsustainable pace, and people have higher expectations, and you just begin to meet expectations instead of wildly exceeding them. It seems really common in people for whom programming comes naturally.
So... it sucks to be in your position, but... it will happen again. It sucks to miss the benefits of working in the same place for a long time, but it also sucks to have a toxic environment to work in.
One thing I never tried in my career is to start my own business. I'm too afraid and repulsed by the need to do accounting, beg for sponsorship and deal with people in general. But, that's me. Many people seem to like that, or at least not to mind it as much. I'm mentioning this as just one more option on the menu, not the solution to your situation. One thing I'm sure of: the more I was my own boss (i.e. progressing towards the management), the less I had to worry about the kind of interactions you are facing. It never goes away, of course, but the most petty and vengeful people are somehow always the lowest level of management in any organization. It gets better if you are just a grunt or the more you progress up the hierarchy, especially in big corporations where nobody really cares about much the higher up in the hierarchy they are.
The feedback you won't like is that it's partially self inflicted. If you change company and combine working very hard with looking like you're happy with a pay cut each year (inflation is a thing) again, you'll be exploited again.
1. Immediately expressed disappointment and asked for an explanation of why you didn't receive a raise despite the feedback. They're probably not going to give you a raise at that point, but it makes clear that you're unhappy and comp adjustments are important to you. That way when they're making comp decisions at the next cycle, they can intuit that there will be consequences if they don't give you a raise.
2. ~6 months before the next comp adjustment cycle, remind your manager that you were disappointed not to have a raise last time, you've continued to outperform your peers, and it's extremely important to you to receive a significant raise in the upcoming cycle to feel valued by the company. Repeat this speech once review time starts.
After not getting a raise for two cycles (whether you took the above two steps or not), you get a new job. Why are you sticking around at a place that doesn't treat you well when you're a high-performing employee with an in-demand skillset? They're treating you poorly because you allow them to treat you poorly while still getting the work they need from you. You have to advocate for yourself in your career (and the rest of your life). You're asking how to handle this situation best, but it's honestly obvious - you know what you want, so go ask for it, and if you don't get it, go somewhere else where you can get it. You don't need advice on what to do, you just need to go stick up for yourself.
Job hoppers earn a lot more, over time. It sounds like it’s time to go. Perhaps there’s another department you could move to, as well? Otherwise, time to spend a weekend or two on Leetcode and then wrangle up some interviews.
I suspect something else is going on here, and without further details, I have to assume that leaving to a higher-paying job would be best for you.
As others have said, your best option is to do two things at once: look around, and voice your concerns. You clearly don't like the environment; even in this market, there are lots of other options; why not explore those options? Reach out to friends, ex-colleagues, whatever.
In the meantime, make it clear that you feel unsupported and unrecognised, and that these are dealbreakers for you if not fixed quickly and decisively. If your manager doesn't listen, set up a skip-level meeting. If your skip-level doesn't listen, well, that's an even better sign that you should be planning your exit. If either of them do listen, you have a strong chance of either a) getting a raise and renewed support or b) understanding the situation better (which, though it doesn't always solve the situation, can remove some stress / toxicity from it.)
If you feel you deserve the lead role, say that directly! Provide evidence to support your position - not just technical things you've built / shipped, but also (especially?) anything where you've helped organise work for others, or communicated changes outwards, or worked with Product / Design effectively, etc.
As a small counterpoint: if you feel that you've been doing an extraordinary amount of effort, and they just cut a bunch of people, it may be that the team does need an extra person! No one should be in the position of needing to put in extraordinary effort for 3 years. For the vast majority of people, that leads to burnout; this is especially true in the stressful environment of mass layoffs, where people are often asked to do extra work to cover for their coworkers who were fired.
> Last year when performance review meeting happened just like every other year, I was told that you are the best engineer in the whole organization. For these years, I have not got a single dollar raise or promotion.
Don't stay at a place that isn't interested in keeping your pay in line with inflation. Unless you can reduce your work output to match. Effectively, this was a reduction in salary.
> I am a nice person
Was this happening: Did you make an "invisible deal" where you do X and magically expect Y to happen without an explicit agreement? It can work sometimes, but it depends on people other than you to be nice, and if you haven't empirically confirmed that, then you'll probably just be taken advantage of.
It sounds like you did confirm that, but then things changed. That's not your fault, but it does happen.
> I put an extraordinary amount of work effort in the company for 3 years. I
Don't work for free anymore.
The get the heck out of there and find somewhere that is willing to treat you with more respect.
It was fucking horrible. Tell them how you feel about the situation. Start looking elsewhere.
There's no need to over-analyze or justify it either. Get a 20% minimum bump by switching employers, like every other person here would do.
But in the same time I also have been in situation where I hated a manager from another division who was clear he wanted to take over my team. I did not manage those emotions well enough, and they were easy to exploit. Also the fact that the guy was having regular evening phone calls with people from my team, led to creation of very toxic situation. People can be very methodic when they really want to achieve something, in such situation you are either more methodic or you submit to the situation. In such situation a lot depends on who you can talk to in your workplace and what is their position in hierarchy.
I'd advice you calm down and make a mental work of decoupling your life at work from emotions you experience. Make yourself a list of priorities that you want to achieve and work towards achieving them in a well planned way. If making more money is one of them then you need to have plan B which you can fall back if/when you don't get that in your current place. If having nice environment at work is another item on your list then you want to work around your emotions/ambitions or jump to another company.
I personally would start making moves to leave as soon as I was asked to train my replacement. But again the situation is probably a bit more complicated than you think it is - or maybe it is not? :)
Good luck.
You haven't explained what you'd like to see change. What are you after exactly? A raise? Higher social standing within the company?
When you know what you want to change, you'll be in a position to consider how feasible that change will be based on your 3 years of experience at the company.
If your desired changes are not feasible, I'd say find another position immediately.
Actually, I'd suggest doing that regardless of how feasible the changes will be. It's a lot easier to negotiate with another job offer on the table. If you can't find another offer, then you may have to re-evaluate your asks.
IMO: talking to him about the situation is a mistake and may force his hand. You’ll be out on a PIP and setup to fail.
Line up another job - then talk to your manager.
Don’t burn any bridges with the current company. No point trying to get petty revenge on your current manager. You’ve just found a better opportunity and can’t turn it down.
I hate (have experience this myself) when instead of compensation for hard work, you receive fairly empty praise like "you're the best engineer we have". If I am, please pay me accordingly. This doesn't mean jumping you to principal engineer or anything, but it does mean to at least give you a raise. No raise or promotion in those three high performing years as their described best engineer seems absurd. In a lot of places, you need to vouch for yourself and maybe this is one of those places. You're the only person that's going to prioritize yourself.
I'd definitely sit down with you boss and tell him how you feel (write notes before hand) and be honest with them. Honestly, I'd start passively looking for jobs now. If things work out with your current employer, you can always still stay, but this will give you a jump start and an idea of your market worth.
I really wish you the best of luck. Worst case, I'm sure you'll be able to find another position that will compensate you appropriately.
Prompt: Read the following diary entry from a worker. Write an email he could send to his manager outlining his concerns. The goal of the email is to create a productive path forward for the employee to continue in their job while feeling like they are appropriately compensated and fully engaged.
Results:
Subject: Request for a meeting to discuss my concerns about my current situation
Dear [Manager's Name],
I hope this email finds you well. I would like to request a meeting with you to discuss my current situation and concerns at the company.
As you are aware, I have been with the company for the past three years and have consistently given my best effort in my work. In our performance review meeting last year, I was told that I am the best engineer in the organization. Despite this recognition, I have not received any raises or promotions in the past three years and my salary has remained the same since my joining in 2019.
Recently, there was an addition of another engineer to our team, who was brought on during the mass layoffs. I understand that this person has a prior relationship with you, which may be that of a friend. Despite there being no requirement for another engineer, I took it upon myself to train this person to bring them up to speed. However, since this person has learned all that I know, I have noticed a change in the behavior of my manager towards me and a lack of communication in our 1:1 meetings. Additionally, this person who I trained has now been assigned a lead role and is giving me directions. This whole situation has become toxic for me and is affecting my work satisfaction.
I believe that it is important for me to feel appropriately compensated and engaged in my work. I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss this matter with you and find a productive path forward.
Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing back from you.
Best regards, [Your Name]
I had a similar experience. New guy came in. Was not as good of a developer, got less done, but manager liked him better. I complained, and got more pay while other guy got promotion. I was better at getting shit done, new guy was better at communicating, plain and simple, and manager liked that better. Story of my life.
> For these years, I have not got a single dollar raise or promotion.
Actions speak louder than words and it is your own fault for accepting this. Find a new job and get a big raise.
You should be preparing to find another job asap. There’s no reason to be staying in a situation like this.
I wanna address this point. Even amazing companies will have shitty teams and managers. Conversely, companies with generally toxic reputations (like Amazon) will have amazing teams. Also: many startups kinda have to have a good culture since they lack the means to compensate you as well as bigger firms.
All of this to say: humans are very loss averse. There will be better/worse teams everywhere. Try to invest some effort into finding one that works for you.
just because its a top company, doesnt mean it treats ALL its employees better than other companies... Each team is usually a microcosm which runs itself as youve witnessed. The same applies elsewhere, a non-fortune500 company can have great teams and culture. It doesnt need an office slide or a professional chef to be a strong culture.
What do you want? Communicate that, clearly and without making them wrong.
Better if you can understand what your boss and company are wanting to accomplish and avoid, and then showing them that the most direct way to get that is by giving you what you want.
I've had managers who strong me along before, it often happens because they perceive you as unable to move to the next level for valid or invalid reasons. It makes their job easier to tell you what you want to hear.
What do you mean is "hasn't happened"? You didn't ask for it? Or your manager ignored your requests for several months?
If it's the former you should grow some balls and ask for one, if it's the latter you should GTFO right now
People don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers.
Aside from that, this doesn't sound surprising to me. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I've seen similar stuff over my 10 years working for a company that markets itself as a place that cares.
> I am getting cold shoulder treatment from everyone else on team
But the above paints another.
Is there some reason the whole team would change in unison towards you that is related to your manager?
1. No one is going to advocate for your interests other than you;
2. How hard you work doesn't matter. It may even be detrimental. What matters is how your work is perceived. Hopefully that correlates with adding value to the business (and you should be able to quantify that) but that's not necessarily true; and
3. Listen to the money. Words cost nothing.
Big companies are political. You will often find you get the best results merely ingratiating yourself with various key people and talking a lot about how hard your job is and how amazing the things you've done are.
Even bringing up problems to your manager can hurt you. Often you won't be rewarded for foreseeing a problem. You'll be punished for being negative. Your manager may simply not be talking to you because you (in their mind) "create" problems.
Let me put another way: if you anticipate a problem and fixes it before it becomes a problem there's a good chance you'll get absolutely zero credit for it. But if things blow up spectacularly and you come in and save the day? Well, you're hte hero.
As for your manager bringing in a friend. It might be a friend. More likely (IME) is it's someone your manager has simply decided they like. They may like them because the new engineer doesn't "create" problems. It could be as simple as some common background (eg same college) or it could just be vibes.
As for being told you are the "best engineer", words cost nothing. If that praise doesn't translate into some kind of reward (eg promotion or direct compensation) it means exactly nothing. You will find a lot of managers wil learn who can be assuaged with words.
Listen to the money.
As for getting the "cold shoulder" treatment, it could be that the rest of your team can see which way the wind is blowing and don't want to get on your manager's bad side. A lot of work life is simply currying favor. But you need to take a good, hard look at how you conduct yourself at work. Why? Because it could be that they just don't like you.
The reasons for this can be (and often are) completely superficial. Maybe they view you as negative. Maybe you don't know how to carry a conversation. Maybe you don't ask them about themselves. Maybe you one-up them. Who knows?
Engineers tend to be more introverted and less socially skilled on the whole than the general population (IME). Learning social skills and learning how to be liked will take you so far in life. I cannot overstate this. Being liked can be the difference between "failing to deliver" and "trying hard against impossible odds with learnings that we take to future projects" for the exact same set of facts.
Are you overly sexist? Bitchy? Difficult?
If not use your time to find something better! You probably can't win this game.
One thing you could try: ask everyone on your team in private what you could do to be better.
Perhaps this might shine up something.