"If you don't like the tone, leave the chat." An engineer was outraged by a situation where his manager humiliated him in a work chat. Do other IT professionals often encounter something like this?

Daniel Kurka, Software Engineer

First, you need to try to put the person in their place directly. No, don’t contact the CEO. If he is not adequate, then money is the price for such a company. Don’t waste your time and quit. If you really respect yourself as a specialist.

Mykhailo Fashchevsky, Crypto & IT content writer

That moron would have already flown out the window, and if you are on a remote job, you always have to be able to stand up for yourself, regardless of what position someone has. This is work, not slavery. I have been working freelance for 3 years (with breaks for full-time work) and very often, clients who cross certain boundaries are with them very briefly. And for 5 years in a company, default — you invest a lot of resources in increasing your value in the company, and then the company takes advantage of the fact that you are dependent. The longer you are in the company and are afraid that you will be kicked out, the more the company will be impudent and use it.

Andriy Shvydkyi, PPC Specialist

Now there is a significant substitution of concepts, spinelessness has been replaced with soft skills, which is why they are not «filtered».

Look for another job.

Volodymyr Lutsenko, 2d artist at Gameloft

It seems to me that you need to talk to that person and put an end to the «it», you shouldn’t accumulate negativity. Conversation is the key to understanding and respect. If you are persistent and defend your position, if of course you believe that you are right, you will show the person that the accusations were useless. Especially if colleagues do not know how to react to such attacks, you need to teach everyone by personal example, but without negativity with compromises of course.

Artem Bohdan, Angular front end developer at Multimedia Nordic AS

Dismissal is the solution to the problem.

Andriy Voznyuk, Software developer

Alternatively, send the screenshots to the HR manager with a copy to the director. And the director will know what’s in the chat.

Alina Lukashevich, Junior PPC Specialist

It’s not enough to resign here. It would be fair to slap this CEO, lead or whoever. Regardless of the position, you need to «hold your horses», because after a while you will be the lead, but one of you will remain.

Iryna Lukysha, Data Science

Unfortunately, this is how it is, there were other people before. At such times I leave, believe me, there are a lot of people with whom you are on the same wavelength.

Pavlo Chebotyuk, System Engineer at Primer

Just accept the fact that moral deviants exist and project their complexes and shortcomings onto others. If possible, such people should be put in their place, because in general, many people in the IT field have been a little pissed off by the impunity of toxic behavior in recent years. Unfortunately, this became possible because there is now a trend to silence the excessive toxicity of some individuals and not react in any way. You made a post about it on LinkedIn — that’s something, I support it.

Evgenia Bereshchuk, Full-cycle Technical Recruiter

If this is a systemic problem that reproduces the corporate culture, and if this job does not have special value (for example, you gain some exceptional experience or benefits) for which it makes sense to endure — it may be time to look for a new employer.

If this is an unusual situation, it is worth discussing it with the HR/People partner. In an ideal world, if they are present in that chat, they should have already started communicating about this case.

Alyona Tsaryova, Engineering Manager

I had a very similar situation and more than once, when the top management changed in the company where I liked to work. Several times, I raised this topic with HR, several times I wanted to quit and escalated this problem again. But, when I had already made the decision that I could leave, that is, the fear of the unknown was no longer there, I decided to try a different strategy — to find out what was wrong with this manager, what was going on in his life, why he behaved this way at work.

Since we worked closely with him and had 1:1 sessions, I turned on my empathy and became interested in him and his life until I began to understand. And when you understand people, you can empathize with them and support them.

The very fact of this behavior continued to bother me, but I stopped emotionally immersing myself in this experience and instead looked on from the sidelines.

It so happened, in my case, that the manager lacked recognition and attention, when he received them and received them sincerely, the situation from incomprehensible turned into effective cooperation. Therefore, I believe that the main thing is to have several strategies, whether it is dismissal or testing approaches to a person. The main thing is to consider yourself not as a humiliated and vulnerable being, but as an experimenter in communication strategies.

Tatyana Kichkina, Business analyst

This is happening at every step now, especially unfortunately in Ukrainian companies. This tone and manner of communication is present. Plus dismissal without reason in one day and non-payment of wages. This is the case. I understand you very well and these situations are terrible and outrageous.

Taras Andriychuk, AP representative

There was a case when I witnessed a team leader openly humiliating and «suffocating» an employee who had been working on the project for several months, and in fact I came to his place. Later, I learned from the same employee that this had started long before his decision to leave, which, by the way, was connected with the behavior of this team leader. I decided that I did not belong in this team, since it had already spread to me before I had even started doing anything. Not all people who work well as a separate unit can lead a team well.

Marina, Software QA Engineer

I wasn’t treated like that specifically, but I was at a rally where they treated one engineer like that — they shouted obscene language at me. I quit my job after that because it was unpleasant to stay in the company.

Anna Yeschenko, Java Automation QA Engineer

One-to-one, HR, company policy, fortunately, I didn’t encounter this directly. But I once saw a colleague when the development team yelled at her for a bug that wasn’t a bug. I understand everything, maybe she wrote the wrong bug, but still.