I have been thinking about this recently. I had great experience working at a Client’s place (consulting) – but every aspect of that work was great. I was respected for who I am and encouraged to do anything that would align with Company’s ideal.
In contrast, I was reminded of a shitty experience I had in my previous job. When I thought more about it – I realized that in that scenario – my boss was just petty, close minded, probably racist and what’s most annoying is he always made me feel small. He would say things that were weird and his work style was always passive aggressive.
Of course he is human and prone to mistakes but now that I look back – his response to other employees in the team was not as the way he would respond to me. He had his favorite employee and also favorite go to person with everything. He was a good analyst but not a great manager. One of them who got promoted consistently because of his tenure at the company. He acted surprised time he got promoted.
But of all the things he did, the worst experience I feel I had was he made me feel really small. Like my ideas or thoughts didn’t matter. I switched roles from frontend dev to data knowing its going to be hard and he was ok with it, but never in those years was that he came by to help me out career wise. He was too much into his own world and his own life. Which is fair, but being a bad manager he was not clear enough to parse his own aspirations with his team members.
I see a pattern of what he did. Made me feel not belonging and just not appreciative. I worked hard to impress but it never worked. I was unhappy and after a long time quit the job because there was no growth in it as he was restricting any growth I can have.
The big lesson for me out of that is to be wary of people who make you feel small. The identifiers of that are – they never appreciate you, they think whatever you do, it was supposed to be done already, they have favorite team members and they lie to your face and never let you climb that ladder of growth and promotion. Oh also they act as if they are surprised that they got promoted, just out of no where accidentally.
It took me few years to understand this kind of abuse and now I feel like I can spot it and avoid those toxic people.
I am lucky to be part of my current company which has consistently put me in projects where I am seen, recognized for my skills and appreciated for what bring in as value.
Please avoid the the toxic people who make you feel bad. Life is short.
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