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Man I really need to get this off my chest. So here goes.
I just finished 1 year in corporate after college. When I joined, the team I got was brilliant, more than what I thought I would get. About 6 months in, the project manager and lead dev left the company. Two replacements took their place, and life's been hell ever since.

The new PM decided it was his responsibility to be our spokesperson and started talking to our overseas manager (call her GM) on our behalf, even in the meetings where we were present, putting words in our mouth so that he's excellent and we get a bad rep.

1 month in, GM came to visit our location for a week. She was initially very friendly towards all of us. About halfway through the week, I realized that she had basically antagonized the entire old team members. Our responsibilities got redistributed and the work I was set to do was assigned to the new dev (call her NR).

Since then, I noticed GM started giving me the most difficult tasks and then criticizing my work extra hard, and the work NR was doing was praised no matter what. I didn't pay much attention to it at first, but lately the truth hit me hard. I found out a fault in NR's code and both PM and GM started saying that because I found it, it was my responsibility to fix it. I went through the buggy code for hours and fixed it. (NR didn't know how it worked, because she had it written by the lead dev and told everyone she wrote it).

I found out lately that NR and PM got the most hike, because they apparently "learnt" new tech (both of them got their work done by others and hogged the credit).They are the first in line to go onsite because they've been doing 'management work'. They'd complained to GM during her visit that we were not friendly towards them. And from that point on if anything went wrong, it would be my fault, because my component found it out (I should mention that my component mostly deals with the backend logic, so its pretty adept at finding code leaks).

What broke my patience is the fact that lately I worked my ass off to deliver some of the best code I'd written, but my GM said in front of the entire team that at this point "I'm just wasting money". She's been making a bad example out of me for some time, but this one took the cake. I had just delivered a promising result in a task in 1 week that couldn't be done by my PM in 4 weeks, and guess what? "It's not good enough". No thank you, no appreciation, nothing. Finally, I decided I'd had enough of it and started just doing tasks as I could. I'd do what they ask, but won't go above and beyond my way to make it perfect.

My PM realized this and then started pushing me harder. Two days back, I sent a mail to the team with GM in cc exposing a flaw in the code he had written, and no one bothered to reply (the issue was critical). When I asked him about it, he said "How can you expect me to reply so soon when it's already been told that when anything happens we should first resolve within the team and then add GM in the loop?" I realized it was indeed discussed, but the issue was extremely urgent, so I had asked everyone involved, and it portrayed him in a bad light. I could've fixed it, but I didn't because on the off chance if it broke something, they'd start telling me that I broke the tool, how its my fault and how its a critical issue I have to fix ASAP, etc. etc., you get the idea.

Can anyone give me some advice of how to deal with this kind of situation? I would have left but with this pandemic going on, market being scarce and the fact that I'm only experienced by 1 year, I don't think I qualify for a job switch just now.

Comments
  • 6
    Can't give advice on this too badly but have my upvote and good luck!
  • 2
    @linuxxx thanks fellow dev, really appreciate it!
  • 12
    You will have to take up office politics and get these people out. This will involve their superiors.
  • 2
    @Fast-Nop thank you for the advice!
  • 2
    Kind of drastic and bit of a quitter attitude, but perhaps a possibility in the distant future: become consultant/ contractor/ freelance. When the shit hits the fan, you just sit out the contract and leave. Unfortunately there's bad apples and enough blame to throw everywhere and as life goes on my bullshit tolerance level goes down. I've experienced similar situations in about 30% of projects Ive done (about 12). May the force be with you.
  • 5
    I'd suggest changing workplace when you have the chance and playing the office politics game
  • 9
    I am afraid you will have to stay low profile, you've been targeted.

    Don't complain, and just keep training on hackerank or similar to get better at interviews.

    Spend time preparing a portfolio, and just don't document much.

    The day you get a new job offer, resign straight away and never look back.

    Never say anything wrong about your current job, specially on interviews. After you are out, your life will become better, good luck!
  • 1
    Do nothing more then they expect from you and stay silent while looking for another job.
  • 11
    I think the root cause of your problem is that you think the way to be successful is to be recognized by your "superiors" and maybe get a promotion at work. It's not.

    If you change your mindset to @sergioe256 's, you will start working for yourself. Imagine that you are a smith in a medieval story. Stop thinking that your current employer is your master and you are their servant. They're your customer. You will have many throughout your career. When your customer buys a crappy piece of steel from your no-skill, scheming rival smith, don't spend all of your time trying to inform the whole village about what happened. That takes too much time, and will only make you seem like the desperate loser smith.

    Just keep working on your craft. Your customer will find out where the best deal is eventually, that's all they care about.

    If 2 smiths are competing and 1 is way, WAY better than the other, eventually the money will always end up with the better smith. I promise!
  • 10
    1. stop pulling thier ass out of the fire. Do not look for problems!
    2. ignore anything not on your plate. Wait until they come to you, with a documented ticket.
    3. after you have a ticket, make sure to ask for more info, from the idiots, via mail. Be proactive in the wording.
    4. wait a couple of days.
    5. request more info, on the same mail.
    6. Only then solve the problem, and push testing it back to the idiots.

    Do not behave as though you already know. You Are A Team Member.

    rinse, repeat. The gm should understand what is going on. If not, polish the CV, and GTFO.
  • 0
    Bail. Look for a new job every day. There’s way too much demand in this field to put up with this crap.
  • 0
    Get into a better team one way or another
  • 0
    Thanks, guys! I couldn't have been part of a better community :)
  • 0
    Dm me on t.me/uyouthe if you need help, we can polish your cv together and I can post it on my LinkedIn, all for free
  • 2
    You live in the software dev world. Just do some prep, update your resume, go do interviews and you’ll get a job. Since you are just out of college and still in your first job, they won’t/shouldn’t expect references. You are not stuck there.

    You’re a software developer, so you are in demand. You’re doing them a service by staying there. They are not doing you a service by employing you, it’s the other way around. I say start looking elsewhere. They will miss you when you are gone.
  • 0
    Follow @magicmirror's advice.
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