I have always worked in a small startup environment and maybe I'm just lucky but I feel like it is harder to be toxic to each other when we know that we need each other.
I'm interested to know how to approach this situation though, because I can talk big but in the end unless I am put in this situation I would not know how I react, despite knowing better.
I just got out of a helpdesk job at a small startup, and it was a nightmare. I was there for a year (I was stuck in rural AL at the time & had literally no other options). I put on 90lb in one year from stress eating. 2 people hired after me quit within a few months. I spent the entire time being set up to fail, then humiliated when I inevitably failed. They didn't maintain their KB, so the KB contained a mixture of true and false information in almost every article. As the new guy, I had no way of knowing which was which. If I asked one of the senior staff, they'd bite my head off & tell me to use the KB. If I didn't ask, and screwed up, I'd get humiliated by the VP. On more than one occasion, I was actually reprimanded for following the instructions in the knowledge base.
The company was less than a dozen people, but the problem was one that I've seen before. Often, the worst person on a team is the senior tech and manager's pet who has been there forever.
I wish that I could say this to all managers: If you've got one or two loyal people who have been with your department for years, and you just can't retain new people, you might have a bullying problem.
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I have always worked in a small startup environment and maybe I'm just lucky but I feel like it is harder to be toxic to each other when we know that we need each other.
I'm interested to know how to approach this situation though, because I can talk big but in the end unless I am put in this situation I would not know how I react, despite knowing better.
Can second that.
I just got out of a helpdesk job at a small startup, and it was a nightmare. I was there for a year (I was stuck in rural AL at the time & had literally no other options). I put on 90lb in one year from stress eating. 2 people hired after me quit within a few months. I spent the entire time being set up to fail, then humiliated when I inevitably failed. They didn't maintain their KB, so the KB contained a mixture of true and false information in almost every article. As the new guy, I had no way of knowing which was which. If I asked one of the senior staff, they'd bite my head off & tell me to use the KB. If I didn't ask, and screwed up, I'd get humiliated by the VP. On more than one occasion, I was actually reprimanded for following the instructions in the knowledge base.
The company was less than a dozen people, but the problem was one that I've seen before. Often, the worst person on a team is the senior tech and manager's pet who has been there forever.
I wish that I could say this to all managers: If you've got one or two loyal people who have been with your department for years, and you just can't retain new people, you might have a bullying problem.