Yhyjyk

At my first job, I had the bad luck to get a manager that was, quite literally toxic.

This was to the point of him driving most of the team to quit.
In the three month I was there, he drove 5 people to quit (in a team composed of 12 persons), and was growing close to drive the rest of the team to quit.

To give a perspective of why he was toxic :

• Constantly undermining every one's work by saying thing like "I could have done it in one hour" or "That was really easy, don't be too proud of yourself"


• Constantly failing to meet deadlines, which resulted in everyone else (not him) to stay overtime to try and makes things right (We once had to wait 3 week, for a vital piece of information, and when he delivered it to us, we were one week behind the deadline).


• Berating the team for using their rights, such as overtime pay.

Now at the time I was lucky enough to have the possibility to leave without too much consequences. But a colleague there was not so lucky, as he needed this job to sustain his family.

This made me wonder, if there exists any method to, at the very least, mitigate the stress induced by this kind of manager ? When quitting is not an option, and you have to stick with the job ?

As suggested a little more precision on the situation :

This happened in France, in a region where the supply of software developer is far higher than the demand, and leaving your job can lead to several months of job hunting.

In France when you quit, it is harder to get monetary compensation than if you were let go.

Also, there was only two people above this manager, there had already been complaints made, but they did not do anything, because he had way too much responsibilities, and the company was basically tied to him, for better or for worse.

First of all, quitting is always an option. What would your colleague do if the company suddenly closed its doors? (This happens, and the employees are usually the last to see it coming).

Your colleague needs to stop making excuses and start job hunting for real. It may take a long time, but there are better jobs and non-toxic managers out there.

In the meantime, there are a couple of things your colleague can do:

Constantly undermining every one's work by saying thing like "I could have done it in one hour"

• Remember that this person is toxic and whatever comes out of their mouth is not relevant or meaningful. Stop caring about this manager's opinion.

Constantly failing to meet deadlines

• Keep a written log of what was promised, when, and by whom. When anything happens, log that as well (what, when, by whom). It's a major pain in the rear to do, but when the grand boss comes around looking for necks to choke it will not only protect you, it may shine some unwanted light on the toxic manager.

Berating the team for using their rights, such as overtime pay

• Same as above - keep a log about what was earned, paid, etc. and remember that the babbling of fools is best ignored as much as possible.


• If the colleague is paid hourly, then not receiving overtime pay is something to take up with HR or the union, if there is one. If the colleague is salaried and this is "comp time", then the right answer might be to stop working the overtime to begin with (so there's nothing to comp)

To reduce the stress: Stop caring. After 8 hours work a day, stop working. If the manager makes it hard to leave, stop working and get overtime pay without working. If he says “I could have done that in an hour” you say “of course you could” so he doesn’t see you getting upset (because that’s what he wants) while thinking to yourself what you actually think of him. Same if he says “that was really easy”, you say “absolutely, that was really easy, you could have done that in an hour”.

He knows what he is, and you know what he is, so make it clear without saying anything bad that you know and you don’t care. It’s only stress if you care.

The immature American way to deal with toxic people who you can't remove from your life, assuming you've already had a sit down with them and explained why their behavior is unacceptable, is to cut them down back.

For example, "I could have done that in an hour" should be answered with something like "You sure you're sober?" or "I'd like to see you try".

Refusing to pay for work should be met with "No money, no honey" and followed up by you not showing up to work the next day for whatever reason - probably sick time, it honestly doesn't matter if it gets approved or not because you're sending a message.

That piece of information you didn't get that put the entire team behind schedule should be something that the manager is never allowed to forget. Bring it up every time it might be relevant.

This is the wrong thing to do, but if you can't quit and really want things to work out, you're going to have to discipline your manager.

The professional thing to do is to document this behavior, send it to your managers superiors even though you know they won't do anything, and find another job. Look for a job while you still have one and then stop working with the toxic manager as soon as you get a new job. People like this are going to have a much bigger impact on your career than they have any right to if you keep working for them.