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by throw1230 1538 days ago
None of the feedback OP has given to HR has any substance. If you throw around heavy words like this, you better know how to back your words up.

- passive aggressive: This is a personal judgment. He was passive aggressive in what way? - excluded you from the team: How was he excluded? Was he not invited to events? Or did he not get good projects? If you are a temp with potential performance problems, it's normal that you don't get the cool projects. - code was awful: Again, is this a sentiment shared by other members of the team or is it just one junior engineer being super opinionated about something - long term maintainability: I don't think he was there for long - missing roadmap because poor design decisions: Again a junior opinion, running projects are complex with many different variables, you fail meeting deadlines for various reasons, there's never a single reason, and that reason is never "we had a bad piece of code written by one guy". I don't think OP has the historical context of that led to the that code.

When I hear all this feedback coming from a temp, all I hear is they weren't a team player, they don't know how to be diplomatic and most of the things they are saying are coming out of frustration and have no substance and is not actionable.

4 comments

> "- passive aggressive: This is a personal judgment... missing roadmap because poor design decisions: Again a junior opinion"

So you asked a Junior person for his opinion and you complain that you got Junior's opinion? What did you expect, to get a senior executive's opinion?

It's irrelevant if his opinions are incompetent - let's imagine he got fired for being an complete idiot. Then you asked for his opinion, and complain that it's an idiotic opinion. That means we have at least two idiots!

What in the world are these complains about negativity, is management entitled to love and loyalty from employees it fired? This sounds like a North-Korea style dictatorship, not a company.

If they are too daft to know that fired employees might provide negative feedback, or if their fragile egos can't handle it - that's their problem.

Let me make a parallel that might be clearer:

If someone comes up to me tells me I smell, that's kind of offensive.

But it if I go to someone and spesifically ask them 'do I smell', they might answer 'Yes'.

I don't get to complain that they are not a qualified perfumer, or their judgement is poor - I picked them, I asked them. And I certainly don't get to go around town telling everyone how they are a terrible person.

> This is a personal judgment. He was passive aggressive in what way?

It's an exit interview, so that is an excellent question for HR to ask.

> excluded you from the team: How was he excluded?

same as above.

> code was awful: Again, is this a sentiment shared by other members of the team or is it just one junior engineer being super opinionated about something

Something you can correlate with other feedback, and see if it gets mentioned repeatedly, or not.

...

But you straight out just always assume the most negative interpretation, and then come to the conclusion that your prejudice was confirmed, and support spreading that outside the company.

Yeah I've managed an assumption based on what I'm seeing here. That's all the data I have.

Similarly most everyone assumed that the manager went out of his way to talk shit about him. Managers don't go around and talk shit of their employees without getting prompted. If someone asks his manager "Hey I saw you worked with aroundtown, what was your experience like" you bet the answer is going to be crystal clear.

You are sealioning with all of these questions and accusations. This isn't a trial, aroundtown doesn't need to divulge all of the evidence in order to share their anecdote here. You've made an unfair judgement without knowing them or their boss.
I've made a judgment about the event with what I have read. I have no intention to bully anyone.

My point is clear, we are only reading one side of the story and I don't see an iota of maturity in the story he described. Therefore I also don't believe that his manager called everyone in the town to tell them not to hire him. We don't even know the feedback was sent out to his manager.

Maybe the other employers figured out on their own or maybe they asked his manager for a reference.

And again, this isn’t a trial and aroundtown doesn’t have to share all their evidence. Why not just take it as an anecdote and leave it? You’ve repeated this theme enough now that it sure seems like bullying. Would you just let it go?
I'm not even talking to him, most of my replies are to others who asked me a question or challenged what I said.

They don't have to share anything at all, but I'm free to talk about the parts I've read.

Even if all my judgment is correct, that doesn't mean anything. We all did hot-headed stuff, fucked around and found out.

I guess the main point is they were exit interviewed by the HR, but then the conversation was leaked to their direct manager. That's a no-no regardless of the OP was right in their accusations or not.