We as a team are learning, our manager is moon lightning and faked their entire work experience. They cheated using AI during interview process to answer questions. They do not have fundamental idea of what team does. They do not know foundational technical stuff. Plus, always talks in condescending tone. Its getting he-l managing this at day wise level. How do you expose this?
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@fb Long winded just like a people leader. Well, to OP, if you are going to seek outside counsel, do it now while you have a paycheck. I was looking to go after these f**kers and best I could find was $400/hr. Without a paycheck, that's a bit spendy.
Maybe the best option is next group meeting with this manager, tell him/her to go f**k their ignorant selves and you'll be out of a job, but it feels good.
This is my 6th year at schwab and I've had 3 different Managers and Directors and none of them knew what our team was doing. We are a STS team of 6-10 people where 2 engineers do most work and the rest are just there to do minimal work with very little to no impact. This is very common in STS Teams where your higher ups have no clue what so ever and they are just Message Relays to some higher up manager who also has no clue. When my Manager and Director went on vacation for weeks our productivity increased we didn't waste time in useless meetings When some senior engineers went on Leave things came to a standstill but we did put in enough checks and balances to not break stuff in production and were willing to help if needed. So to your question I don't think Escalating this will help because its the same person in the hierarchy as your manager. Having said that plan your exit accordingly. Hope this helps.
Ask AI.
You should be having skip levels with your managing director. That is where you should report the issues. That is the point of those skip levels. If things don't get looked into there or you don't have them, then go to HR. I think...THINK...it would be the omsbudsman to report to if there were retaliation.
This may have been well intended, but it is terrible guidance.
The ombudsman and HR have no cause of action. Ombudsman, a third party attorney, is almost always a bad idea as they don’t have a singular requirement to represent you. HR never represents you. As a PL, my guidance is always to seek outside counsel for really big items - s-xual as--ult, EEOC. View the ombudsman as little more than bad implementation of a nice idea.
Take the claims - (1) used AI. Ok. Any evidence of this or prohibition against it? (Understand it su-ks and they appear unqualified, but that’s a supervisor assessment) (2) No idea of team function/tech. Ok. Not required. Management can be people level and results. It’s not good, but happens. (3) Condescending tone. Ok. So do I. Seriously, that’s unfortunate and makes team stress, but style and subjective language isn’t something HR will act on.
Skip level - Never go into a skip looking to criticize your direct lead. Either the skip already knows or it’s a surprise. When surprise it puts them on the defensive as it shows they aren’t paying attention or made a bad decision. If you take that advice, frame it as a single item and issue you would like help with.
Example. “I’m having problem with X and manager is not technical enough in X to help. I’ve gone to others on my team and looked online, but without success. Do you know someone in another group I might be able to discuss this with or another idea?” Frame it as positive to you, make damn sure you asked your manager for help and document that in your notes, and let the skip level come to the conclusion themselves.
You aren’t going to get a A->B result. Informing of A weakness doesn’t result in firing. Bluntly we are glacially slow to correct bad hiring.
Retaliation. Really hard to show and harder to parry. It’s called constructive discharge and usually involves a coaching memo and performance plan. We do them all the time. The best response is to have already documented everything. Reviews, conversations, Sendwords, accomplishments. Capture positive and negative. Once you get a memo the game is to explicitly respond and be deliberate in anything that could be actionable. Are you in a protected class? Are others treated the same? Are the demands legitimate? Your goal isn’t to stay. The goal is to have successful arbitration or legal standing to settle once you’re out the door. Don’t sign anything by the way.
You should be having skip levels with your managing director. That is where you should report the issues. That is the point of those skip levels. If things don't get looked into there or you don't have them, then go to HR. I think...THINK...it would be the omsbudsman to report to if there were retaliation.
I hope that you make more than your manager so don’t be offended they can’t do your job. As a “fintech” company we should know engineering output compounds.
Unlike management, technical work:
*Often scales across systems and users
*Can be reused, optimized, or turned into infrastructure that powers future growth
*Has long-tail impact on customer experience and revenue
A single technical decision can save millions or create entirely new capabilities
NOT PAYING the Leader more!
Your boss was not hired to do your same job period. Schwab would only go back in time if every leader did all of the roles they lead. The fastest moving companies keep seeing that and do not have people work their way up through the ranks.
My Previous Director and Manager bought like 6 people from their previous jobs. They had absolutely no clue the Director was let go in Oct last year along with a Product Manager who was also let go. Then my manager hired 2 more Product Managers from her previous job as contractors and they worked through their contract and one Product Manager took another job for year and came back as a contractor again for another 2 years. I have submitted many resumes of legit people with good problem solving skills and degrees from pretty good US universities and none of them were even considered. This should stop. Sadly the system is rigged. My team recently gave this feedback to our new Director and I don't think they will do anything. They are busy tracking badge metrics and that's all they talk about in 1:1s
Like a previous person said, they care more about work getting done than competency. My manager is utterly clueless when it comes to our work, couldn’t process the simplest request if their job depended on it. However, they’re a good enough leader and get along well with almost everyone
It’s frustrating sometimes to be “led” by someone who couldn’t do your job, but in my case, it’s better than a micromanager. My boss has been at the company for YEARS tho and has a decent reputation, yours sounds like a legit problem lol
HR is probably your only option, keeping in mind that you’re opening yourself up to retaliation for throwing someone under the bus (deservedly so or not). Legally, they can’t directly come after you for reporting them… but we all know there are ways around that. IMHO, I’d look at switching teams or jobs if it bothers you
Was the interview not in person or at least camera on - if so how did they use AI?
I think the best you can do is document everything and let it play out. Our boss’s boss, I’ve learned, are not particularly concerned about how they manage their teams - or their competencies, if the work is being done.
Good luck with that, sounds like almost every manager I ever had at Schwab.