So let’s say you’re a software engineer on a backend team of 10. Your team’s product is glue that holds several systems together, allowing incoming data to be used in reporting, so there’s a lot of team dependencies from external teams to support new functionalities. Additionally, your team has had a mandate for a while to rewrite the systems you own using more modern processes like Kafka. And of course, there are product asks to add X new feature and there’s always bugs to fix and maintenance to do.

Your team has had a fair amount of churn in the past two years, going through 3 managers and several engineers. It’s hard to get any sort of advancement in that environment. By the time the yearly compensation cycle comes around, the newest manager has been around for a month or two. According to the top members of the org chart, this year you’ll one of three options:

  • 0% raise if you’re a bottom 10% contributor
  • 4% if you’re 10-90%
  • 8% if you’re at the top

Teams with more stability seem to be following that guidance. You are your manager’s go-to. You get 2%. The rest of your team, as far as you can tell, get similarly poor results or worse.

A team member, we’ll call them Octavian, has requested transfer to a related front-end team, but is passed up. Later, your latest manager comes to you and asks about Octavian’s performance: “For this design doc, would you say Octavian was a co-author, a commentor, or a brainstormer?”. When you ask why they need that info, the manager is vague and evasive. You believe they will be using whatever you say as evidence against Octavian.

In general, Octavian’s a pretty good engineer. Most people on the team are.

So, what do you do?


Option 0: Tell the truth

Octavian didn't really do too much on the design doc in question, so just say that. This is the honest answer and the most beneficial to management, but perhaps not the best play for the health of the team. Do you think management is always right? Do you not like Octavian (or at least not like them enough to lie for them)? This one's for you.

Option 1: A little lie

Octavian's a pretty good engineer and the team would be worse off without him. So you lie a bit and say that the doc was a collaborative effort.

This would be a better idea if you...

Option 2: Bring the affected party in on the lie

Tell Octavian about the question posed to you by the manager and let them know what your response is. You could also bring Octavian and get their opinion on the matter and listen to their thoughts.

Option 3: Resign

This may seem drastic, but you're in a high-demand field, so finding a new job probably wouldn't be too difficult. You've gotten comparitively pittance raises the two years you've been here, there's been no possibility for advancement on the team you've been on due to the churn, and the RSUs you were given on hiring are worth less than a quarter of their initial value.

But the market has been cooling recently with all the big tech layoffs and the talks of the economy. They've not hit your company, but the bottom 10% no-raise sure felt like a soft layoff when it was announced.

Resigning could send a message, depending on what you say in your exit interview, but there's no gaurantees that it would help your team mates. Plenty of people have left the team already just to be replaced with no changes. It would get you out though.

Option 4: Something else?

There are probably lots of other options, but these were the ones I thought of.



Option 2 is possibly the most interesting to me though in that it’s creating what could be seen as an impromtu union, if just for a limited time. If you actually believe in the product, simply feel that the person is being wrongly targeted, or are just frustrated with the way management has been treating your team, this seems like a great way to go. There’s no need for over formality in it’s inception either, simply be open with your coworkers about what management is asking of you, especially if it appears to be at the expense of one of your own.

There are downsides to this approach. Companies, especially in the US, typically don’t like their employees banding together like this, so be wary of consequences if you are found out. To minimize this, you should probably do any such organizing using non-company communications, such as Discord, Signal, Whatsapp, or whatever your favorite message sending service may be.

But I’m not a pro at this, so maybe don’t listen to me.