Episode 538: toxic manager or low impact project and over-staffed?

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p>

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<p>Thank you for this podcast it’s the only tech podcast I listen to these days, I think it’s more relevant than ever, and it has definitely helped me in my career.</p>

<p>I am a Staff Software Engineer in a multi-national software company based in Germany (Where I’m also based). I have been working on a very important project that’s pretty visible and has the potential to make a ton of money, I have been very happy working on it.</p>

<p>Recently however, I got into a politically weird situation, a recent restructuring moved this project under a new manager. I don’t really get a long with the new manager. This person is known for being toxic, a colleague heard him recently say that everyone working with him is stupid, but when talking to him I don’t exactly remember him saying anything bright tbh.</p>

<p>In my initial conversations with him, he told me that I don’t have a chance for any career progress working in his team, and that I wouldn’t have much freedom either, he would like to be the final word on pretty much anything.</p>

<p>So I decided to speak to his supervisor, who directly ignored my complains and offered me to move to a different team. I accepted the change since for me working with a bad manager is the worst thing that can happen. The new manager is good, but the product is quite niche and rarely get’s mentioned anywhere, and it has a very few customers</p>

<p>I’m concerned about where my career is heading, since what I’m working on seems quite unimportant, I’m afraid the company could decide to drop this product at any point and fire the team (that can also happen in Germany these days btw, it just costs them a bit more severance)</p>

<p>what would you do in my situation? would you try to seek a different opportunity internally, externally or just wait? Thank you in advance!</p>

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