Chipress

Most people only realize the manager is toxic after on-boarding, when the switching costs are too high. They did not realize, toxic managers often reveal themselves during the interview process, if they know what to ask and what to look for.

Patterns of Toxic Managers

The most common type of toxic managers looks like this:

1. During project planning, they do not provide clear requirements
2. During project execution, the scope of the work constantly changing but the deadlines are not
3. During project review, you often hear “You need to take the ownership and be more proactive” or “You should have raised this earlier”. When you ask what you should have done differently or what the expectations are, you never get clear answers

This type of managers are particularly dangerous for interns or new grads, since they do not yet have a sense of “normal” expectations or experience of “decoding” vague feedback.

What actually happens is:

1. Responsibility is unclear upfront
2. Accountability is enforced afterwards
3. Feedback stays vague for the managers to keep control

Another type of toxic managers claim they are being hands-on or supportive, yet in reality, they micro-manage:

1. They will tell you exactly how to write code
2. They will dictate implementation choices
3. They treat your decisions as risky
4. They treat their decisions as automatically safe

For interns or new grads, this is devastating, since you do not get to build judgement or ownership, and you never learn how decisions are made. When something goes wrong, you are often blamed for outcomes you did not control.

How to Spot Toxic Managers

During the interview process, you should ask hiring managers questions like:

1. What would make a new hire fail at this role in 6 months?
2. How do you make sure performance is fair across engineers?
3. Is there a time when you had to push back on leadership for your team?

You need to make judgement for their answers. The more concrete the answers, the lower toxicity; the more abstract the answers, the higher risk for you as a future team member. Good managers should clearly explain what they expect, how they provide guidance, and how they share responsibilities when things go wrong.