Difficult to Manage
After not getting the promotions I was promised in my previous two companies, I was excited to have joined GetYourGuide as a Data Science Manager in January 2022.
It was a difficult environment to join, the expectations were high and this was communicated to me on a daily basis by my manager. The job started remotely and I was responsible for building my team from scratch, from setting up processes, onboarding new joiners while myself having been in the company only for 3 weeks, figuring out the yearly roadmap to establishing ourselves within the company. I only met my team members 4 months later for the first time in person, same with my own manager and other colleagues. It was at that time I started getting routinely mistaken for the Associate Data Scientist that had also joined our team recently as I had no Slack handle to protect me from assumptions.
The planning for the role was badly thought out, maybe even purposefully as my manager had the same learning from our sister team - that it could not function without a product manager. We were the only product team without one in all of engineering, even though our name would suggest otherwise; Growth Data Products. We also didn’t limit our collaborations to the Growth department as the name again would suggest, but ended up supporting multiple domains in the company. We were a unique team in that regard, the only generalist data science team. It was not only my job to functionally lead the team and mentor them, but also do the full time job of a product manager on a daily basis. I was overworked from day one, with things deteriorating over the course of spring and summer, as I do have family and friends that wanted to also spend time with me, and not just watch me work nights and weekends. At the heights of it, I focused the blame inward, I was trapped in self-feeding depressive thoughts and internalizing my burnout to be due to my own failures.
When our team got complimented in Q3 for our outstanding performance by the CPO, my manager suggested it was due to “luck and great timing”, and I gladly accepted his assessment of the situation as I was so deeply trapped by my deteriorating mental health; forgetting all the late night shifts I pulled and all the Sundays worked to get us there. I started taking antidepressants, again to fix myself as I wasn’t able to zoom out and see the situation for what it really was. I was constantly sick, maybe because we had been isolated from germs for the prior 2 years but maybe also because my immune system was weakened by my fragile state of mind. I was also constantly working while sick. When I would ask my manager to cover for me in those situations, I was being dismissed as he had other commitments (the commitments being a voluntary Customer Care rotation for example). I would end up showing up for meetings and do my presentations with a 39 degree fever, and even worse apologizing to my colleagues for looking like sh*t. When I finally had the courage to speak up about me being overworked I was greeted with suggestions to reduce my 1:1 times with my team, and not much more. Well I did that, it ended up with me having to jump on unscheduled calls with my team as we didn’t have the time to address all topics in the allocated slot. That in fact turned out to be even worse as now I didn’t even have the calendar evidence of how much of my time was spent on meetings. When I was raising attention to the fact that I was oftentimes excluded on decisions directly affecting my team by my manager, he would paint a different reality, making me question my judgments even more.
In summer we started plans on growing the team and splitting it into two domains, Supply and Growth. I suggested we hire a Product Manager instead of another Data Science Manager that I would have to onboard (meaning even more overtime for me) and keep the team intact. My suggestion was not considered as senior leadership believed to know better what my team needed than my team and I who were living and breathing the work. I was kept quiet by empty promises that hiring a PM was the first priority in Engineering, this promise never materialized and I was still working while physically and mentally ill. They even had the audacity to suggest I ask some other PMs for help, basically telling me to manage yet another person on top of being the culprit to increasing my colleagues' already high workload. I was not willing to do that. Things culminated in December shortly before my planned vacation. I saw something on a team members screen that upset me deeply and made me spiral deep into depression. This event also triggered the avalanche yet to come.
I immediately went on sick leave and spent a week just crying on my couch, trying to get it all out before visiting my family for Christmas. I was determined to quit as soon as my holiday was over; New Year, new me. I prepared a speech, a farewell speech. I rehearsed it and reread it at least 50 times and I felt I said what I needed to say in order to heal and I had planned on reading it out to my team as soon as everyone was back, the second week of January. In my 1:1 I informed my manager I would be resigning at the end of the month in the first week of January. I did so to give him and the company plenty of time to find a replacement. I was trying my best to not put anyone in a difficult spot. I had my psychiatrist assessment suggesting I go on sick leave for the rest of my notice period, but I went against it, I wanted to see things through and leave my team in the best possible place behind. I cried a lot in that meeting.How did my manager react? With no acknowledgement of my emotional state my people leader only asked me what the transition plan is for the next 4 months. No thank you for your contributions. No nothing. His response shocked and sobered me up to such an extent that I just stopped crying immediately and talked about my envisioned timeline (when I mentioned this to him in one of our follow up meetings he just sarcastically thanked me for my work once leaving the meeting room). The day before the team meeting I shared the farewell speech (hosted on my private google account) with my manager in what I now believe was an attempt to make myself finally heard. One part of that speech goes as follows:
“To digress a bit, I am a feminist. I care about women in management positions and I don’t want us to be there by being exactly like the stereotype of a tall alpha male manager - but by being different and walking our own walk; even if that means I show emotions and tell people they hurt me if they talk to me a certain way. Even if I am not taken seriously at times. I won’t compromise on that. I believe in honest and fair communication and that it’s ok to be vulnerable.“
He scheduled a follow up meeting in which he tried to convince me not to hold that speech as it supposedly “contains accusations against the company”. When trying to get to the bottom of it, he said my bit about being a “feminist was problematic”. I was just baffled, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; how could it possibly be problematic in today's day and age to call oneself a feminist, especially in tech, in a company putting in so much effort and money in hiring women?! We just couldn’t see eye to eye on that topic and I called him out for trying to censor me. The talk didn’t go anywhere so at one point I just bluntly asked whether he was forbidding me to hold the speech. His answer was “I’m not, but I’m asking you to reconsider”. I even thanked him in the end for allowing me to speak my truth and assured him my only intentions were to have a positive impact on the team
The next day, I read it out to my team. After an initial shock I was greeted with so much love and understanding that this goes down as the best day I’ve had in my journey with GYG. They all tried to convince me to stay in our 1:1s (which I had scheduled directly after with all 5 of them) and on our team lunch. I was again confused as to what to do as I did like my job, as well as my team and colleagues, I just wasn’t willing to sacrifice my relationships with my partner, friends and family any longer to keep it.
Later that day I had a meeting with my manager, he was clearly irritated, and immediately asked how it went. After I told him it evolved in the best possible manner he seemed even more upset. He told me I couldn’t keep changing my mind like that. And I kept telling him that I was just keeping him up to date in real time as things were progressing. In that meeting he also called me “difficult to manage.” I asked why, and the only thing he came up with was that farewell speech. I asked for examples not affected by recency bias so I could improve, he couldn’t think of anything. We again couldn’t see eye to eye, so I had to manage my manager, suggesting we meet up again EOW so we both have time to process things and make up our minds. We left it at that.
Same day we had a global update (long day I know) where the last ~10 minutes are reserved for Q&A from the employees. One of the people in the panel was our CPO. During the hackdays a couple of weeks prior some of my team members and 2 other teams in Engineering built a working demo that could be used to improve Search on GYG’s platform. I was really passionate about the topic as I was the one initiating this collaboration and I asked the CPO what we could do in order to see this through from a products perspective. He seemed to be open to it, suggested we talk after the Global Update and immediately after he scheduled a call with all people involved. Seems like a regular interaction you think? That’s what I thought, but this is the message I was greeted with the next morning by my people leader:
“What was that question Ivana? Why did you feel the need to escalate things instead of going through regular communication channels and processes?”
I was again startled. How could this man, after one year of knowing me, interpret malice into my passion? I was confused. Did I do something wrong? I went ahead and apologized to the CPO if I had in any way made the impression to have challenged his vision as that was not my intent. He told me not to worry about it as that was not how he interpreted things either. Only later I realized that it was probably my manager's ego that was hurt, as this was a topic he had tried to push with our sister team for years, to no avail. And now this loud Bosnian woman is “challenging his authority” and “going behind his back”. Our relationship was broken. I suggested we turn our EOW meeting into a mediation with HR. He accepted and informed me a people partner would be joining.
Friday comes, I go into the meeting room and they are already sitting there waiting for me. I proceed to sit down and open my laptop to go over my notes. I had 3 topics I wanted to iron out: 1) my manager only seeing the negative in me, not seeing my authenticity, integrity and fighting for my believes as the strengths they actually are, but seeing them as escalative. 2) my manager lacking empathy and warmth needed to be a good people manager and downplaying those qualities under the disguise of “wanting to keep things professional” and 3) my manager not giving me concrete examples on why he believed me to be “difficult to manage”. I’ve often heard the word “difficult” used when describing a woman or minority challenging the status quo. It’s a very well documented sexist dog whistle that I was aware he wouldn’t have the arguments to justify in a rational manner. I of course never got any closure on any of those topics.
The meeting got kicked off by my manager saying that “we are gathered here today because you already verbally resigned and we want to discuss next steps”. I turned to HR and informed her I was not here because of that, I was here for a mediation and proceeded to tell my side of the story. At one point I hear again, this time from her, “accusations against the company”. When trying to get some specifics, I get no answers, again the same vague statement that my stance on feminism is problematic. When asking whether I could read the speech to her so she can make her own judgment call, she informed me she already read it. I was shocked. I don’t know why I was being so naive but I did honestly believe he wouldn’t have shared it with anyone, let alone HR as it was a confidential diary entry shared via my private email account. Things started escalating slowly with them trying to intimidate me into “reaching a mutual understanding” - meaning I sing something that benefits them and me feeling ganged up on by 2 people claiming I had already verbally resigned and pushing me into making some decisions at gunpoint. It didn’t take long before I had a full blown panic attack after properly realizing what the hell they were actually trying to do to me. The panic attack was no reason for them to stop relentlessly speaking at me and intimidating me into resigning. Theyeven had the audacity to start touching me in order to calm me down. Needless to say, that was the last thing I needed.
The second I managed to calm myself a bit, I collected my stuff, informed them I’d be taking the afternoon off and fled. As I found refuge in another building and was in the middle of canceling my afternoon, I just got cut off from all internal communication channels. I never got my mediation meeting and I never got the opportunity to say goodbye to my team and colleagues. Mind you, this is all very illegal in Germany as I had not resigned or signed a resignation and they had yet to hand me my termination letter if they wanted to fire me. The harassment continued the following workday, where my boss started sending me emails on my personal account trying to once again rewrite history by claiming “he accepted my resignation”. He would continue to lie about just everything over the course of the following months, claiming “he had forbidden me from giving that speech” and I wasn’t “qualified for the Data Science Manager role”, the role I had successfully executed over the course of the last year. My job is now held by a man and the team got a part time PM to support him.
The infamous “mediation meeting” happened January the 13th, I got my termination letter “served” January the 23rd. No reasons stated. They probably wanted to make it seem like I was part of the operational cuts that happened in Engineering on January 24th where 15-19 other employees got terminated. In the following months, I got in touch with the executives of GYG hoping someone would be ready to hear my side of the story and that I was not automatically in the wrong because it’s a conflict with my manager. I tried talking to them about diversity of thought. No success. I was met with a wall of silence on all fronts. Both my boss and them were telling my colleagues they were “protecting my privacy”, insinuating I had done something terribly wrong. I will not dive into the details of the legal proceedings, but I will ask you this Johannes: Why didn’t anyone accept my invitation to talk? Do you believe me when I tell you that all of this could have been avoided if someone had treated me with a shred of decency just once in the past 4 months?
Thanks for sharing ♥️
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