Signs You’re in a Toxic Workplace

Toxic workplaces are like poison in the bloodstream and are usually a result of multiple factors. Untrustworthy managers, underhanded co-workers, and burnout. These things affect everyone at the company, but most employees are unable to affect change to positively influence the environment because of the structure of the workplace.

Compliment in public, criticize in private.

This is a guideline for managers to effectively manage employees so that they both feel good about themselves and the work that they contribute to a team at work, but still, have guide rails from their manager on the expectations of their work and at work. It facilitates a growth-based strategy for helping employees do their best and feel good doing it.

In particular, it also prevents resentment towards managers, who are the primary form of contact and assistance in the tools an employee needs to do their job properly.

At a startup that I interned at, the CEO of the company berated me in the shared workspace of not just our company, but also others.

At the time, the roles were not clearly defined or communicated. As an intern, I did not yet have the experience to know nor was I taught that startup culture expects one individual to fulfill multiple roles across the company. Or the hierarchy.

After interning at the company for 3 months, a new hire was brought onboard. I was not informed that this new hire was a manager of a different team in Sales, or that I was expected to work as a full member of that team on top of being a software developer.

How can someone who is hired after me by my manager? If it was clearly defined, sure, I’ll listen to them. But the new manager whom I thought was another intern gave a lot of work that I was not brought on to do using technology I was not familiar with, nor expected to work with on a complex scale for the majority of my internship.

So I established my professional boundaries and said no I’m not doing this. It wasn’t what I was hired for and the purpose of the work was never communicated with me by managers or the CEO with whom I was familiar. Because I said no, I was punished by being publicly admonished in a shared lobby by the CEO of the company who, mind you, didn’t know about the software development aspect of the company I was brought on for, or the sales development that he tried to stick me with.

It was demoralizing because I was just an intern. I couldn’t imagine what full-time employees had to put up with because this was already at the end of my internship. During this heated interaction, another intern was sitting a few feet away from me and told me later that she had heard him. She was too afraid to say anything but I made up my mind that I wouldn't be working with the company at the same moment.

It wasn’t just because he dared to mistreat and disrespect an intern. It was the fact that he felt comfortable doing that in front of other people just because a young woman had the confidence to say no to a professional request within reason.

When he yelled at me in the lobby, I wasn’t given a chance to explain my side or ask for clarification. It was not a discussion. It was his voice and no others. Now when I talk to employees who have been on the team since I interned at the company, my experience has become a pattern across various employees and the co-founder. It has led to very low morale and negative mental health for the company as a whole.

A toxic workplace drops the ball when retaining hard-working and capable talent. It also ingratiates a fear-based strategy that runs on narcissistic management which burns out well-meaning employees who seek to fulfill a strong company mission. A toxic workplace is self-defeating and erodes the trust that is necessary for a healthy manager-managee relationship.

Toxicity in the workplace doesn’t come just from incompetent bosses disguising as leaders. It can also be seen in coworkers.

On a conference call at a different company, two colleagues went off on each other in a full-on screaming match. Each coworker attacked the other for an impossible business problem. It was a high-level system issue that needed a bunch of approvals and lots of waiting for a solution to be put in place. This required not just one person, one team, or even multiple teams. It required waiting time because archaic technology was being used.

The voice call had 30 people on it which was unnecessary in the first place. But with the altercation, now there were 30 other people on the same zoom call with the same WTF look on their faces. No, it was not a video conference, but I know that the wide-eyed, shell-shocked look on my face in my bedroom that doubled as an office that I sat in alone was reflected on everyone else’s face who was in the Zoom call too.

This verbal fight was never acknowledged or talked about amongst colleagues. There was never a breath of fresh air which was brought by a public discussion about why it happened or how to solve it going forward. The thing was, everyone in the call knew why it happened but no one had the power to solve it. Though we all knew that the higher-ups had the power to solve the root cause of why the fight occurred but wouldn’t. It wasn’t cost-effective.

The blowout happened because of severe burnout. Most people at the company were working multiple jobs and roles, in improbable circumstances. Technology was always failing (note: we were the engineering team). Communication always broke down. Teams straight out refused to help each other because everyone was so overburdened, but it also lead to increased work to teams that originally did not have the responsibility to make up for it.

When people have to work in improbable situations with other overworked and underpaid individuals, employees can't be positive towards their work, manager, and coworkers. It happens because management chooses to not see, and therefore solve, the problems of overwork and burnout in a workplace.

Toxicity is a top-down issue that junior, mid-level, and senior employees cannot fix. The only way this sort of problem can be solved is by management and C-suite executives. It is often forgotten that employees are humans too. We have limits to how much work we can do and a need for validation of how hard we work. When these things are violated, it causes us to react in negative ways and contribute to a cycle of toxicity in the workplace.