I was still a Software Engineer.
It all started with a code review.
I’d spent days working on a complex feature. Hundreds of lines of code, edge cases covered, performance tweaks in place. I was proud of it. I hit “Create Pull Request” and waited for feedback, expecting maybe a comment or two.
What I got back was brutal.
“Over-engineered. Too many moving parts. Refactor.”
That was it. No “nice work.” No “good attempt”. Just a hard stop.
I sat there, fuming. I thought, “Does this guy enjoy tearing people down?”
But this was just the beginning.
The manager who didn’t care about my feelings
He wasn’t like other leads I’d worked with.
No hand-holding. No fluff.
He rejected half-baked ideas without blinking.
He hated complexity for the sake of cleverness.
He cared about one thing: clean, maintainable, efficient code.
In sprint retros, he didn’t sugarcoat things. Missed a deadline? He’d say, “We scoped it wrong. Let’s fix it.” Built something that didn’t scale? “That’s tech debt. We can’t afford it.”
At f…