Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?

Assertiveness and Using Authority

• Many argue the lead should stop treating decisions as suggestions. If a post‑mortem or process change is needed, simply decide and schedule it, not “float” it.
• Suggested tactics: be consistently “no”-driven with bad ideas, have prepared one‑liners to deflect derailment, and clearly state “we’re doing X” rather than negotiating.
• Some advocate publicly calling out disrespectful behavior; others warn this risks backfire and recommend addressing it privately but firmly.

Performance Management, Documentation, and HR

• Strong advice to build a detailed paper trail: dates, behaviors, Slack threads, tickets, outages, and their impact on production or revenue.
• With enough documented incidents, managers can justify a PIP and potentially “manage him out.”
• Several recommend involving HR and/or skip‑level leadership, especially since the direct manager appears conflict‑averse and worried about how it reflects on him.
• Using formal leveling and promotion criteria is seen as powerful: make explicit that poor collaboration, single‑point‑of‑failure status, and lack of mentoring block advancement.

Coping Strategies vs. Exiting

• Some recommend emotional detachment: minimal, curt responses; don’t let passive‑aggressive comments “rent space in your head.”
• Others insist that if management won’t act, the healthiest move may be to leave, invoking “no asshole”–type principles.
• Coaching or therapy is suggested to help OP navigate stress and avoid burnout.

Relationship‑Building and “Status Injury”

• A recurring theme: the difficult engineer likely feels wronged after being told he’d lead the platform, then seeing someone else installed.
• Proposed remedies: one‑on‑one conversations (coffee/remote 1:1), acknowledging his technical expertise, clarifying roles, and offering him a clear promotion path that explicitly requires better people skills.
• Opinions diverge: some think “kill with kindness” and giving him meaningful but bounded ownership can convert him; others see this as rewarding bad behavior.

Organizational and Leadership Reflections

• Several commenters say the core problem is weak management and unclear authority between “team lead” and manager.
• Some challenge OP to examine his own leadership: possible overfocus on “vibes,” conflict‑avoidance, and insufficiently decisive behavior.
• Counter‑voices stress missing context but agree that OP’s best leverage is: assert clear expectations, document everything, push manager/skip to act, and accept that if the culture tolerates this, it may not change.