Amanda Lam_Official_Audio

0:00

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

me i'll be asking you some questions on distrust in the workplace and okay you know i'll just start

0:08

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

okay so which country and state are you from it's america and uh seattle right

0:17

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

seattle in washington state seattle in washington oh washington's the state and seattle is like

0:22

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

the city okay let me see all right how long have you been in this country oh uh pretty much of my

0:33

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

entire duration of my life and that would be 30 years 30 years all right and how long have you

0:40

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

been working full-time full-time i started in august 2019 so that puts me around six years i think

0:53

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

six years and a couple months six and a couple months okay yeah maybe like half a year so six

1:01

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and a half years that's a long time to be working i hope your mental health is surviving

1:15

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and you've been in this specific organization for how long

1:19

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um yeah i started work at this new team for i think i switched in 2021

1:29

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

so about five years no five four to five years on the current board okay it's been better since then

1:38

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

right yeah all right do you happen to be a manager nope i am an individual contributor okay

1:50

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

uh huh supervisor in your work life sorry these questions are confusing

1:58

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

in your entire like work life have you ever been a manager at all or a supervisor in any form

2:06

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

no not officially just a mentor to some other contributors but i've been we call it an ic

2:13

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and i've been an ic my my whole career what's an ic ic is just short for individual contributor

2:21

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

yeah is that the job title is it like oh no so i guess job title is software development engineer

2:28

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um and then there are generally sdes so that that as an acronym um there are usually individual

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

contributors um sometimes people who uh get more experience and maybe start wanting to be people

2:44

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

managers become they transition from being ic's to being managers but they still have the same

2:49

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

technical background okay great and how many employees will there be in your is there in your unit

2:57

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

in sorry what was the last part uh how many employees are there in your unit i guess oh yeah so my direct

3:07

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

team of engineers is like a cohort group of about six six people i would say um the wider team

3:16

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

in my org or in my yeah i guess under my skip level manager is about 30 something people okay

3:24

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

wow wow that's a surprisingly big team yeah interesting all right um in your opinion what does distrust mean

3:39

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

exactly oh distrust for me is like you don't know you can say uh well in your interactions with

3:50

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

someone or even a team uh distrust is like you don't you don't know if you can trust them to

3:58

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

one like a few things uh to uphold any agreements you have um that's at a very like contract level like

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you talking to another team and trying to work together that doesn't even include like the

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

interpersonal part like when you talk to them do you know that they're going to give back the same kind

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

of attention are they going to be sour about whatever you talk about are they like self-centered

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

as a team um but i think probably it's more about um whether or not that team will hold to its

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

commitments and be willing to work with your team on like a shared goal is it common that when you guys

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

agree to like do things as a team one side doesn't uphold their end of the work or their bargain

4:47

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

what they're supposed to do yeah i said say that um if you're within the same maybe like skid level

4:55

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

manager so not your manager but as their manager

4:59

S… Speaker 3 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you

5:00

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Usually those level that is low enough that two teams under the same skip will try to work together pretty well to maintain working harmony.

5:10

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

There can be some distrust there, like a bit of contention in discussions and whether or not people take your word for things seriously.

5:26

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But then if you're like talking about two teams that are separated by even more managers, it can be hard to even get people to put time aside to work on whatever you need them to.

5:40

S… Speaker 5 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Okay, it's good. It's difficult being in corporate setting, isn't it?

5:47

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Corpo.

5:48

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Corp life.

5:49

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

5:51

S… Speaker 5 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So, do you believe most people are trustworthy? Why or why not?

5:57

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I would say that it depends on the kind of company you work for.

6:06

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I feel like most people are trustworthy, like they want to do the right thing.

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

People like having good interactions with others.

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But if you're in a company that encourages certain behaviors, then people may not be as altruistic.

6:35

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah, so the company culture can make a big impact.

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Like, how are your promotions handled?

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Are you ranked against other people?

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Are you fighting with people for projects that would look good for your promotion?

6:50

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I feel like sometimes things like that can get in the way of people wanting to put time aside to fit in your, like, to do the right thing and help people at the company.

7:06

S… Speaker 6 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

7:08

S… Speaker 5 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Is it, well, what kind of culture do you say your company is like?

7:17

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So, in my direct team, the culture is not like this.

7:23

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So, it's, this is kind of a general feeling that I have, and especially as someone who transferred from a different team, that the culture in my company does do all of those things.

7:38

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Because, you know, it does stack rank people against their peers, and we have forced, I think they call it forced attrition of the lowest, some percentage of people will be fired to continue to raise, in quotes, raise the standard.

7:58

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So, that encourages a very competitive scene, and you don't know, like, if you can really trust your coworkers sometimes.

8:11

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Like, are they going to try to help you with your, with things that you actually need help with?

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Are they going to kind of try to steal projects or steal recognition?

8:24

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

That's what I've seen on some other teams.

8:28

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

My current team is not an example of that as much.

8:31

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Okay.

8:32

S… Speaker 3 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Understood.

8:34

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Right.

8:34

S… Speaker 5 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I guess this is kind of like a follow-up to what you mentioned, but do you typically trust people until they betray you, or are you more cautious with people until they earn your trust?

8:46

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I think, generally, I am more of a trusting person, which is maybe not always a great thing in some ways, because, yeah, of course, when you begin to realize the ways that we have different communications, and it may not jive well with the way, like, I communicate,

9:09

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

then, you know, that, that can be a point of conflict.

9:16

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But I think I do prefer having good initial conversations with people.

9:23

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So, even if, like, for example, I feel like they do something in a not optimized way, or they don't take certain initiatives that I would like them to, it's still good to have the open first impression.

9:42

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And then, if it becomes a problem later, then I think I would talk to, like, managers to, to give feedback.

9:50

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But, yeah, for the most part, I, I do trust people when I do them.

9:56

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

9:56

S… Speaker 5 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Would you say that people are more, like, in your...

10:00

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

culture on the company are they more like open to small talk and stuff or do you feel like people

10:08

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like some people are just there because they're like oh i just want to rise through the ranks that

10:12

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

they don't really care about being friends with anyone in the company or the team yeah there's

10:19

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

both for sure um i think that's also a culture thing so on on my team we have a good circle of

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

people who like to talk to each other even about things outside of work um and sometimes things

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

that are in work they'll also talk chat with each other for support like if some other team did

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

something like not helpful at all they'll be like well how could this happen what are we gonna do

10:49

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um but then outside of the team um what was remind me your original question again

10:55

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

i was just wondering if like there's a mix of people who are generally very sociable and friendly

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and actually want to know people or are they just like they only care about work and being competitive

11:08

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and they don't want to be friends with anyone yeah yeah okay yeah i would say you know my team is a

11:15

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

good example of the the people who do want to talk to you more personally and see you outside of the

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

the worker that you're here for the role yeah and i think the average american is probably like that

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

too um but there are also some people for sure there are a lot of people who are mostly here to rise

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

ranks and just get the work done and some i've met some less personable people that they don't really

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

care about getting to know who you are and they won't they won't even try on like reviews for each

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

other and you give feedback or um talk about stuff at work they won't try to consider your feelings on

12:05

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

things that they say it can be very harsh um but my team on my team even like the seniors generally

12:15

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

more considerate about the feedback they give okay that's good it's is it easy for you to tell

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like do people try to hide that part of them like some people pretend to be friendly and then

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you know is is that common or is it just easy to tell i think that for the most part it's easy to tell

12:38

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

yeah but i'm sure for all the nice like all the the easy to tell people there are a few

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

of the folks who are very um two-faced i guess cunning manipulative all okay understood

12:58

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

now we'll get into like uh the distrust portion like a big like your personal experience part

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

so i'll just ask you the question describe in detail an incident that led someone to distrust

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you highly if you have any and do you have any incidents like that so i i think a high level

13:22

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

of distrust is probably not what ended up happening um but we did have a project last year where

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um my team and the partner team had a sort of handshake like agreement on some way we were going to

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

communicate um the product that we were writing and what it expected from them as our customers

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um we had agreed on you were going they should put things in a certain location in a certain format for

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

our service to ingest it but even when we had written um like a document and got it reviewed with them

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

on the expectations the layout that they gave us was still not as expected and i had to spend quite a

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

while um fixing our side our side of things because they had done this format that we didn't expect and

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

it raised a lot of problems so but there are still things that i didn't budge on like i need you to give me

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

these things in this certain location in this format um you know it's not done yet i need you guys to do

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

this but from their side they're like we already did this um in this other spot why can't you guys

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

change it over like it shouldn't be that much work to change it over and from my from my team's

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S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

perspective like we already reviewed this with them so and we agreed i'm not going to change it

14:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

so and we agreed

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you

14:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you

15:00

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But as it turned out, in other designs that that team had set up,

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

they had already written out in a few locations

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

that they wanted to put these files in the location that they wanted them in,

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

even though I expected them in a different location.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so I think that period that I was not addressing

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

the request of moving it over to the new location

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

because I didn't think that that was something that was on our responsibility.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

That period, probably, this was over maybe a month or two

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

of we were waiting for you guys to do something.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

It sounded like you weren't done.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And they were like, we thought that you guys weren't done.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So we didn't say anything.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So I think over that period of time,

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

there grew distrust from them to us in the like,

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I don't know how much they generally think that we don't know what we're doing

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

because the person on that other team has the same job title.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

They do the same job role as I do,

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

but just in a different team.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So they feel like they kind of trust their expertise over my team's expertise,

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

which we're the dedicated engineering group.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And they're also an engineer, but they're not on the engineering group.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so they're questioning a lot of the decisions that we're making.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But it's, it's all like, we reviewed these things with you guys before.

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S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Like there are reasons.

16:47

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

It's not just like we did something wrong.

16:51

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Actually, this group of people, you said they have the same job title,

16:56

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

but like you guys were just in charge of different parts of the same project,

17:00

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like even though the tech, the expertise or like the technical expertise is like,

17:05

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

are you both groups, the same kind of expertise or different?

17:11

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

17:11

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So I guess my team is the engineering group.

17:16

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

The partner team is more on the teaching side.

17:19

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So that team has a lot of data scientists and more educational background folks.

17:28

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So they're the ones who come up with the content and how to teach people,

17:33

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

how to present the content to our students.

17:37

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So that team decided they would benefit from also having an engineer.

17:45

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So even though that team is the, in the teaching team,

17:49

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

they have an engineer there to help figure out how to do some of the requests

17:54

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

because the engineer, the actual engineering team doesn't have enough bandwidth

18:00

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

to handle all the ideas that we're growing in that teaching team space.

18:07

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

18:08

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So in the project that I was describing,

18:14

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

we have, the engineering team has a service we were writing

18:18

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

to support testing for some course materials the other team had developed.

18:24

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So the dependency there is that the teaching team needed to give us their course materials

18:32

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

to be tested.

18:35

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yes.

18:36

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Okay.

18:37

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

That team, roughly how many people were there?

18:40

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Is it also like a 30 people team or is it like a six people team?

18:44

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Oh, so yeah.

18:46

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

The engineering team is the generally small, like six-ish group.

18:50

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And then the partner team is about, I'm not sure, at least 10 people.

18:56

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

10 people?

18:57

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

18:57

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Maybe more.

18:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And then one engineer is part of that team as well.

19:03

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Okay.

19:04

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So would you say there was like a specific person on that team

19:08

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

that you were having like this point of contact with

19:11

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

that was like the person that may have made the issue worse

19:16

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

or like more intense than it had to be?

19:18

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Or was it just the whole group of them collectively

19:22

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

that made it a difficult situation?

19:25

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I think it was mainly one person, but also two others,

19:33

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

which is partly because one of them joined midway

19:37

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

through the development of the project.

19:39

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So they joined in and they had all these ideas about what we were doing.

19:45

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And it's like, well, you've already reviewed this as a team before.

19:48

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So it's not like we can come back and just change the design

19:51

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

now that you're here.

19:53

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But that person, once they understood what the limitations were,

19:58

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

they kind of stepped up.

20:00

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

back on it another person who joined even later than that person also kind of was questioning

20:10

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like what is this is this thing that we the engineering team wrote actually doing what

20:15

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

it's intended to what's the benefit um it's they were asking things like why does it do it like

20:22

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

this you know i don't think that makes sense it shouldn't it shouldn't keep um like cutting

20:29

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

tickets to us and i'm like but we agreed that it would cut tickets so that you know that something's

20:34

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

wrong um but the main contact was the engineer on the other team who generally was not very

20:46

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

appreciative of the work that we're doing didn't seem to appreciate the partnership very much

20:50

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

just wanted to get their side of the requirements done um yeah okay so this person

21:00

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um he's basically at the same level as you in terms of like job title right or like um

21:06

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

positions like more seniority than anyone yeah he actually does have more seniority than me

21:13

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um he joined the team later than i did by a lot so i think at the time of the project he had maybe

21:21

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

been on the team for less than a year but he is one level higher than me so did you know him for

21:29

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

the whole year like from when he joined to this incident um a little bit yeah i we had actually met

21:37

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

once in person as well because the team does try to do some get-togethers once in a while

21:44

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um and generally i think i had tried to talk to them but um some people you can kind of tell when

21:51

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

they're not really interested in getting to know you not not the very sociable kind of yeah or at

21:58

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

least like my there there's they did not see me as someone that was maybe worth trying to become

22:08

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um uh develop like uh a working a prop like a closer working relationship with i see so they

22:17

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

had a different perception basically yeah kind of like they're looking down on me kind of thing

22:24

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

from the beginning is this person like male or female this is a caucasian male caucasian male okay

22:34

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

so you you'd say like on a scale of one to five the relationship like um it was like a one maybe

22:41

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like it was like a poor relationship or do you think it would be higher i think i would actually

22:47

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

give it maybe like a two and a half or a three um because i think when we do agree on things then

22:58

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and partly if there are the right people in the room

23:01

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

our discussions are a bit more level um but still i feel like there's not much uh trust

23:10

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

from their side on on at least for between that person and i okay so yeah in your mind you would

23:19

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

separate this as like a purely working relationship and in no form personal right yeah for sure okay

23:28

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

there are some people maybe in your organization where that line is like a bit more interlap where

23:35

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like if you become really close with them is there like a do you still split it between working and

23:41

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

personal or do you think there's a bit of interlap oh i think for me because of my personality

23:47

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

i interlap a lot when there's people that i feel like i get along with outside of well i get along

23:55

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

with um during work and maybe just like talking about other things outside of work

24:01

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um for those people uh i like to keep things less uh formal because i think it relieves some of the

24:11

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

tension from working and know like you know we're on we're on each other's side yeah i have mostly

24:17

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

it's within the engineering team my direct co-workers that developed this kind of more personal

24:23

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

relationship with a few of them yeah um and with those people we do have times where we need to

24:31

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

talk about work things like of course we're working so

24:36

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

but when we have that connection outside then i think the trust is stronger when we actually do need

24:44

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

to talk about um things that work yeah does that's a great question yes it does that's wonderful

24:52

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

all right so after the whole incident between the two teams um was there any

24:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

uh

25:00

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

to repair the relationship from either side so i think at some at one point like about the month

25:11

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

in i might have mentioned earlier we were at a stalemate i guess in between two people not

25:17

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

wanting to make a change so it ended up uh escalating to my manager and then my manager

25:25

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

talked between the two um to understand how much work it was for us to meet in the middle or at

25:33

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

least for engineering to meet them and so in that way i think we started to understand where they're

25:42

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

coming from like they already had written some designs um that detailed what they were going to

25:49

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

do that we didn't know about and didn't write about in the doc that we reviewed later with them

25:55

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

so um yeah we after that involvement with the manager i think it's kind of back to um not as

26:09

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

controversial but i think the teams still often have small fights about what value we're getting

26:19

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

from the service that we wrote yeah but um so i i think because my team culture is pretty good

26:29

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

there wasn't a huge escalation so we were able to come back to working um in other areas together again

26:38

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

yeah but in other in other teams outside of mine that might be a different story

26:46

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

i see yeah would you say it's like even though you guys are able to work together like

26:52

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

in other projects now is it the same are you guys like back to what you originally were before the

26:58

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

incident or is do you feel like a little bit of tension now i think that we've at least i have

27:07

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

developed a kind of um separation i guess a little bit of space to keep myself from personally

27:17

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

being impacted as much so i've kind of come to expect that some people will just say things that

27:25

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

are kind of crass and blunt and i don't need to take them that seriously um because now apparently i

27:35

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

know we know what they are like um so i guess in the way that i've learned how these people are

27:44

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and some of the things they say is just how they are i guess we've gone back to the way things were

27:49

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

before the incident

27:53

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

yeah there was no like apology from either side or anything right you guys just like

27:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

uh yeah well there was there might have been some apologies from the engineering side but there was

28:06

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

never any from the other side it was never like we did something wrong or i'm sorry that we made work

28:13

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

for you guys like there was never any of that acknowledgement of the the time that we spent

28:18

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

to fix the fix things from our side okay yeah all right yes okay so i guess you could i mean even

28:32

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

though there's like this like uh some sort of like blockage you would you say like the trust has been

28:39

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

repaired in the sense that you all can still work together to get things done like yeah i would say

28:46

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

so it did take um the you know my manager and the senior coming in to help lead with the later's um

28:58

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

later meetings that we have with this other team but with having the right people in the room

29:06

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um and moving on past a certain project then yeah i think we are working uh sufficiently

29:13

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

with each other enough to get the work done right yeah yeah it's good so your current relationship with

29:21

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

this person the main point of contact would you describe it still the same because you mentioned

29:27

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

it was like a two and a half to a three like when you met him did it change at all like

29:32

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

now or is it still the same um well when i met them i didn't have too much of an impression

29:38

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

on what they were like besides well this this person doesn't seem that interested in getting to know

29:43

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

the engineers um so at that time they might have been about like a yeah like a three or whatever

29:51

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um after the incident i feel like they didn't change as people as a person but i know them

29:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um

30:00

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

bit better now so i guess my impression is a bit lower um but not that i think i don't think they

30:13

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

have it out for me personally it's just yeah how they how they are so it'd be like a two maybe a

30:21

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

one and a half yeah maybe a two is pretty good i'd rather not have to talk to them unless i have to

30:31

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

completely gets all right so what would you do in the future to avoid such incidents if you were

30:39

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

to change anything i think we did have a retrospective on this and a lot of it was

30:46

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

communication based so things like weekly weekly meetings um even if it doesn't seem like there's

30:53

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

going to be topics we should still get together and and talk and see if there are any updates

31:02

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

i think we need to we needed to also hold people uh more accountable so any decisions that were made

31:11

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

we need to be sure that they've acknowledged it um but besides how we how we do work together

31:23

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

uh i don't think like the way that i approach them as a person has changed

31:31

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

yeah yes yes you'd say you're more reserved maybe in approaching them yeah i think it's more like

31:39

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um you know take any any side comments with the just like try to shrug things off more as what they say

31:48

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um yeah it's mostly that kind of thing like if they say something that's kind of mean it's like

32:02

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

well you don't have like you don't have the expertise you don't they don't always have the

32:09

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

full expertise to say what they what they're saying and even though they're saying something that might

32:14

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

be kind of negative it doesn't mean that that's true um or it might be you know there is some valid

32:20

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

concern behind the the criticism but it's about the work that we do and if it does feel like it's

32:29

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

attacking us then talk to the managers we talk to co-workers

32:42

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

thank you for sharing about this incident i have one more incident to ask of you

32:50

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

okay so so before the first incident was about um someone uh distrusting you an incident that made

33:01

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

someone distrust you but now this incident will be an event or a detail incident that led you to

33:10

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

distrust someone else highly so do you have anything like that in the workplace where

33:15

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you felt like yep yep yeah okay so we talked a little uh i told you a bit before about um before

33:28

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

my current team i was on a different team and the other team uh because my current team is a

33:35

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

training team it's internal so the stakes are a bit lower this other team has to do with

33:42

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

transportation so yeah the scale of the work that they do is a lot bigger um there's a lot more time

33:51

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

pressure there's um there's pressure from costs because there's a there's a whole actual like profit that

34:00

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

people are tracking so the tension in that org is a lot higher so at the time i was an entry-level

34:10

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

engineer and i had joined under some other managers um for the first year we were fine for the most part

34:22

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

um yeah the managers and the team were okay so after that we had some new management step in

34:33

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

this manager brought in um a senior engineer and some other engineers from their other team and at

34:44

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

first when i uh i joined or when they became my manager um i had made the decision you know i don't

34:51

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

want to work on this um phone app for the the stuff for my team i want to work on like back-end stuff

34:58

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

i want to work on this and so with that decision

34:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and so with that decision

34:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and so with that decision

34:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and so with that decision

34:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and so with that decision

34:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I'm going to show you what I'm going to do.

35:00

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I ended up working under this new manager.

35:03

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So this new manager, when they first joined, they were like, you know, you don't have to worry.

35:08

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I'm going to, you know, we're going to get you promoted.

35:11

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

You're going to do great.

35:12

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Just, you know, follow my suggestions.

35:17

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I've gotten so many people promoted.

35:19

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And I have all these people that are coming along with me because we have a great culture.

35:24

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And I'm like, okay, all right, let's see how that goes.

35:29

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so over the next, I don't know if I even lasted half a year under that team.

35:35

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I think it was probably a whole year during the first year of COVID.

35:42

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And gradually they started to do things that I was pretty concerned about.

35:51

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So one of the things to kind of keep it short, I had started, before that manager jumped in, I started working on a project with a team in Canada.

36:04

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

That team in Canada had a project itself.

36:08

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so when the new manager came in, he and the engineers decided that they wanted to do basically what that other project was, but do it faster.

36:19

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so I had this partnership with that other team because I was going to be an away engineer.

36:26

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So I was going to join them and work on their stuff for my team to get our work done.

36:32

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But because this manager came in and he and the team started to convince the higher-ups that, you know, we can deliver this thing faster than this other team.

36:45

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Give us the project so we can do it faster.

36:49

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

We'll do it right.

36:51

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Meanwhile, this other team was trying to take things a bit slower, make sure that they can do everything right for all the use cases.

37:01

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So that started to form a lot of conflict between the two teams, which we previously were in good relationship with.

37:11

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So I think that was a major red flag.

37:15

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

37:16

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And then separately from that, over the months that I worked with this project and this team, I was starting to get first, like my tasks that were with this other team started to become lost, I guess, because of the conflict, the rising conflict between the two teams.

37:40

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so instead of attributing my decreased production of work, I guess, instead of recognizing it as like it was losing things I was supposed to be working on because of politics, they blamed me for it.

38:05

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So it was starting to get feedback like you aren't, you know, getting through conflict, you aren't getting through complications, like you aren't dealing with complexity properly, you're not working well enough.

38:27

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And instead of giving me like proper mentorship, I think they gave me harder work.

38:38

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And essentially, they took another engineer who was on the team before they joined.

38:44

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

He was a level two at the time and I was a level one.

38:49

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So they put me under that guy for mentorship, but they gave us a project that went to a level three, the same one that jumped ship from that team onto my current team because that project was such a mess.

39:02

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah, so yeah, so yeah, they gave level two and a level one, the project that a senior wouldn't want to do.

39:10

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah, essentially to, I think it was a way to try to get us to leave because we just can't deliver it.

39:19

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Like it's too complex.

39:21

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

39:22

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So yeah, it was a whole thing.

39:26

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And it's hard to say truly if it was, if this is the right view of what happened.

39:33

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I don't know if it's as political as it sounds, but from my perspective, being in that, yeah, it was very much political.

39:45

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And like this guy who came in saying that he would do what he could to make me a better engineer, like he didn't do any of that.

39:56

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

He didn't do any of that, basically, right?

39:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Literally.

40:00

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

just loaded on more pressure.

40:03

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

It didn't give me that much feedback that I could work with.

40:08

S… Speaker 5 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

40:10

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Just to clarify, right?

40:13

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So you have your own team and then the Canada team,

40:17

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

which has that project that you were supposed to work on, right?

40:20

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So were you answerable in terms of your manager?

40:24

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Was it you answering to the guy on your team

40:28

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

or did you have to answer to any of the management

40:30

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

from the Canadian team?

40:34

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I would say mostly it was my management.

40:40

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I had a mentor on the other team

40:43

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

that I would work with for my tasks.

40:46

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But yeah, the management I reported to was just on my team.

40:52

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

This project, actually the project was like

40:56

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

something the Canadian team was assigned to do, right?

40:59

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But was it assigned from your branch

41:01

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

or did they already do the project?

41:03

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah, I would say that separately with some other leadership in the area.

41:10

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I don't know if that leadership was in Canada or also in my side of town.

41:16

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But that project on the other team was already in the works.

41:20

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I was arguing.

41:21

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

41:22

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So yeah, my team,

41:24

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

this team came in,

41:25

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

started to fight for the right to do that project

41:28

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and essentially took it away from the Canadian team.

41:32

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And the Canadian team is,

41:34

S… Speaker 3 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I think,

41:35

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

has dissolved since then.

41:38

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

41:39

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

41:41

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Okay.

41:43

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Okay.

41:44

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So,

41:47

S… Speaker 3 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

all right.

41:48

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So,

41:50

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

this guy is,

41:51

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

the manager on your side is a male as well, right?

41:54

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

41:55

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

41:55

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Okay.

41:56

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And you knew him only when he came into the team,

42:00

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

which was after you.

42:03

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

42:03

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Right.

42:03

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Right.

42:04

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

It wasn't that long as well, right?

42:06

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Like maybe a few months at most.

42:11

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

42:12

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I guess I would say,

42:13

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

because I,

42:14

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I started working under them the moment they joined.

42:17

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So,

42:18

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

the amount of time that I knew that person was however long

42:21

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and from when they joined until I left.

42:24

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I think that was about a year.

42:25

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

About a year.

42:27

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Okay.

42:28

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And you did say that you,

42:30

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

because of all these things that he promised,

42:32

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

did he give you like a good impression?

42:34

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Or did you initially already think that this was like,

42:37

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

he was just saying things that are not ever good?

42:39

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

going to deliver on them?

42:42

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I did think initially that it was going to be like,

42:46

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like a tough love kind of thing where they,

42:49

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

they may be harsh on the way they treat,

42:52

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

on the way they give feedback,

42:54

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

or they might be,

42:55

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you know,

42:56

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

open on criticism,

42:57

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

but it was,

42:58

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I had believed that it would be in a good faith,

43:01

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

that they really did want to develop.

43:05

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

43:05

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

They did want to develop their people,

43:07

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

but,

43:10

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and it,

43:11

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

it seemed okay at first,

43:13

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

because they would,

43:14

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

they would do things for the team,

43:16

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like host,

43:18

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like fun activities to,

43:20

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

do team culture.

43:22

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

It always felt a little forced,

43:24

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

but at least there was some effort there.

43:26

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so when they joined,

43:28

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I would have maybe given it like a,

43:31

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

three and a half.

43:32

S… Speaker 3 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

43:35

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But then after that,

43:37

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you know,

43:38

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I learned that it was not what they were promising at all.

43:42

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And then it went super downhill.

43:44

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

43:47

S… Speaker 6 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Honestly,

43:48

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

apart from like pressure,

43:50

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

right,

43:50

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

what was the emotion you were really feeling when you realized that he was just,

43:55

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you know,

43:57

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

saying things,

43:57

S… Speaker 4 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

but never really delivering on them?

43:59

S… Speaker 3 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

44:01

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So thankfully when that started happening,

44:06

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

the Canadian team was still there.

44:08

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I still had the mentor that I worked under.

44:11

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

He was sort of the main voice of reason for me because,

44:17

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

and my advocate,

44:18

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I guess,

44:19

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

because from his perspective,

44:22

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

he saw,

44:23

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

you know,

44:24

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

an engineer that makes mistakes,

44:26

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

sure,

44:27

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

but is coachable and wants to learn.

44:30

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So he,

44:32

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I would talk to him about some of the things I was hearing from my team,

44:36

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

like some of the feedback I got and some of the,

44:39

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

the politics that were happening.

44:40

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And he was the one who made Lee would be very angry for me.

44:45

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

He was angry for himself too,

44:47

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

because he was the lead for the project on the other team.

44:49

S… Speaker 3 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Um,

44:51

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

but he was also very angry for how I was getting treated.

44:55

S… Speaker 3 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Um,

44:56

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

at the time,

44:57

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

if it was just me,

44:58

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I,

44:59

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I,

44:59

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I,

45:00

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I was very unhappy.

45:04

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Confidence was pretty low.

45:07

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I think I had felt very trapped because I didn't know what I was going to do with this project that even the senior didn't want.

45:22

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And now a junior engineer is being given the same project.

45:26

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I'm so screwed.

45:27

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

What am I going to do?

45:28

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

There's no way this will end well.

45:30

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Oh, yeah.

45:32

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

Yeah.

45:33

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

So when eventually when I did start to the internal transfer process, I had talked to my manager.

45:40

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

I was saying, I found a new team.

45:42

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

You know, I'm going to be switching over.

45:44

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And he said, oh, you know, I'm sorry you can't do that because you're on a focus.

45:50

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And a focus is this program they have for people who are not quite on like an improvement plan, which is the last step before getting fired.

46:00

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

But they do want to partner you with someone else on the team to get you back on track.

46:07

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And the main part is that it blocks you from transferring teams.

46:11

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so, yeah, that that went back to my the team that I transferred to that news and they reached out to HR.

46:19

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so there was this whole thing that I wasn't actually on the focus, which I heard from the other team.

46:25

S… Speaker 2 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

And so I found out that the manager essentially lied to me.

46:32

S… Speaker 1 (Amanda Lam_Official_Audio)

It's the same person.

Amanda Lam_Official_Audio

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