Unhealthy Behaviour in a Tech Team: Signals and Actions

After speaking at Saint HighLoad++ 2024, I had many conversations with people from different companies. Alongside architecture and delivery, one subject kept appearing: what happens when high standards become humiliation and feedback becomes a form of pressure?

This is not a market survey or a claim about particular organisations. It is a practical frame assembled from several professional observations.

Describe repeated behaviour, not a type of person

Calling someone “toxic” is convenient, but it quickly turns a complex situation into a diagnosis of character. A manager can act more effectively by describing an observable behaviour, its frequency, and its effect on the work.

Examples include:

• mistakes are mocked in public instead of investigated;
• performance or bonus rules change after the result;
• disagreement with a manager leads to exclusion from information or work;
• urgency becomes permanent without reducing scope;
• one person controls knowledge and blocks shared ownership;
• feedback uses broad claims about personality;
• people cannot report a risk or error without fear of retaliation.

One poor conversation does not define a culture. Repetition, a power imbalance, and the absence of a route to correction matter.

High standards and an unsafe environment are different

Healthy standards come with clear outcomes, consistent rules, and room to discuss how the work should be done. An error receives analysis and a corrective action. The person understands what needs to change.

An unsafe environment has implicit expectations, unpredictable feedback, and consequences shaped by relationship or status. People begin hiding problems, agreeing without checking, and optimising the appearance of progress.

For engineering work, that is an operational risk. If reporting a defect is more dangerous than staying quiet, the risk of a defect reaching the customer grows, even with a formally strong quality process.

What an individual contributor can do

1. Separate the event from the interpretation

Record a specific situation: date, participants, behaviour, agreement, and consequence. Replace “my manager does not respect me” with “the delivery risk was mocked in the meeting, no decision was recorded, and the risk occurred the following week.”

This helps identify a pattern and makes a later conversation more concrete.

2. Clarify the expectation and boundary

When it is safe, discuss the event directly: which behaviour affected the work, which feedback format you need, and what change you propose.

Some problems come from different communication norms and improve after a clear conversation. Sometimes the response confirms that open discussion is not possible.

3. Use the available channels

Depending on the organisation, this may be the next manager, HR, a people partner, an ethics office, a union, or a formal reporting channel. Understand the procedure first and preserve work-related evidence within the company’s information-security rules.

4. Find support outside the conflict

A trusted colleague, mentor, friend, or family member can help test your interpretation and prevent isolation. If the situation is affecting health, sleep, or the ability to work, seek qualified professional support rather than relying on an article.

5. Decide on the next route

There is no universal deadline or answer. Consider the severity, room for influence, health, financial position, and available alternatives. The appropriate route may be a change plan within the team, an internal transfer, or a search elsewhere.

Keeping a record of professional outcomes is useful in any case. It supports a factual career conversation and prevents the current environment from becoming the only source of judgement about your competence.

What a manager must do

Interrupt the behaviour when it happens

Public humiliation or pressure should not wait for a later one-to-one. A calm intervention is enough: “We are discussing the decision, not the person’s character. State the specific concern.”

Examine impact rather than intention

“I am simply demanding” does not remove the effect. The manager needs to understand what happened to the decision, collaboration, and willingness to report risk.

Make rules predictable

Outcome, reward, review, and escalation criteria should be known in advance. If a rule changes, it should not be applied retrospectively and the reason should be explained.

Inspect the incentives

Sometimes the process rewards the behaviour: a bonus tied only to the date, an individual defect ranking, or constant competition for visibility. A request to “respect each other” will not work while the system rewards the opposite.

Protect the person who reports a concern

Raising a problem should not lead to retaliation, removal from work, or uncontrolled sharing of details. Confidentiality has limits, but the review route and the people involved should be clear.

Record the agreement and verify change

The conversation needs an expected behaviour, a review point, and consequences for repetition. If the pattern continues, the manager should use the normal performance or conduct process rather than repeatedly asking everyone for a fresh start.

What to observe

No single metric defines a healthy environment. A combination of signals can justify a closer look:

• risks are reported late;
• decisions contain no dissenting views;
• transfers or departures cluster in one area;
• the same concern repeats across one-to-ones;
• retrospectives contain only safe statements;
• critical knowledge concentrates around a few people;
• incident reviews find a culprit faster than a cause.

These signs call for investigation, not an automatic judgement about a team or individual.

A healthy culture does not remove conflict. It allows conflict to become a discussion of evidence, a decision, and clear action without humiliation or fear of retaliation. For a manager, this is not a vague question of atmosphere; it is part of managing quality and team resilience.

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The first version was published on my Telegram channel @it_underside.

Yours, DPUPP