I know this could apply to any field, but I feel like there is a specific type of Queen Bee syndrome archetype in tech that likes to bully female subordinates to prove their 'competence', and I wonder who else has experienced this and if so, any survival strategies.
I work for a healthcare b2b saas software company and when I got this job, I was so happy to have a branch to cling to, to stay in the industry since it's so rough right now. I downtitled and did the best I could while learning my new role.
When I started, people were friendly enough, including my boss, who I got along great with. There was one senior member of the team who was fairly wretched toward me and iced me out no matter how nice I was, and no matter how much I tried to ask her about her weekend, her son, her hobbies like photography—it's like pulling teeth to have a conversation with her about anything.
Well this member was recently promoted to manager, and I now report to her. While I pretended to be excited about the transition, deep down I was horrified at the decision.
She is condescending and treats me like a junior designer even though I've been in the industry longer than her. She will pick random line items from a one-off design for an acquired product that we rarely do work for, has pre-established, decided upon conventions, was already accepted by the PO, (who had already told me he thought it was "great" and what they needed) and pull it back out to ask 'why' they do it this way, why they want it this way, are all these things necessary, it's not ready for handoff, etc.
I was just pitching in for another designer who was overwhelmed and it was kind of a 'hey can you do this busywork for me, I'm slammed today' type of thing. It was not intended as a redesign or overhaul of their product (which my manager knows absolutely nothing about.)
Another example is she told me to break with our design pattern library and use a custom form layout with no containers for the individual sections. I did so, and the margins looked tight because the text and inputs were so close to the side of the drawer they were in. I brought it to a group review, she said nothing, waited until I presented it again with our higher ups present, and started lecturing me on how the margins were "too tight". I told her I agreed, but the margins were the same width they always were, they just looked closer because she made me remove the container I had originally.
She goes through and nitpicks things that don't affect the design (like the dummy data being the same in each example, when the patterns are exactly the same.) and she will often voluntell me to bring something to review while she refuses to ever present anything herself.
I could give a whole host of other reasons, but you get the idea. She nitpicks and leaves a flurry of 12 questions in my file about trivial things. I tried at first to just "become a better designer" and truly absorb all the things she was saying, trying to do it her way. This did not work because even if I'm right, she moves the goalpost and will ask "why" about some random attribute to performatively look like she's trying to 'get to the bottom' of a problem, but really it's a pissing contest and a way to try and make herself look superior and me in need of her guidance.
I've tried asking her questions early about designs, asking for her opinion, (many times yielding "well what do YOU think?" Like she's Teacher and I'm 5 year old.) She constantly keeps score and I really feel like she is building a case against me to undermine my credibility.
Did you even have a boss like this? What did you do? I try to 'manage up' and give her reports and summaries early and bombard her before she can hound me for anything, but it doesn't seem to slow her roll. I feel like she might be working up to a PIP which is often the perfect storm when new managers inherit a team they didn't pick, and I might just be cooked. But if not, did you ever manage to change or improve this dynamic? I'd love another job but it was so hard to find this one.