How to Spot a Backstabber
My first lesson in office politics came disguised as collaboration.
This was 2008, a few months before the housing meltdown and mass layoffs. I was at Yahoo, in Burbank, California. My best friend Ali and I worked on the same team. He remembers this incident better than I do and swears it changed me.
He’s probably right.
It started with my manager saying, “We’re going to stretch you a little,” which I assumed meant more meetings, maybe a higher-profile project. Instead, I got paired with a product manager named Curtis.
“He’s great,” my manager said. “You’ll learn a lot from him.”
I thought I’d learn how to run better meetings. Instead, I learned how people climb ladders by stepping on other people’s reputations.
The first time I met Curtis, I made a rookie mistake.
I showed up five minutes early. He showed up ten minutes late.
He wore sunglasses indoors and drank something green, the kind of green that dares you to ask what’s in it.
“Hey man,” he said. “You cool driving the alignment doc?”
“Sure,” I said.
I didn’t know what an alignment doc was. I thought maybe it had to do with Jira.
It did not.
Curtis smiled and gave me what I now recognize as the standard corporate lie.
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out together.”
Of course, I believed him.
That afternoon, I shared the doc with the team. By the next morning, it had sixteen comments, four threads, and one emoji reaction that looked encouraging until I realized it was the laughing one.
I messaged Curtis for backup.
He “hearted” the message.
The next meeting, Curtis shared the doc on the big screen. There were maybe twelve people in the room. More joined remotely.
He smiled and said:
“I’ll let our brilliant new tech lead walk us through this.”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. My brain screamed run. My body froze. Their smirking faces said it all: Never had they seen such an incompetent leader.
“Should’ve promoted the intern, ” someone muttered.
The shame was brilliant, like a humiliating inspiration. It was the worst I’d felt in my short tech lead role, but it only held the top spot for a few seconds.
When I finally spoke, the words came out hissing like I was speaking Parseltongue. They laughed - gently at first. Then freely.
Curtis leaned back like we were spitballing in a casual one-on-one.
“Haha, no worries, man. This is a safe space.”
It wasn’t. Not for me.
The third meeting came the next week.
I brought diagrams.
I brought bullet points.
I brought what was left of my confidence.
None of it helped.
Halfway through, Curtis stood up, walked to the trash can, tossed his smoothie, and said:
“I love where this is going, but I’m just going to take this over for clarity.”
Then he clicked into the deck and kept talking like I wasn’t in the room.
After the meeting, he walked over while everyone was still watching.
He smiled and said,
“There. You were great, Taha. And it’s all over.”
He was right. It was all over.
Since that series of meetings, one of my firmest principles has been this:
If you’re not shaping the narrative, someone else is.
After that incident, I was quiet for some time. I remember calling Ali every day on my way from the dreadful 405. Did I miss something? Did I deserve it? I replayed their smirks, over and over.
The layoffs came in December 2008. I should’ve felt dread. Instead, I felt relief. Like I’d been pardoned.
I got lucky. They moved me to a new team in Santa Clara, 300 miles north. A new zip code. A fresh org. No one up there had seen my fall. It was a clean slate. A reboot.
Or I was blissfully redirected to a messier problem.
This was the headquarters of Yahoo. Carol Bartz was the new CEO. Infamous for her sailor’s mouth and a deadline for everything, she pushed us to deliver three years of backlog in half the time.
Sprint retros turned into tribunals.
Weekend outages.
Monday sermons.
Then one day, I was sitting in a retrospective, minding my own business, when a team member pointed at me. Directly. Called me out in front of everyone.
I got up.
I paused.
And this time, I owned the room.
Read it here:
How I Built Credibility as a Tech Lead
I was looking down, minding my own business, when an engineer across the room pointed at me.
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That feeling of being thrown in, watched, and quietly judged. It’s all too real. The line “If you’re not shaping the narrative, someone else is” gave me chills. Thank you for sharing something so raw and honest.
Cliffhanger 😭😅