Six weeks into a new job and I already dread talking to my own founder.
Small company, about 20 people. The product is good, my coworkers are great, and the work itself is solid. But every conversation with the founder leaves me feeling like I'm walking on eggshells.
Some examples:
- First week, i was slow replying about an insurance form. He messaged: "We want autonomy and proactivity. We don't do babysitting🙂"
- Had a long, tense back-and-forth in team chat because he aggressively challenged my read on an analytics doc. We eventually realized we were saying the same thing.
- After a multilingual site migration, I was put in charge of monitoring SEO performance. i shared a pre-migration checklist because I wanted to understand what was being implemented before owning the audit. He replied publicly that my message looked AI-generated and that generic AI content isn't necessarily relevant. The checklist covered real stuff: redirects, hreflang, high-traffic pages.
He also constantly pushes back on my ad campaign recommendations, then recently told me to be more confident and just run with my ideas when I know I'm right, even when he argues with me.
His line is that he's direct and has no time to waste. He's generally got good energy, but other employees have already told him his written communication comes across as harsh. That actually happened a month ago, during his yearly performance review.
I'm considering saying something like:
"I like the company, the product, and the team, but I think we need to find common ground in how we communicate. Sometimes our conversations feel more confrontational than collaborative, and it makes me feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I'd like us to find a way of communicating that helps us work effectively together."
Is that reasonable feedback, or would raising it after six weeks be a mistake?
