Your star performer might be the reason your best people are leaving.
“Hi Poornima,
My manager gave me some feedback recently that I’m not the go-to person on my project. I joined the team 6 months ago and I’m learning but I think the problem is one of my teammates is a bit of a ball hog. They reply to all the Slack threads before anyone else does, take all the good projects because they’re more senior and come to all the meetings I’m leading and correct me on the spot.
I get that they are smart but I feel like I have no space to make a mistake, learn and grow. And now my manager basically thinks my teammate has to step in because I’m doing a bad job.
How can I tell my manager that it’s hard for me to come up to speed and build rapport with people if my teammate keeps stepping on my toes?”
– Engineer, 6 months into a new team
I want to address this from two angles because there are two people in this post who need to hear something.
First, to the engineer who wrote in. Then to the leader who might be running this same dynamic on their team without realizing it.
For the engineer:
Your instinct is right, something is off. But “my teammate keeps stepping on my toes” is not the conversation that will move things forward. It sounds like a complaint, even when it’s a legitimate observation.
The conversation that will actually help is this one:
“I want to talk about what it would look like for me to build ownership on this project. Here’s where I think I can lead and here’s what I need to do that well.”
That’s a growth conversation, not a grievance. It puts you in the driver’s seat.
Six months is early. The engineers who grow fastest in new environments are the ones who learn to advocate for their own development clearly and early. This is your chance to start that pattern.
For the leader reading this:
If you manage a team where a senior engineer answers every Slack thread, takes the high-visibility work, and shows up in other people’s meetings to correct them and your read is that this person is your strongest performer I want to offer a different lens.
What you may actually have is someone who has learned that visibility is the currency on your team.
They’re not necessarily doing more. They’re doing more of what gets noticed.
Here’s what’s actually happening beneath the surface:
- Senior engineer answers every Slack thread → New engineer never gets a chance to build that expertise
- Senior engineer takes high-priority projects → New engineer is left with work that won’t build the track record they need
- Senior engineer “helps” in new engineer’s meetings → New engineer can’t build authority or credibility with stakeholders
- New engineer “isn’t the go-to person” → New engineer was never given the conditions to become one
The feedback in this letter: “you’re not the go-to person” was measuring the wrong thing. Go-to status in a 6-month window is almost entirely a function of opportunity and air cover, not capability.
What to do about it:
Get curious before getting corrective. Ask the senior engineer: “How do you think [new engineer] is coming along? What would it look like for them to take more ownership?”
Then ask the new engineer: “What’s an area where you’d like to be the decision-maker in the next 90 days?” Give them something concrete to point to. Then protect that space.
Hero culture doesn’t get built on purpose. It gets built when leaders measure visibility instead of value and reward accordingly.
Your top performer on paper might be your biggest cultural liability. The person you’re overlooking might be the one who leaves first.
Often I post a reply to a reader’s question. If you’re in the thick of it, whether that’s feeling stuck, weighing a move, or trying to size up a company from the outside, come along. I write about the climb from engineer to technical leader every issue: getting heard, getting unstuck, and knowing when it’s time to move on. Subscribe to my newsletter here, then hit reply with your own situation. The most universal ones become the next post.
