How to work around a Manager's favoured team member?
I was moved from TeamA to TeamB as a new project was about to begin; So I came under this TeamB Lead. TeamB has a member (call him Dave) whom the Lead has recruited, unlike the rest of us who have moved from a different team.
We all work well together TechLead is really good except this one problem; Dave hangs around the Lead everywhere he goes (lunch table, team project discussion, team outing, cafeteria, etc.) so much that none of us individual team member are able to discuss with Lead alone for even 5 minutes. Each of us have our own individual tech issues, project issues and ideas that we would like to discuss with the lead - not every discussion need all the team members. It is not always possible to book a conference room. I may just want quick talk in the cafeteria or at the Lead's desk. Somehow Dave finds it out and joins our discussion.
Lead likes Fav so much that even though it is my Tech issue discussion:
Lead listens to Fav rather than my point of view.
If we do some mistake in our code and issue is reported, then the Lead forwards our mistakes to Dave. (only to Dave; we will not even be cc'd in), even though we all are competent enough to resolve our mistakes in the code.
If there are any issues in the code and we provide our analysis, the Lead does not talk to concerned team member instead secretly discusses with Dave to get a second opinion.
On several occasions, this Lead has made fun (derogatory) about team members in front of Dave.
Well, I am not sure whether this should be called bias or this is how the tech lead should be (Dave just happens to be a lucky guy) or whether it is favouritism towards his own recruit.
But I and the rest of the team members are frustrated, we do not know how to communicate about this to our Lead. If any of us mention about Dave in front of him, the Lead gets so angry, we will know that in the next performance review. So we do not know how to deal with this favouritism towards Dave.