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I'm a full-stack developer with 5 years of experience, currently working in a team where I've recently sensed some tension and negative energy. I decided to ask my Scrum Master for feedback, and the response was quite disheartening. He mentioned that my work "could work with another team but not with this one," implying that my contributions are not valued or effective in the current team setting.

Additionally, my technical lead has become increasingly critical and mean, even about things that he doesn't fully understand. This negative feedback and lack of support from my team lead have left me feeling depressed and constantly worried about my job stability.

I want to improve and better integrate into my team, but I'm struggling to understand where I stand and what specific actions I should take to address this situation. How should I handle such feedback, and what steps can I take to improve my standing in the team and secure my job?

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    You asked for feedback. You got feedback. Now ask him what he thinks you should be working on instead, and work on that. This is how you learn.
    – keshlam
    Commented Sep 1 at 23:55
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    Seems to me you're overreacting. Go back and ask them more specifically what you could be doing better. Then do that.
    – keshlam
    Commented Sep 2 at 2:52
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    Being a hard-working person is great. It sounds like what you need to focus on is working on the right things. That's nothing to become demoralized about; it's a valid suggestion on how to improve.
    – keshlam
    Commented Sep 2 at 3:05
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    This edit to the OP is not very useful and threatens to make the question too generic to answer.
    – mxyzplk
    Commented Sep 2 at 15:50
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    I'm confused. The answers seem to reference a particular situation with a tech lead and a scrum master. But the current version of the question doesn't really describe any situation at all, only giving us "I decided to ask for feedback, and the response was quite astonishing. It seems my work "could work with another team but not with this one"." Was a lot of information removed from the question? Should this information be put back? Right now it doesn't make much sense and the answers no longer match the question.
    – Stef
    Commented Sep 2 at 15:58

2 Answers 2

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The fact that you asked for feedback is a great achievement. Congratulations!

Now, you need to act on it. Since you cannot understand what is wrong, you need help (as you already understand).

The simplified approach is like this:

  1. Accept the feedback. If they see you in some way, that is how they see you - even if you do not like it.

  2. Ask them if they agree to help you improve. I assume that they will agree to some extent.

  3. Ask them to tell you the "worst" things, that you need to concentrate first on improving. Ask them to tell you:

    a) what you do bad;

    b) what they expect (better).

    Now you can more easily see the difference.

  4. Modify your behavior in the direction expected by them - which is also suitable for you.

  5. Repeat from 3.

Note: As a "favor" from them to you, ask them to provide feedback at the moment when you do something wrong (or as soon as possible), so you can understand yourself better. This is especially useful if the negative feedback is about your visible behavior. It might be less helpful if it is about the results of your work - but it still applies there also.

In a comment you said:

I'm already a very hard-working person.

Being hard-working is good, but being good-quality-working is better - and often it can even be done without working so hard. You know the saying, about doing more with less...

I'm beginning to wonder why I should go above and beyond if this is the kind of feedback I receive.

Whose "above and beyond"? What is good for you, might not be good for someone else. You need to satisfy your "customers" (manger, Scrum master, colleagues...)

I found the feedback to be vague and not very relevant to my situation. Even though my Scrum Master has noticed some changes

That is good news - you are doing some changes and people notice the result! You now go on and continue - and apply what I wrote above. Things will only get better. No need for depression.

NOTE (personal experience)

I had a problem (among others) with the tone of my voice. It occasionally sounded aggressive. While many (?) people were bothered, only one person actually told me what was the problem. And I did just as I wrote above: I asked the person to tell me that my voice sound angry at the moment when I talked, not after 30 min or 2 days later. It took quite a long time until I succeeded to hear my voice "from the outside". And did it sound aggressive! And that happened when I answered "3 o'clock" when my manager (imagine!) asked what is the time. Ever since, I am very careful with my voice - and even if I occasionally fail to control it, at least it happens less often, and I can hear myself, and I have a chance to apologize for sounding aggressive.

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    I love the anecdote and have had a similar experience: Whenever I felt strongly about something, people would perceive me as getting angry, even (or especially) when I was only excited. For years I would end up actually getting angry at the reactions I caused, when what I needed to do was learn what I was projecting and modify my behavior. My life now has groups of people in it who's literal nickname for me was "Angry [my name]", and people who are astonished when they hear that nickname.
    – Player One
    Commented Sep 2 at 7:25
  • @PlayerOne: interesting coincidence indeed :)) Indeed, in my case it was the same, any excitement, even irrelevant excitement on irrelevant topics, made my voice "jump".
    – virolino
    Commented Sep 2 at 8:38
  • Typo: who's was probably intended to be whose
    – keshlam
    Commented Sep 2 at 17:54
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    @keshlam: Not really a typo, just English insisting on confusing everybody :) That is a genitive which is not a genitive... Tnx for pointing out.
    – virolino
    Commented Sep 3 at 11:05
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You've asked for feedback; that's great! You've got some negative feedback from both the Scrum Master and Tech Lead; that's not unusual. You haven't said whether this critical feedback was constructive or not. From what you said it seems like it is just a personal attack or they are just bashing you; if so that is bad.

Your SM and TL have a responsibility to be fair to you and to help you. In fact this should be a pre-requisite for the TL getting that job, being able to handle team members who make mistakes for whatever reason, maybe they are new, inexperienced, haven't been mentored well, or just picked up bad habits.

Purely negative feedback (eg, "that was rubbish" or "you're doing bad") is a waste of time. It helps nobody. It is the TL's job to turn that into actionable feedback. They should solve the problem of your poor performance by;

  1. Telling you what you did wrong in a courteous and professional way.
  2. Help you understand why it is wrong, and what the correct approach would be.
  3. Coach you to be a better professional who learns and improves.

Don't focus on the fact that you made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. Try to be professional about it and get help from the TL and maybe other seniors in the team.

Ideally your TL should be doing this already, but then again, everyone makes mistakes. Maybe they TL handled this badly too? The TL should be good at situations such as this, but don't assume that they are.

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