The manager I hated and the lesson he taught me

How a tough manager changed my approach to leadership (and why I’m grateful now)

I was still a Software Engineer.

It all started with a code review.

I’d spent days working on a complex feature. Hundreds of lines of code, edge cases covered, performance tweaks in place. I was proud of it. I hit “Create Pull Request” and waited for feedback, expecting maybe a comment or two.

What I got back was brutal.

“Over-engineered. Too many moving parts. Refactor.”

That was it. No “nice work.” No “good attempt”. Just a hard stop.

I sat there, fuming. I thought, “Does this guy enjoy tearing people down?”

But this was just the beginning.