My first job was toxic

Hey everyone,

I recently graduated and started working as a software engineer at a small company. The company is a consultancy, and most of the team works on client sites. However, me and a team of 6 others work at the boss’s house—yes, it’s a bit strange, but the house is huge and has an office space… sort of. It’s just a large round table where we all gather. Before joining, I had the chance to meet everyone at a family event, and I spoke with a senior engineer who worked on the software application I would be handling. He jokingly told me that I’d regret it after a week, but when I asked him again, he said it was a joke.

When I started working, the senior engineer didn’t really help me much. He just told me to figure things out on my own. He asked me to work on the front end of the application, which I did, but he made me redo it multiple times. Eventually, I told the boss about the issue, and after the boss got involved, the project moved forward quickly, partly because of my efforts, as some of my colleagues mentioned. This made the senior engineer jealous, and he began sabotaging my work and blaming me for things. He also started bullying me, like pushing his office chair into me, and even made racist comments, turning others against me. I reported it to the boss, but not much changed.

Fast forward to last Friday: the senior engineer got upset with me in a meeting because I didn’t follow his instructions, and I lost my temper. I said some things I regret, but during my 5 months there, my doctor had already recommended I find another job due to depression. I was experiencing panic attacks at work. This Monday, the boss wanted to discuss the incident from Friday and presented a paper accusing me of being the problem. I ended up telling him to fire me, but he didn’t. He said he was giving me another chance, but I ended up resigning instead. He was upset, and I became unprofessional in the process, which I regret. I told him the work environment was toxic, and that really seemed to hit him.

Now, I feel really lost. I still live with my parents, so I don’t have the pressure of paying rent, but this experience has really affected me. It was my first job after university, and it’s been emotionally draining. I know I should have left earlier, but it’s still hard to process.

Any advice or support would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.

I wrote it on chatgpt and then asked it to rewrite it for me since I am not english speaker 🙂