Know your manager before you join.

clear instructions and give credits to the team, generous about conference traveling , engaged in team building.

Was condescending and rude. Made multiple team members cry. Was unfair and punishing to those who weren’t her friend.

Absolutely one of the worst managers I've ever come across. The favoritism is terrible under him. He chooses a couple of people who end up being his "yes men" and they get all the work. This translates to promos as well. I've seen countless times these "yes" men actually doing nothing while the rest of the team is grinding hard to deliver results This guy is very racist and sexist. Very rude and honestly crude comments about everyone around, but particularly towards women. Many people ended up getting screwed over due to this guy

He is so desperate to build up his own achievements that he keeps taking credit for the team’s work while putting ridiculous pressure on everyone else. Every time upper management comes up with a new goal, he immediately pushes us to be the first team to hit it. And of course, just meeting the goal is never enough. We have to exceed it, because he needs another achievement he can point to while trying to get himself an SDM role. What makes the whole thing even more ridiculous is that he is still a Sr SDE and was only promoted about a year ago. Our previous manager and strongest Sr SDEs left, and he immediately saw an opportunity and aggressively went after it. Then another SDM, who has already created a strong impression of favoritism through her management and promotion decisions, backed him and made him our manager less than a year after his own promotion. It is honestly a joke watching how promotions work in this org. Someone becomes a new L6 SDE, and almost immediately we are already talking about turning that person into an L6 SDM. Meanwhile, the rest of the team is the one doing the actual work, dealing with the pressure, and generating the results that he gets to present upward as his leadership achievements. This is exactly why the org has become such a toxic place. Everything is about visibility, credit grabbing, impressing upper management, and building the next promotion case. People are constantly pushed harder so someone above them can look good. When leadership starts rewarding this kind of behavior, it destroys trust, morale, and any sense that promotions are actually based on real leadership or merit.