My teammate loses his temper and yells during 1:1 calls between us so I told my mgr but they aren’t going to do anything what should I do?

I have a team mate. We are devs. The project we are on is high profile and extremely stressful. A couple of months ago, my teammate and I got on a 1:1 call to debug something. I’m asking him basic debugging questions so I can understand the problem and he gets angry about it. To the point where I felt the situation needed to be diffused so I said I was asking so I could get caught up to where he was on the problem because I’m trying to help you. This calmed him down slightly but later on the call something came up about the project that sent him into a raging tirade. I was floored someone would act this way at work. It was like 10-15 minutes of him ranting non stop. After that I told my team lead what happened and that it was unprofessional and he needed to treat me respectfully going forward.

There have been multiple other small instances of issues that have come up since then where he’s been rude and belittling and unhelpful. I mostly let it roll off and pushed back when he was rude. These were annoying but not anything as a woman dev I’ve never experienced before and not directly impacting the work.

Last week we were on a call to merge some work and he absolutely lost his shit again but much worse this time. He was full on raging about everything and I kept saying I need to go and he’d say “ok ya we should go” then launch into another rage. I tried diffusing it or redirecting him but it was not possible and tbh, he was so angry I felt like if I hung up that would make his rage even worse.

This week I’ve been obviously reluctant to get on any 1:1 call with him and this is not good for team collaboration or efficiency as you can imagine. I’m now the team lead so I need to be able to interact with him. Furthermore, as I’ve started to take on more of a leadership role I’m noticing more instances of dismissal of me and ignoring my requests.

He never loses his temper when anyone else is present. He also never loses his temper on anyone else. It’s also worth noting that I’m a woman and while there are other women on the team they are the team leadership.

I told my team lead and sent her some screenshots of his slack messages. She reached out to the project EM who spoke with me this morning. She said since no one has had a direct conversation with him we have to do that first. Also she said I should record or transcribe any 1:1 call I have with him. That’s pretty much it.

I told her I did not want to ever be in a 1:1 call with him ever again during the call and that his treatment of me wasn’t only a problem of unprofessional behavior that affected me personally it was also affecting team collaboration and efficiency. I described his behavior as hostile and aggressive.

She sent me a message after she met with him that he was “unaware he was making me uncomfortable.” He definitely knew I wasn’t comfortable because he would intermittently apologize during his rants then keep on going. And he definitely knows this is not acceptable behavior and he can control it. If he didn’t and he couldn’t he wouldn’t wait until we were on a 1:1 call to unleash it. Or send it as back channel slack messages.

Despite this it seems that they still expect me to get on 1:1 calls with him and they won’t remove him from the team, no plans for EAP referral or anything else.

What do I do next?

Posted Sep 1, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

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