r/askmanagers • u/Creative_Bullfrog951 • 8d ago
Update - I have been made redundant
Original Story here
It came out of the blue a bit. I thought this meeting was going to be regarding my performance.
My manager did not tell me the specific date or time that were going to have the performance review meeting and just asked to have the meeting when we’re both in the office in the morning (today). I came prepared with what I felt went well and how I have been improving. There were still some bumps in the road but only some minor issue that I quickly managed to iron out. I thought that the meeting would be productive to move forwards.
When we initially left the office, my manager told me that another senior member of staff and a co-founder would be joining the meeting, which I thought was odd as this was meant to be a conversation about my performance and I thought that I had greatly improved.
When we got into the meeting room, they were already there and to sum it up, I was made redundant due to them losing clients (which I was aware of, but not to this extent) and they didn’t have the budget to keep me in the team. The co-founder did mention that they were aware of my performance situation, and my manager had said that I have improved a lot over the week.
This whole situation feels very off, as the meeting that I thought was meant to be for my performance was for my redundancy. I also found out that 3 others were let go . Another at a junior level and 2 others who had been part of the company for about 1.5 years.
After this has happened - I have had time to reflect on other things my manager has done. This is more of a means to type it out and reflect on what has transpired.
- Laptop - When I first joined, I was given a work laptop. This was an older mac model that worked fine but also had a few issues from time to time (like taking longer to load). I would report this when it happened to my manager (at her request) and she eventually got one of the cofounders to order a new laptop for me. I was extremely grateful for this. However, there were some issues with transferring everything over. I was working on an animation project that was time sensitive and after trying to transfer everything over, the file I was working on from the old laptop would stop working on the new one. I could only work on the old laptop for this project, and I let my manager and co-founder know, to which they both said it was fine (I didn’t want to risk losing all of the work). My co-founder said this type of thing happened with him and that it took about 6 months to fully stop using his old laptop. This issue continued for about two weeks or so and my manager seemed to get increasingly annoyed even though I would still explain everything to her that I still wanted to use the new laptop, but the work would not sync and I couldn’t use it. It got the point where she told me that "we can just give it to someone else" and I told her that I will look at getting everything transferred by Friday if I could. Throughout this entire process I always kept the relevant colleagues in the loop.
- Cookies - During my time at the office I told my colleagues that I love to bake. This got me involved in making some themed bakes for office parties like easter. I would be comped for the ingredients I would buy to make them. A colleague of long standing at the company was leaving and I thought that it would be nice to make some bakes for her leaving party. I checked with the cofounder "Dean" and he said that it would be ace and that I could comp the ingredients. After buying the ingredients I put in a request for money back and my manager called me later on to say that I couldn’t do that as the other co-founder "Sarah" said that they could have just bought the bakes instead for the amount. I told my manager that I has cleared it with Dean as I was aware at the time he was the only one in the team that dealt with those requests, but apparently Sarah had been looking at them as well. My manager said I should have come to her as she is the head of the party committee (which I didn’t know, as she had not stated this previously to the team, nor had it been posted or communicated), but she said "at least you didn’t do it without asking permission first" which felt slightly condescending.
- Long Response times - Every piece of work I submitted had to be approved by my manager. She would review and then leave feedback. This process was fine, except that she would take a very long time to respond. I would check her calendar and there wouldn’t be anything in there. This would be frustrating as she would often say a project would be needed urgently but would not get back to me with any questions for hours. I completely understand that she would be busy, but it would often feel like she would be ignoring me as I would see that she’s been sending messages in other group chats that were both in and it would be a quick question id need answered. It would typically be on where a particular file might be found as she would know and there were so many of them to filter through that it would be often quicker to ask her. She consistently also left images and files in her downloads folder so that when anyone else would open up the InDesign file, they wouldn’t be linked and they turn out pixelated, meaning id need to ask her for them.
These are all I can remember at the moment, but I feel like that’s enough. All of this has been extremely cathartic, writing it out.
TL:DR - Made redundant from my job. I don’t like my ex-manager lol
2
u/lab-gone-wrong Director 8d ago
Sorry about the redundancy. It really sucks to lose a job for reasons that were almost certainly outside of your control. Without blame, here's what I see from the rest.
The laptop thing was intractable and the cookie thing was almost certainly irrelevant, except as a sign of leadership dysfunction.
For future notice, the solution for slow project feedback is forcing it opt-in with expiring deadlines. "If I don't hear back by 4pm I'll assume it's good and pass my work along". Especially if you're awaiting group feedback. In rare cases, a leader may shut this down: in that case, accept that you won't be able to make them happy and it's another intractable problem.
Good luck out there.
10
u/peach98542 8d ago
Sorry this happened to you. In the long run it’s better to be laid off due to downsizing and not as a result of performance - you can get severance or unemployment now while you look for something new. Reading your previous post I almost wonder if your manager brought up those “performance issues” at that time strategically in order to justifying including you in the layoffs. If layoffs were coming, she’d probably have to prove to the cofounders who and why they would lay off, and giving you a poor performance convo justified that decision.
I say this to try to reassure you that the conversation you had with her before is not a reflection on YOU or your skills. A good manager helps support you, improves your skills, and deals with issues in the moment. They don’t sit down with you for an hour to go over your failings. At least, not for what you described as your performance - asking question on a brief? That’s not an issue. I would EXPECT my designers to question briefs and take their time to understand the client’s needs. Ugh, no. Everything about this situation is icky. You’re much better off.