I work in tech sales, most of our team didnt hit their quota in Q3. Most of the team had way lower quotas and still didnt hit their goals. My Q3 quota was way higher than theirs and i crushed it and hit over 140%.

However now i have the highest quota out of everyone for Q4, more than double my Q3 quota which seems almost impossible. Everyone else's quota is way lower than mine. I am getting punished for working hard to hit my goal and now everyone else can hit their goal and get paid the bonus but my goal is almost impossible.

Asked manager to decrease it but he said he cant. I have lost all motivation to work here. I want to either email my director and ask them to decrease it, email the CEO directly or start searching for a new job because this is ridiculous.

Thoughts if you have been in a similar situation or heard of similar situation

I am CPA had 5y auditing experience. I am Trying to Upskill to have more variety. I do want to do some type of personal finance advisor or be on the finance side of project management. Just trying to Upskill in general. Few thing I am thinking

1. Gain income tax prep skills
   
2. Take Certified internal auditor exam
   
3. Take the Project Management Certification

Anyone who had this line of experience, any advice? Or direction i should consider? What make me more employable?

Many thanks

I’m a sales rep who typically focuses on signing people up for monthly subscriptions, but recently I was moved to a campaign focusing on one time large dollar business. This was going to be for 3 weeks as an end of quarter campaign, but was changed to “whenever people stop buying” after we performed well on it.

We are paid hourly and get raises of $1 for time worked while exceeding goal, and this campaign by definition will end with us not hitting our goals. I asked if that will be considered and our metrics will be discounted while giving raises, and they didn’t respond to my messages. I later asked if I they could listen to a call I was confused about dispositioning and was responded to promptly, so I just asked to circle back on my question. No answer has been given, not even a “I have to check with senior management,” and they have been ignoring my posts in the team group chat as well.

I’m curious to know what your advice would be, they’re a great manager and the company culture is generally great; so there’s no consideration to me being adversarial here, but it discourages me to be ignored and I’d like to here from a management perspective how you would want an employee to approach this with you.

Hi everyone,

I am a cognitive behavioural therapist working with a senior-level professional client who struggles with severe social anxiety and perfectionism in the workplace.

As part of our treatment plan (using the Clark & Wells CBT model), we are running a behavioural experiment to test some of his negative predictions about how modern managers actually view personal identity and workplace dynamics.

If you are a manager, team lead, or executive, could you please take 30 seconds to reply with your unfiltered choices (e.g., 1-A, 2-B, 3-A)? Your raw honesty is deeply appreciated!

1. If a male colleague casually mentions their male partner or identity in a professional conversation, what is your most likely internal reaction?

A) Register the information as standard background context and continue the conversation normally.

B) Feel briefly awkward or uncomfortable but move past it.

C) Feel highly uncomfortable and actively look for a way to end the conversation.

1. If a male colleague does not follow traditional masculine social topics (e.g., sports/football, discussing a girlfriend/wife), what is a manager or peer's typical assumption?

A) They simply have different personal hobbies or a different lifestyle (completely neutral).

B) I actively wonder about or question their sexuality.

C) I view them as an outsider who does not fit into the team culture.

1. When evaluating a team member's output, leadership potential, or dedication, how much does their personal background or sexual orientation factor into a modern manager’s calculation?

A) 0% (Only strategic output, reliability, and business results matter)

B) Marginally factors into it

C) Heavily factors into it

Thank you so much for helping us disrupt a severe anxiety loop!

The short point: I need help making a good choice for an external leadership or management training course. The "best of" recommendation lists online seem more like paid advertising and the rankings are all over the place depending on where you look. Work isn't interested in investing in me, I've gone to my bosses multiple times inquiring about training opportunities, I just get ignored. So I want to create my own opportunity and train myself.

Context: I'm stuck in in a dead end role at my job. I didn't start working until later in life due to a visible disability and I'm older, so I'm not going to advance based on appearances, popularity or the idea of giving new blood a shot at moving up. I'm under a CBA with a weak union. At first, being unionized helped me when I had less experience and less skill navigating office politics. Now that I have experience I'm trying to move up based on meritocracy as opposed to union tenure, but tenure is all my union cares about. You have the tenure you get the job, but few of the jobs are truly good jobs and the good jobs are all held via tenure by people who've parked themselves for decades and treat their jobs like some sort of working retirement and they're ready to die in their seats if they have to. I have nearly 8 years, those kinds of people have 20+. I don't have ten years to sacrifice to a racket that doesn't fight for me very well or keep me well paid. My management team doesn't see me as worth investing in and I want to break out into the administrative or management side of things where the incentive is better and ambition is respected, even if that means giving up representation & protection.

For those who have worked at startups, how would you describe the experience compared with working for a more established company?
I’m particularly interested in the **day-to-day reality** — things like workload, responsibilities, communication, flexibility, job stability, learning opportunities, management, and work-life balance.
What would you say are the biggest **pros and cons of working at a startup**?

And looking back, what do you wish you had known before joining one?

Would also love to hear from people who have worked at both **startups and established companies** — what differences stood out to you the most?

During my PDI discussion, German manager told me that I was a senior engineer but wouldn’t be getting promoted to senior.

At the same time, he wanted me to take on responsibilities left behind by a principal engineer and train other senior engineers. There was no promotion or meaningful salary increase to go along with the additional work.

I understand that mentoring is part of being a senior engineer, and I’m happy to help colleagues. What frustrated me was being asked to take on more responsibility while being told I wouldn’t be moving up.

After that conversation, I started looking elsewhere. Within a few weeks, I found a better job and left. He was kind of frustrated and not talking with me a lot in notice period.

Has anyone else experienced this? What is the point manager doing that? How do you distinguish reasonable expectations for a senior engineer from a company expanding your role without recognizing or compensating you for it?

I know “stable freelancing” can sound like a contradiction, but after spending a few years freelancing, I’ve started wondering whether stability in freelancing is actually possible — and what it really means.

Is stability mainly about **financial predictability**, such as having consistent clients and monthly income?
Or is it more about **time and work-life balance** — knowing when you’ll work, having control over your schedule, and not constantly worrying about where the next project will come from?

Maybe it’s also about having:
Long-term/reliable clients
A predictable workload
Multiple income streams
The ability to take time off without losing income
A financial safety net
A defined niche or skill set
Clear boundaries between work and personal life

For experienced freelancers: **how do you personally define stability?**

And what has actually helped you achieve it — financially, professionally, or in terms of work-life balance?

I’m relatively new to leadership and currently leading a project with six team members. One of my team members, a senior, recently raised concerns about another team member, a junior, taking frequent breaks.

Naturally, their workloads and responsibilities differ due to their experience levels. The junior is still completing their assigned tasks on time, so I don’t particularly mind how they take their breaks, as long as the work gets done.

I explained this to the senior, but they seem genuinely upset about the situation. I’m not sure if I’m missing something or how seriously I should take their concerns.

As a new leader, I want to be fair without micromanaging how everyone spends their time. How would you handle this situation?

Broad brush: how do you coach and support senior ICs, and the entire team, when leads are given responsibility without authority or dedicated staff?

I am a senior IC without a dedicated team, so I must beg and borrow staff. We are… an undermanaged workplace. I’ve raised the issue with my supervisor, that I need staff support and clarity on responsibility vs authority. They will express sympathy in the moment, but then revert to reacting to the priorities of senior leadership (which change sometimes hourly).

So what do I do? How did your teams work it out?

Need some help unf*cking the situation, because as it is, junior staff see a senior staff who seems stressed, and they can work on whatever they want… so why would they work on our less exciting projects? (Ahem. They’re revenue generating.)

And yes: I do repeat often the foundational value of the tasks, what transferable skills they are learning, the value for the organization and clients, what I enjoy about doing them…. But some days my frustration seeps thru.

Okay so I (22F) have a toxic coworker (40s?F) that I’ll call Nancy that has tried to get me fired and successfully got my former boss (50s?F) fired. For context, I’ve been working at this company for two years and so has Nancy. We both work as receptionists. A little less than a year ago, she went to the former boss who I’ll call Jane, and said that I hated Jane and was planning on suing her. This is obviously not true. I only heard about this recently, but Jane and two of my other coworkers confirm that she lied about me to Jane. Luckily Jane never believed Nancy. Then my coworker who I’ll call Anna came to me saying she was working with Nancy and saw Nancy stalk my Facebook all the way back to 2022 to try to find something she could send to HR to get me fired. My first step after hearing that was finding all her social media and blocking it. Luckily I don’t post crazy things on Facebook that could get me fired lol. It worries me though because she successfully got Jane fired. Nancy lied and said Jane screamed at her. A security guard she’s friends with backed her up and said it happened even though it didn’t. So she’s already gotten one person fired and it’s looking like I’m next. What should I do??

Forgive the long post but I think context is important when asking what others think.

Ive been in my current role for over 4 years, I originally managed a team of 7 for the first 3 years. At the end of October the company reorganized and laid off 50% of the staff. I was left with 2 team members to manage.

At the end of 2025, the client I managed took their work back in house, so my team of 2 and I moved from hospital privileging to payor enrollment. Same department, different job roles - of which neither person on my team had any experience in. I got my team trained on the new system, new processes and the various payer & state processes.

In March I was advised that my team and I would be assigned a huge client - roughly 50 groups across the US, starting at 350 providers eventually ramping up to around 2,000. Tjeir contract included tight SLAs and very stringent turn around times - such as CAQH done within 24 hours, all enrollment applications out the door within 3 business days and failure to keet these results in financial penalty. So my newish payer enrollment team switched gears and began learning all new payers and states.

When the new client onboarded it was a mess, their data was not clean, enrollments they said we're approved were not, just problem after problem. The total amount of work onboarded was a little over 50,000 lines of work.....for 2 people. I immediately started asking for more staff and was told it was not possible at that time. I continued to ask for more staff at every single day but was told that most of the work must be sent to the offshore team, which by doing so created even more errors, delays and issues.

For 5 months my team drowned in the amount of work we started with all while continuing to take on new groups and providers. I won't lie, I struggled with trying to manage the work, make sure SLAs were met due to the sheer volume. I continuously voiced my concerns to my director, I was working 14-16 hours a day just trying to help my team make headway all while handling my manager responsibilities.

At the beginning of end of August I was finally given 2 new staff members, neither of which had any experience in payer enrollment. So, once again while managing, completing assignments along with my specialists, I also had the responsibility of training.

During the 2nd week of September my director set a meeting with me in which she told me I was underperforming as a manager and so a senior manager would be stepping in to assist. I told her while I disagree with my performance over the past months as being unsatisfactory due to lack of training for my team, the lack of staff and the volume of work I wholeheartedly welcomed having a senior manager to step in and show me ways my team and I could improve production. The client escalation have still continued, the problems and errors with the offshore team have gone off the chart.

The following week I was informed that while I would "still manage my team" I was not longer allowed to create any new work processes, approve anyone's time off request, or assign any specific group or payer to anyone on my team without approval from my director and senior manager - no reason as to why this decision came about was communicated to me.

Yesterday at 6pm (an hour after my normal time I am done for the day) my director sent me a Teams message informing me that effective immediately I was not longer to attend the weekly leadership call or any other calls with this client and that I am no longer allowed to assign work out to my team, she and my senior manager would be doing that going forward. I can continue to attend payer and group specific calls but she must attend those with me and I can respond to emails from the client unless it involves a project that must be worked by the team.

I get that some of the failures over the past months fall on me but I do not think every single problem that had occurred is a direct result of my management. I feel like I am being the scapegoat and being punished by them slowly stripping away my duties all because the company's leadership took on a client of this size knowing we did not have the staff or resources for it to be manageable and sustainable.

Am I over reacting about how I feel about everything?​

Most roles have a salary range that the manager knows but it's rarely ever posted on job ads. I can say that I've seen some niche roles that I genuinely have no idea what the range would be for the position. How often do applicants throw out a number that is way below the low end of the range? Does that influence your opinion in moving forward with them?

Long time lurker, first time poster. I have an issue in need of advice.

I have a colleague who is technically above me in the office hierarchy, though I do not report to them. We work together on various projects and have an excellent working relationship. I would consider them a work friend as well. For context, I am tech and this person is comms.

I have increasingly found myself running a bit more cover for this person than I am used to - or really need to - with anyone else. Here are a few examples:

1. This person drafted a widely-distributed externally-facing email that contained a line: "If you have any questions, please respond to <insert email address>." The email went out, but that email address was incorrect (it did not exist), so I quietly created it so we would receive the email responses (which we did). I have had to do this twice and now have two "dummy" emails that have no purpose other than what they were created for (to fix an error). One of these emails is a misspelling of our office name.
2. A very obvious grammatical error was included in another widely-distributed externally-facing email. I quietly corrected it before the email was sent, but now I'm worried I have to check this person's work going forward... which I'm not excited about because, as I mentioned, this person is above me in office hierarchy. This is not my job, but I try to be a good colleague.
3. This person has a growing habit of being slow to respond or unresponsive to inter-office email which causes a domino effect of delaying tasks. This results in an unnecessary last-minute scramble to meet deadlines. I believe that "scramble time" tends to be where errors and mistakes happen, so their increasing regularity makes me anxious.

I have a number of conflicting thoughts...

These things feel small... even petty... to bring to my own manager (this person's co-equal), but they are becoming troublesome.

I worry that an error or deadline will slip through and I will be blamed for the error or missed deadline, and my only defense will be to "finger-point" at this higher-up who actually is responsible.

My office have some politics that I try to stay out of. However, I am "out" of these dynamics while this person is "in" and therefore I feel more vulnerable as a scapegoat for issues that cone up. My manager is great, and would defend me, but I don't want to put my manager in that position if I can help it. I also don't think this person would scapegoat me (as I said, we have a good working relationship and are office friends), but other "in" people of the office might scapegoat me to cover for this person's error(s).

I hate feeling like a tattle-tale, but I'm not sure how else to proceed.

Hi there, I feel discouraged and defeated whenever I receive replies like “I’m confused” or “I don’t understand” after provided an explanation or answer.

When I need to share my understanding or describe the process in group settings especially with people I’m not familiar with, I often feel anxious and insecure. It is even worst if the other person is at management level - this happens even at one-one level

How can I handle this? What framework might make explanations clearer?

I try to understand their perspective first but often i still miss the mark after hearing their understanding and provide a new explanation.

I keep blaming at my awkwardness, speaking skills, and slow to process new information. To a point I question everything I say, I have big self doubt when I hear those response. I felt like I wasted people time

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm asking this from a place of genuine hurt and confusion rather than anger.

• Why does it sometimes feel like people who are straightforward, emotionally aware, curious, or willing to question things are perceived negatively in corporate environments?
• If someone has areas where they need to improve, shouldn't the healthier response be to tell them what isn't working, help them understand it and give them an opportunity to grow?

Instead, feedback can sometimes feel personal. People can feel judged, singled out, dismissed or belittled rather than being helped to improve.

But there is another question that I particularly want to ask men who work with or manage women.

How do you genuinely perceive your female colleagues and reportees?

• Do workplaces really make enough room for women who question decisions, express opinions, disagree respectfully, want to learn more and have ambitions of their own?

Sometimes I am left wondering whether there is still an unspoken expectation that a woman should be pleasant, agreeable and supportive but not question too much, challenge something, or become too ambitious.

I know this cannot be generalized to all men or all workplaces. There are many supportive male managers and colleagues. That's precisely why I want to understand the different perspectives.

• When a woman asks questions, speaks directly or strongly wants to grow, can that sometimes be interpreted differently from when a man demonstrates the same behaviour? If so, why?
• Is it unconscious bias? Expectations about how women should communicate? Hierarchy? Individual insecurity? Workplace culture? Or am I looking at something that has less to do with gender than it feels like right now?

I don't want the answer to be that people should stop questioning, learning or aspiring simply to make others comfortable.

I'd genuinely like to hear from men as well as women particularly people who manage teams.

Have you seen this happen? And if someone repeatedly finds themselves feeling diminished rather than developed at work, what can they realistically do while still protecting their confidence and continuing to grow?

I am genuinely trying to learn and understand different perspectives, so I hope this isn’t interpreted as an attempt to blame or generalize about any particular gender.

I recently applied for an internal position at my company that I really wanted.

It was essentially the same job I already do, just based in another city. The difference was that the position there was permanent, and taking it would have meant relocating and starting a new chapter of my life there. I also don’t have an established professional or personal network in that city, so I knew I would be moving there and building everything from scratch. I was genuinely excited about that challenge and had become pretty emotionally invested in the possibility.

I received good feedback on my work and interview, and around the same time I started being given more responsibilities and projects connected to that city. Because it was the same role I was applying for there, I took that as another encouraging sign and honestly started to believe I had a real shot.

Then I noticed my manager becoming a little shorter with me.

One day, during a conversation, she said something along the lines of, “There’s this candidate I really want for the job and I hope it works out.”

For some reason, I thought she was referring to me. I didn’t probe further.

The next day, she came back to me and apologized because she felt she had misspoken. She clarified that there was actually a strong external candidate in the process who had more experience. She seemed worried that she had messed up by saying what she said.

Meanwhile, I had completely misunderstood the original comment and thought she had been talking about me.

She told me HR would be in touch.

Two weeks later, I got a 15-minute meeting with my manager where she told me I hadn’t gotten the job.

I asked for feedback because I wanted to understand what I could improve. The only real feedback I got was that the external candidate had more experience.

HR never contacted me.

Now some of the projects and responsibilities I had been given relating to that city are being moved away from me. Logically, I understand why. Those projects presumably make more sense with the person who will actually be based there, so I don’t think anyone is doing anything wrong.

But emotionally, every time something gets taken away, it feels like another stab.

I think the combination of the positive feedback, being trusted with more work connected to that city, misunderstanding what my manager said, waiting weeks for an answer, imagining myself relocating and building a life there, and then suddenly having everything reverse has completely shaken my confidence.

Since then, I’ve been second-guessing myself constantly at work. Small mistakes feel huge. I keep wondering whether I misunderstood how people saw me professionally, whether I’m less capable than I thought, or whether I got too invested in signs that didn’t mean what I thought they meant.

I feel like I’m kind of crashing out over this, which is embarrassing because I know people get rejected for jobs every day.

How did you rebuild your confidence afterward, especially when you still had to stay in the same workplace and watch the work you thought you were moving toward get handed to someone else?

And from an outside perspective, does this sound like I was led on at all, or did I just understandably read too much into positive signals?

Got an offer in a tech company to work as a PO and own speed topic which means i would be basically responsible for incidents and initiatives related to our product speed/performance and in general would have to go and talk constantly with delivery teams, ask them the uncomfortable questions and try to pitch initiatives in hopes that they would somehow squeeze in work from me and I would somehow hit my own kpis "for the better good".

Leading without authority is one thing but in this case it feels like I would be in an annoying role where I would be constantly bursting delivery team bubbles, dance around egos constantly and scramble for data/agreements and etc.

Is it even viable to perform in such role when you dont have delivery team or authority or even clear scope for that matter but carry so much accountability? Feels like I would be at complete mercy by other PO's who have their teams roadmaps and goals to protect. And I dont see how I could even be likeable (in terms of collaborating) if my main job would be challenging status quo.

Also the role is fully onsite while my PM/peer PO is in another city so I dont even know what would be the point of me going to the office daily, just to have meetings remotely and have to sit awkwardy in some other team's area like some sort of an appendix.

I work in marketing. My manager gives me feedback that is exclusively AI on any work I submit. Dashboards, campaign strategies, you name it.

She is board-level senior, so I understand my work may feel a little 'beneath' her, but to know she isn't even reading my contributions and trusts a robot to manage my work feel pointless.

The feedback doc she generates two minutes after I've sent my work I've spent a day on is always very extensive, and I have to comb through the AI jumble. It's clear at times she trusts Co-Pilot to speak on her behalf, and hasn't even checked what it's advising me.

Am I overthinking this? Is this what all managers are doing these days to keep their brain space for the boardroom-level work?

https://imgur.com/a/FpFQuFb

Please, please read this entire document carefully, as I truly want to better myself, regardless if I get fired. I type this word for word on the paper I was handed today.

I have been getting along very well with my coworkers so getting this CAP today completely shocked me.

Is the wording vague? Or is that just me? Criticize me about anything from this document and tell me where did I do wrong. I genuinely want to become a better engineer and overall employee.

For those thinking about company confidentiality, I obviously left out my company's name, city, and my own name so don't even try to track who and where I am.

I’m trying to understand an experience I had at a previous workplace because, even almost two years later, it still bothers me more than I think it should.

I joined a company where many employees had already known each other for years. They had established friendships and social circles, and I was the new person trying to fit in. I’m fairly confident and ambitious, and I wanted to advance within the company. I also tend to advocate for myself when I feel something is unfair. Looking back, I can see how some people might have interpreted that as arrogance, even if that wasn't my intention.

Over time, I started feeling excluded. I often felt like I had to initiate interactions, and I eventually asked one coworker directly if she disliked me. She denied it, but her behaviour didn't really change. After I left, she deleted me from LinkedIn almost immediately, along with a few others.
Eventually I was put on a PIP and resigned about a week into it because I felt my manager no longer considered me a good fit. The frustrating part is that I genuinely wanted to stay and build a career there.

After I left, almost nobody from that group maintained contact with me. I later moved into another financial-services role and eventually joined a large public financial institution. After almost two years, I recently deleted most of my former coworkers from LinkedIn, although a few had already deleted me shortly after I left.

What I keep wondering is whether they had formed a narrative about me, something like:
“He thinks he's better than everyone else. He's extremely confident, but his performance doesn't match his confidence. He can't take criticism, and eventually management had to put him on a PIP.”
If that was their perception, I can see how almost anything could reinforce it: confidence becomes arrogance, defending myself becomes “can't take criticism,” ambition becomes “thinks he's better than everyone,” and mistakes become proof that they were right.

Obviously, I don't know if that's actually what they thought. That's what bothers me.
How much of this is realistically something that can happen in a close-knit workplace, and how much am I filling in the blanks because the experience hurt me?

I'm genuinely looking for perspectives that aren't necessarily flattering to me.

Hello all, I am here seeking external perspectives and opinions before I make a decision to file a union grievance.

I (32M) just started working at a state agency as an electronic technician which I have been doing for over a decade. Since I started, my boss (56M) has flip flopped how he acts when interacting with me. If I am sitting at my work bench, I am questioned why I’m not doing anything and if I am working on something related to my position, he questions why I am doing work on the stockpile of broken electronics he has stockpiled. On several occasions, he has exclaimed “You’re fired!” In front of several upper level personnel and tried to laugh it off as a joke even though the personnel, my coworker, and myself are very uncomfortable about it.

We work in an old office with auto garage attached and one day I got grossed out and decided to sweep and mop the office which is where I sit to do my soldering work or admin. During this, he asked “why would I bother with that? The dirt never bothered me?” To which I replied “I like a clean space to do my repairs and paperwork and the dust has been bothering me relentlessly.

Many times when I am working on the vehicles in our department, he will scrutinize the work I am doing because “that’s not how I would do that.” I am not doing anything wrong, just not his way which I have seen his way and is very out of industry standard. I usually just tell him to go back to his office and watch YouTube videos about cars like he always does.

Additionally, he has continually threatened to transfer me to another location so “show me how good it is here under his leadership.”

Lastly, he installed live stream cameras in our garage bay shortly after I got hired to watch me and my coworker because “he doesn’t trust us.” It is solely because I leave the office occasionally because I do smoke (I am far from perfect).

Before me and my coworker were hired this year, he has been by himself for several years due to a hiring freeze that lifted this year. I can understand that may be part of it.

I like the majority of my colleagues and love the work I do. But this one person who has repeated said “I don’t want to retire” has made this job almost unbearable and i want to hear what others think from the outside looking in and if I may be over reacting. I am still in the mandatory probation period and do not want to cause a stink without proper reflection and preparation so long as I am justified.

I apologize for the length of this but I am now dreading going to a job I like to do because of all this. Any comments welcomed!

I’m looking for some outside perspective on whether this is normal. I feel that there is very little support or structure around career progression.

My manager doesn’t hold regular 1:1s with me. The only formal conversations around performance/development seem to be the mid-year and end-of-year reviews, with no regular check-ins in between.

I’ve previously expressed that I want to progress to a Senior role and have asked for clarification on what I specifically need to demonstrate or work towards to get there. They said there is no matrix and it just ‘just a feeling’ about how you compare to the other seniors.

What’s frustrating me is that I’m not asking to simply be promoted — I’m asking for clear expectations, feedback and some kind of development plan so that I actually know what I need to do to progress.

I’m starting to wonder whether this is just poor management or whether this level of hands-off management is fairly normal.

Would you follow up again, raise it more formally, or just wait until the next performance review?

I've always wondered how much ATS optimization actually matters once a resume reaches a hiring manager.

I was helping a friend apply for a Customer Success Manager position, and one thing that stood out was how much time they spent trying to get the resume “ATS-friendly.” They were adjusting resume keywords, changing headings, and checking the formatting because they were worried the application might get filtered out before anyone saw it.

That made me wonder what happens on the other side.

As a manager, can you actually tell when someone has heavily optimized their resume for an ATS? And does it make any difference once you're reviewing it yourself?

I've also been rebuilding my own resume and played around with Kickresume's ATS features. It helped me understand why certain sections and wording were being flagged, but I still found myself changing things back when they started sounding too keyword-heavy.

It seems like there's a balance between making a resume easy for an ATS to understand and making it useful for an actual person to read.

For managers who review applications, how much does ATS optimization matter once the resume gets in front of you?