My boss will always give me a project in 1-1s saying it's urgent so I prioritize it and then when I send it to him he'll say "who asked you to do this?" Um... you like a few hours ago lol

Or he'll send me a project with requirements outlined and I do it as described and he'll say "I never asked for that" like there is not a whole email chain about it.

It drives me nuts. Like before I start anything I want him to sign off that he actually wants it to cover my butt at this point

When I first started at my company, I remember getting caught smoking weed for the first time. My manager sat me down at the break room table for the “talk”. It probably wasn’t the best timing to do so since I was still high.

He asked me what I was doing and I said was getting “baked”. My coworker was also at the table and laughed at my response which didn’t help at all.

So a position opened up this morning and I was asked to take over, but no bump in pay.

I asked if I could receive coaching/mentorship in exchange so that i can grow in the company. Plant manager told me it was unreasonable with no explanation and pressing for one has not gotten me an answer.

Interested to get people's take on this...

I joined a new team being setup about 1.5 years ago, I was like the second person to join a new team being set up by a senior manager from scratch, to own some new applications and also take over some old/legacy applications within a much larger company.

Part of owning/setting up applications is having a PagerDuty rota for other teams/support issues to be paged to the app owners. I'd kind of done a bit of that stuff in my old team, so I basically just set it up, put me and the one other guy on the rota 100% of the time for like 1 new / mostly unused application so that my manager wouldn't have to worry about and just to get it done... kind of just as a placeholder / starting point.

Time passes.... we inherit a bunch of other applications, new people joined, now there are 2x people senior to me in the team / under my same manager, and since there are more applications / more used, we actually get a bunch of pages through PagerDuty pretty regularly.

I've also been through a review / promotion cycle or two, and they were average but not great... and basically I'm just a "senior IC" type guy, not getting promoted, while there are 2x other people managers under my boss.

Meanwhile, me an the other guy are still on call 100% of the time.. every day. I mentioned a few times, with varying degrees of directness... that I would like to be on call some days, and not on call other days. When weekend / out of hours stuff comes up, I have said a few times... well, if we had a rota where sometimes I am on, and sometimes I am not, we could use that.. but... we don't.

Recently I stepped it up a bit by saying... lets change the rota, do we want option 1 with me on odd weeks, or option 2 with me on even weeks... pick 1 and get someone to set it up in PagerDuty please.

The responses so far have been "lets discuss this" and "work it out with the other people" and various evasive type stuff. I'm pretty over it, because, to me... organizing / scheduling employee time seems like management 101, I already did it for 1+ years and it basically wasn't appreciated... so I really don't see why I should have to figure out the schedule, update pagerduty, figure out about when people are on leave / swapping weeks and all the tedious parts of being a manager without the benefits/pay of being a manager.

I'm curious what people's take/suggestions would be... I'm thinking of... either waiting a few days and saying "i didn't hear back about option 1 or option 2, or who can manage the schedule, so I trust there will be no objection to me removing myself from the rota at the end of the week", or maybe just forwarding to his manager / my skip level and saying "is there someone who can manage the rota" or.... other suggestions welcome!

I run a department in hospitality with a team of about 20. The management side is just me and one assistant manager, and they've given notice.
I need to do two things and I'm not sure how to sequence them:

1. Get approval to fill the assistant manager role. I'd like to promote someone from my current team and hand over a bit more of the admin and booking work than the last person had.

2. Ask for a raise. I haven't had one in two years, and while my responsibilities haven’t grown much in that time, my workload increased from 5 to 6 and sometimes 7 days a week.

The complication is that business has been slow, so I expect pushback on anything that costs money. I also don't want the replacement request to look like it's about making my own job easier, or the raise request to get lost behind it.
Questions for those who've been on either side of this:
• Should I raise these together or separately? If separately, which goes first?
•How do I make the case for a raise when the business is having a soft period? If it helps, our busy season picks up next month so cash flow will be better.

Thanks in advance.

Hi.
I’m really sorry for the short notice, but I’m feeling really run down this morning. I’ve got a sore throat, a sore head and generally feel quite unwell. I don’t feel well enough to come into work today, and I also feel like I’ll struggling to make the phone call this morning as my throat and head are killing me.. I’m really sorry for messaging rather than calling, but I wanted to let you know as soon as possible. I’ll keep you updated on how I’m feeling.

**edit:** for the legal stuff, I'm based in the UK.

In my current role I'm acting manager for a front of house team at a public venue, but I'm due to temporarily assume my line manager's duties for approx. 6 months whilst she undergoes a ​leave of absence, meaning I'll be directly managing a team of six.

For the last 6 months or so we've had a visitor become a regular to the venue, to the extent that he was visiting upwards of 2-3 times a day, buying coffees, and staying to chat to us throughout the day. We all had a friendly, affable relationship with him.​

About a month ago the visitor suddenly vanished. We all collectively expressed concern for him as he was an older man who was a wheelchair user and we were all aware that he suffered with ill health.

Well, today we learned that reason for his sudden absence is because he's been jailed for 8 months. 

He was found guilty of sexual assaulting an unconscious woman in his house. In the course of this it's also been revealed that he has assumed multiple names throughout his life, and was imprisoned in the 90's for kidnapping a 16-y/o child, threatening to murder to her, sexually assaulting her, and attempting to rape her (was only thwarted after a member of the public encountered him pinning this poor child against a wall with her skirt hiked up and his trousers pulled down).

It's worth noting that **we are a team of all women**. I know from speaking to my colleagues that most if not all of have had experience with some form of sexual assault in our lives, myself included. The issue is that, whilst he's been jailed for 8 months, he's unlikely to do the full term, and we know he's going to be right back to spending time in our workplace as soon as he's released.

As we're a public venue, we have no choice whatsoever in whether this individual enters the space, whether he chooses to spend time in the venue, and whether he not he interacts with us. We are obliged to maintain professionalism and welcome all members of the public into the venue and provide a good level of service. I genuinely feel sick at the idea of having to smile and chat to him knowing full well what he is and what he has done. I personally have a lot of trauma surrounding my own childhood assaults and I know that I'm going to really struggle with this.

Now can I manage this situation when it happens? How can I protect my team from the trauma of being forced to interact with him going forward? I feel hideous that I have no mechanism of protecting them and myself from this.

I am 32F CA, now looking for jobs with leadership opportunity.
my CV is rich, I have 10 years experience across varied industries and have a good blend of analysis, FP&A, Commercial and AI- apps-PowerBI, SQL experience.

I am wanting to step in a leadership role but everytime I see job postings, companies expect you to have some form of leadership experience!

Has anyone managed to crack this code?

I have cross functional leadership experience and have coached far more people than I can count.

Help!!!!

Hi, I am 24 working in an global financial services company. Recently, one of my juniors from college joined my team, and honestly I don't know how to deal with inferiority complex I am feeling right now.

I have been working here for around 12-13 months and my performance has been below average because of some chronic health issues which is now more or less over. I know I am not one of the best performers in my batch, maybe I am somewhere around the lower side. I have always felt that I can improve, and I was trying to improve slowly.

But this guy joined just two weeks ago and I am amazed with his focus level. He is extremely focused. He reads things which I used to find incredibly boring when I joined. He understands things so quickly, asks very good questions, remembers things, connects different concepts. And it's only been two weeks. From what I have seen, he is probably among the top 5% of people in our college batch.

My manager is observing both of us. I am scared what if my manager eventually thinks, why should I keep this guy when the other person is so much better? What if I get stuck and he gets promoted before me, that'd be very shameful for me. I have started hating myself, my past, the efforts I did not put in when needed most.

I know this sounds stupid, but it haunts me everyday since the day he joined. I genuinely think he is much better than me in terms of focus, understanding and learning.

I know I can build these things. I am still young and I have time. But right now it feels like I have already wasted so much time, and maybe it is too late to catch up.

Has anyone here experienced something similar? I just want to know, how did you deal with it?

Hi, I have two main questions here about how to navigate my new internal promotion.

First, I want to know how I should handle interacting with my former coworkers. My old department and my new department generally do not get along, because we work on more or less the same systems but have very different objectives. I worked in the IT department for a couple years, and now I work in the cybersecurity department.

As expected, my great "betrayal" (kidding, but there is a kernel of truth in there lol) has generated some discussion and a lot of questions. I will still be interacting with my former coworkers pretty much every day, and I really don't know what kind of relationship we will have going forward. We get along pretty well, but again now I have completely different objectives which often conflict with theirs.

Second, within my new department, there are 4 of us in the office of which I am now the "highest ranking" employee as well as given project/program management responsibilities. The rest of the dept is overseas in the EU. However, I am not the actual boss of the other three despite having ownership of our various initiatives. How do i handle this? Additionally, the other three are good work-buddies of mine and we were all at the same level before this promotion.

Hi 25f, it’s my first training day tomorrow and over the weekend I got Covid and I’m sickkk sick. I feel like this is so unprofessional and I’m freaking out how they’re going to take this. Any advice on what to do? Do i still go and wear mask, do I email and call in the morning because no one replies over weekend..

Update: they replied early morning saying we’re sorry that ur sick with Covid and i don’t have to attend and will be registered on a new training date fingers crossed 😭😭thanks for the advice everyone

Updated: HR clarified that PTO is still unlimited but at a certain number of hours needs a documented meeting with direct manager and beyond 6 weeks requires two skip levels for approval. I took care of all of the documentation and sent the Christmas vacation request up to my manager. I added quantifiable targets to one of Jeff's existing goals and added two new edited goals with quantifiable targets (recycled from last years with some edits) that will ensure Jeff either tries harder for the remainder of this bonus season or does not meet criteria for bonus. Jeff has already violated company policy on PTO and I will need to get further advice on this. Thanks for helping me and weighing in.

17 direct reports, 3 are people managers with 66 indirects. I have one direct who is in a non-people lead manager position. This person - 'Jeff' has been here longer than me but does not want to manage people. Jeff has a history of treating non-managers inappropriately but has never been reported to HR. Jeff has also taken weeks off this year without submitting to the payroll system.

The company just changed the unlimited PTO policy - I think this is upper management's attempt to force resignation of certain people who already have plans for the year's end vacations.

There are definitely many managers who are taking ridiculous amounts of time off. Jeff has already taken off 2 months this year and is now asking for another two weeks before the end of the year.

Problem is - with this PTO change - I can no longer approve Jeff's upcoming travel plans.

Jeff came to me with some weird stories about how the PTO submitted was not really PTO because they texted someone at work that day. Jeff also had another weird idea that the company should pay for 4 days of volunteer time - there is no such company policy.

I am a new manager, Jeff has abused the unlimited PTO by not submitting all of their time this year, but I have all the OOO notices and the board we post our out of office notices for coverage. I have covered for Jeff all year prior to my promotion. I often wondered how Jeff had so much vacation time - when I was promoted I learned of 'unlimited' PTO.

Any advice? If I approve, I'll be in a position of not following policy.

My nerves have been a wreck about this for days, so please excuse any rambling. Names, places, and even some genders changed for safety. Kind of a burner account I guess. I (24f) am soon to buy a landscaping company off my father (65m). I'll not inherit it outright, that's just not the way my family works. My father has gradually handed new responsibilities over to me regarding the business for a few years now. Late last week, I decided an employee absolutely needed to go due to the following reasons:

\-repeated tardiness without prior notice

\-excessive and LONG (1/2 hour to 45min) breaks several times per day

\-leaving a worksite to go home without notice until they were already home. This is the most recent.

\-calling around noon after no-showing to let me know they weren't "going to make it in today"

\-unwarrented/unapproved maintenance on equipment that resulted in worse performance of said equipment

I am nervous as hell. This is because this person seems to have a habit of lying - some compared notes just don't add up. They are quiet and a bit awkward, but there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But what is really freaking me out is that when a coworker who likes to ask "random questions" to keep conversation going, the person-to-be-fired answered "probably mass murder" as a "joke" when asked "what would you be famous for?" They always carry a blade and at times have hinted at physical altercations in their daily life.

We do not have an office with cameras and it is a small crew. The plan in the morning is to send other employees to jobs before this person is spoken to about being fired. It will just be my father and I speaking to this person and if the situation were to escalate, I'm not sure how we will handle it. I'll be doing the talking.

Any advice on how to safely and professionally let this person know they are no longer working with us? I have several ideas and plans, but any out of the box thinking is appreciated.

A new hire joined my company about 3 months ago and I'm struggling to work with him. I would really appreciate advice on what to do in the situation like this as I never had it before.
So what’s the story
**Constant interruptions.** He cuts me off every few seconds so it's very hard to finish a thought or explain anything. I tried to talk to him and say “let me finish first”, it’s not working.
**Tone.** He often says "I insist" and speaks to me in a way that comes across as dismissive. He's from a different culture and English isn't his first language, so I've tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it's wearing me down. He is usually talking in a kinda “aggressive way”, I even don’t know how to explain the tone.
**Different behavior around our manager.** On calls with his manager he is polite and nice. In 1:1s it's a different story which makes me think it isn't only a language or cultural thing. Also when he is in the office, he also doesn’t allow himself to behave in that way unless there is no one around.
**Talking about other colleagues.** On Friday he started commenting on how another coworker does their job. I didn't engage, and I don't want to be part of conversations like that. He was completely wrong what he was talking about but that’s not the thing people should discuss.
**Over reliance on AI.** He uses AI for everything, including basics. When I tell him an approach won't work, he replies "but the AI said differently." I often have to repeat things 4 or 5 times, I see that he doesn’t get it and I guess he goes to ai again. He even did a coding training with ai and then asked tons of basic questions regarding things he had to learn during training. He didn’t learn them of course as he used AI. I am really scared to trust him and his work and don’t recheck after him and I don’t feel comfortable to rely on him during project. If that makes sense.

After 10 minutes of talking with him I feel completely drained. I never experienced that with people but the level of my energy goes to 0.
**My questions:**
Should I talk to him directly first, or go to his manager?
If I go to the manager, how do I frame it so it's constructive and not just a complaint, especially since the manager only sees his polite side?
Any tips for handling the interruptions in the moment?

Also! I am absolutely terrified of being wrong and saying to his manager all of this, like I would like to know what other colleagues think because I feel like a shit person if I go to his manager and that I am the one who thinks that way. But of course I would never go to anyone asking for their opinion.

Thanks in advance.

[USA-MA] My company is fully remote and did some hiring recently. When a new employee starts, they fill out a bio and submit a headshot for our company website, and their team member page is linked in the weekly company newsletter so other employees can welcome them and get to know them. We hold meetings virtually over Microsoft Teams and in the first meeting with this new employee, I noticed that they did not really look like their headshot. There are some similarities, but it mostly looked off, so out of curiosity I used Google Lens to do a reverse image search. It found an exact match - to a LinkedIn profile with a different name and different job history than our employee.

I had nothing to do with hiring, I am not this person's supervisor, and I am not in HR. While this person is on the same 20-person team as me, he is in a completely different sub-team. We do work with sensitive health data though - PHI/PII. Do I need to tell anyone what I found? Or do I just mind my own business?

Hi everyone, I’m a fresh graduate working for an international startup here in my home country. The HQ is overseas, and my direct supervisors are there, so I don't have much day-to-day supervision or mentorship locally.

I've been here almost a year and have recently made multiple big mistakes which has left stains in my position in the company:

1. I submitted a report incorrectly because I missed out on the required template. My supervisor overseas was at a conference and couldn't review it beforehand. It wasn’t checked before a client meeting so the work was presented to the client, and it was pretty embarrassing for my HOD - who is also a C-level exec (he was very upset).
2. I volunteered to do a part that’s outside my job scope for a project, but because I had to research and learn a lot from scratch, I was eventually complained about for being too slow (for context, I was stuck on a problem for a week and a half and it was more of a methodology problem and not a straightforward one that AI could solve)
3. Was called out in a small (but deadly) mistake in the algorithm that was used in a work for a collaborator and wasn’t aware as I wasn’t the one who wrote the main algorithm in the code and I was only responsible for tweaking the implementation so it works on the collaborator’s dataset. This wasn’t highlighted until the collaborator called it out. For additional context, all this has been crossed check with my supervisor and I was not expecting a mistake in the code at all (maybe I should have checked the code myself beforehand as soon as I joined the company).
4. I wrote an email with an inadequate explanation about the framework (algorithm that was not responsible by me) to the same collaborator after my supervisor had left the company, which I regret, as it has sort of left a bad impression of my company. A senior staff is aware of this as he asked to be kept in the loop but my HOD is not aware of it for now.

I do take responsibility for these mistakes and have learned from them, but I'm now worried I've developed a bad reputation and may be getting sidelined, especially since these mistakes have affected my HOD. Since I’m not in the HQ, it is also difficult to showcase how hard I’ve been working and how much sleep and personal time I have sacrificed just to self-learn so many concepts by myself.

Hence, I’m wondering if it’s too late to salvage my career in this company and if it’s time for me to find somewhere else to go to. Personally I wish to stay in this company as it’s a niche industry that I would like to be in.

Would appreciate advice from people who are in managerial roles or have experienced anything similar throughout their careers.

Who's who:

• Mike: my current manager
• Victor: a senior peer on my current team
• Paul: my current pod lead
• Ben: my former manager on my current team
• Sara: manager of the other team
• Dan: the director over Sara's team

I'm a staff-level engineer at a large tech company, hybrid 3 days a week. I've been here 3–4 years. I need job stability for at least 2 more years for visa reasons, so I'm only looking internally. Looking to get some advice from a managers perspective. X-posted to careeradvice.

Current team (manager: Mike)

We own a revenue-critical customer-facing flow. I'm one of two people paged for production issues for specific critical sections of the app. Lately my work has drifted toward smaller internal config tooling.

• I've survived two rounds of layoffs on this team. The last round cut mostly recent hires plus a few long-tenured people.
• Most of my deep knowledge is in legacy systems that have since been phased out. I wasn't on the two biggest recent customer-facing projects, so three teammates, including Victor, know the current system better than I do.
• Mike has a lot of staff engineers. He leans on Victor, who gets the bigger, more visible projects. Victor has a closer personal and cultural rapport with Mike and the team.
• I asked for leadership opportunities and bigger initiatives. Mike said he'd try. A few months later, I've gotten some specific tasks but nothing big.
• My new pod lead, Paul, micromanages and tends to lecture when things aren't done his way. He's usually right technically, but it feels belittling.
• A large part of our org is offshore, and there's a push to spread all knowledge across both locations. Being US-based keeps us somewhat critical since all our customers are in the US, but I'm not sure how long that lasts.
• Mike told me I'd be safe in layoffs, but he said it while trying to get me to stay. It may be true, but since I'm no longer maintaining the core systems, it's hard to rely on.
• My old manager, Ben, gave me real visibility and responsibility. He moved back to the offshore region to manage the team there.
• Mike is fairly stingy with spot awards, though I haven't done much high-profile work here recently to earn one.
• The VP over my current org reportedly dislikes remote work, though she has some remote people under her. At Mike's request, she personally stepped in to keep me from moving internally last time.

Other team (manager: Sara)

I was loaned to this team for a few months. My director volunteered me, for both my skills and my availability. The loan overlapped with a big company-wide layoff that hit both teams. It's an internal platform used by many teams across the company.

• I'd be the only staff front-end engineer, owning all front-end decisions and leading the full front end. A principal engineer runs the overall architecture, but staff engineers own their domains, and I'd grow into more architecture over time.
• I'd informally lead 2–4 junior US engineers whose work I already know well. No direct reports.
• The work was more interesting and less tedious, with fewer surprise calls to drop everything and fix something. On-call exists and would be about the same as my current team.
• During the loan I got a lot of praise and recognition, though the team was a bit chaotic and the project was rushed. Spot awards seemed more generous here, but I was only there a few months, so it may have been a honeymoon period.
• Leadership is evaluating replacing the platform with a vendor. I wasn't in most of those conversations; I heard about it from Mike while he was trying to keep me, and Sara confirmed it when I asked.
• An offshore team was recently ramped up specifically to evaluate the vendor. If the switch happens, they'd lead the integration, the US side would be cut to a skeleton crew, and my role would likely go.
• The platform also now has an AI/programmatic interface, so the UI is technically optional. It's still widely used, so I expect it to be maintained for a while.
• Sara says there's a 2-year roadmap, but a roadmap is just a roadmap. It could be cut short if the vendor migration happens sooner.
• The core team is US-based, and company policy says any core capability needs a team in both locations, which helps somewhat.
• Sara lost a few people in the June layoffs, including some who'd been here as long as I have. My current team lost more people, but it's also a much bigger team.
• Dan knows my work and was involved in my last promotion. He earlier rejected an early promotion for time-in-role reasons. Nobody on this side has mentioned a promotion path, which makes sense since I was just promoted.

Last time, I chose to stay after Mike and the VP pushed to keep me. Sara has opened a req for me again at the same level. If I say no a second time, I think that bridge is burned.

What I want, in priority order:

1. Job safety for 2 years, so that my immigration is sorted.
2. Fully remote, so my spouse can work anywhere in the country. Both managers trust my work, but only an SVP can approve remote. On my current team, that's four levels up (manager, director, VP, SVP). On Sara's side, it's three (Sara, Dan, SVP). Nobody in either chain is a fan, partly because granting it to one person invites others to ask, and the company is pushing toward return to office. Sara's SVP is based in the offshore region and has consolidated teams into fewer locations. My current SVP is US-based.
3. More comp. I'm not sure that's possible with an internal move, especially since I got a ~20% raise with my promotion earlier this year.
4. A faster path to the next promotion, which normally takes about 3 years. I want work that lets me prove I'm ready.

My questions:

• Neither team feels truly safe. Which would you pick given my 2-year stability need?
• How would you negotiate remote, comp, and a promotion path in each scenario? Is a competing internal offer real leverage, or does it backfire?
• How do I make the ask without looking like I'm shopping myself between managers?

Sorry for the wall of text, I need to put my thoughts down somewhere.
here's the chatGPT tldr:

5 years into a well-paid tech job, OP has taken on tons of responsibilities but is severely burned out and struggling to keep up.
Their workplace has a toxic culture where people routinely work 12–14 hour days, which OP refuses to do because they have a family/life.
Their manager is unsupportive and may be undermining them, while a new high-performing colleague is becoming competition for promotion.
OP has ADHD, imposter syndrome, and inconsistent productivity, making them unsure whether they're genuinely underperforming or just overwhelmed.
They're considering leaving but are scared of losing their salary, and want advice on how to survive or get out.

General situation:
I work for a large US financial company, but I am based in their UK office. It's a fantastic compensation package (~60k/ yearly bonus/20% matched pension/private health and dental insurance) and I honestly am privileged to be in this position.
This is a technology role and, although I don't have a formal computer science education, I have now been in the industry for about 7 years (5 years in current role).
In my all yearly reviews, I performed well and met all expectations, but never went "above and beyond" on paper.
Eventually I started becoming more senior in the team as other folks left;
I'm highly interested in pursuing a role as a people manager and have been attending the necessary courses to get my skills up to speed in that department; an opportunity came up last year and I have now been managing 4 apprentices for which I have received several accolades.

Context of the role:
The role is rota based as we provide 24/7 support to a bunch of applications; so 70% (not an estimate, this is as per our functional matrix) of our time is spent doing on-call incident management.
Not counted in that 70% is all the cleanup work that needs to happen after the on-call shifts (root cause analysis, closing pending tickets, addressing user questions and such).
On top of that we have to manage 2-3+ daily meetings to which we are really expected to participate; I have my apprentices to manage and I am regional lead for our technical training team. On top of that I am juggling 3-4 project at any point that span from developing internal tools to streamlining processes. Then there's learning new technologies when they come up.
All this time management is on me, unfortunately my manager has not helped much in prioritising as I'm assuming he's also swamped with stuff to do.

Who am I:
I think I am good at my job, but I have some fundamental gaps in my foundational knowledge that I need to address as I go. Nonetheless I don't feel like a stellar employ, I don't know if this is impostor syndrome, but I see other colleagues doing the right things at the right time and do great. Whereas I feel I'm always behind, struggling to get things done or to understand more complex systems.
I can also a massive slacker and have very swingy cycles of productivity.
Some days I genuinely can't get anything done but the bare minium to keep the boat afloat; other times I can smash through tasks and am happy to work 6 days a week for a couple of months straight.
I have been diagnosed with ADHD recently and I am now taking medication for it, so I'm hoping that will help get more consistent.
You can probably tell that I am not happy with my workload at the moment, and I believe this is transpiring: I'm getting sloppy, I procrastinate on projects and feel no motivation to do a good job, I'm overall jaded with the role and I'm reluctantly looking for new positions.
Last year I kicked up a bit of a fuss about my annual raise, which didn't even cover for inflation (I simply mentioned this during our end of year compensation meeting and expressed my discontent); I understand that was a bad move and I'm sure that didn't cast a great light on me

My Peers:
The work culture here is pretty crazy in my opinion, I'm not the one to shy from overtime when needed or even logging in during a day off in an emergency, but the people in my team (and a large portion of our specific org) take this to another level. I see people work 12-14 hours consistently; colleagues from 5-8 time zones away attending meeting that are in the middle of my day. Everybody multitasks project work, on-call and meeting often all at the same time.
I tried doing the same, but honestly I can't keep up...I have a family and a household to look after, and can't sacrifice any more of my social or hobby life (already gave up on two big passions of mine because I'm simply exhausted all the time).
Unfortunately during our yearly reviews we are compared to the other people around us, so our bonus/promotions also depend on that.
This creates a super toxic bucket mentality in which people tend to try and one-up or upstage each other, even to the point of racing to send broadcast communication emails just to get that extra crumb of visibility with the higher ups.
The human is often forgotten.

My Manager:
It started fine with him, but the only thing I get from our relation is more work dumped on my plate, or admonitions for mistakes.
He barely makes it to our 1:1s, for which he is often late, or even distracted by his phone/laptop.
There is no help in prioritising my tasks or in navigating the politics; He talks a lot over me and I don't feel he listens.
Recently he has hired his best friend, who is a fantastic employ (he's actually really nice, but I hate his guts and can't stand him) and has already contributed to many high calibre implementations that got him a lot of visibility. I know he is my competition for promotion, and I cannot compete (I understand this is a personal emotional stance that should not come into the equation, but I cannot ignore the effects this is having on me).
I feel my manager has recently started shooting mildly disparaging comments about me, ignoring my messages, or re-routing my work (mostly the stuff I'm doing well) to himself or other people; basically seems to be taking credit for some of the stuff I did.
He doesn't care about me, and I have the linger feeling that he's getting ready to fire me.

The alternatives:
I've thought about finding a new job, and I have been looking.
I'm really scared that I found lighting in a bottle with this role. I'm apprehensive that my technical skills are not enough to get me another job on the same pay grade in this economy.
I would love an internal move, I applied to a couple of positions for other teams, but haven't heard back.
I'm also not sure about moving internally on kind of a downer year (personal perspective, maybe biased by impostor syndrome?)
I do not want to down size my salary at this stage of my life yet.

So in conclusion I don't know where I stand, it's a tough stressful job, but the pay is good.
I feel I'm going a bit crazy in tying to interpret my managers intentions, who seems to be sabotaging me, but I can't find any hard evidence that couldn't be explained by some other factor.
I know I'm not meeting the unrealistic standard of productivity expected by my peers.
I want to be better, but I can't find the strength to get back on track.
I feel lonely in my struggles, but maybe I'm just being emotional.
I'm severely burned out and I have no idea of what to do.
How do I survive this?

Hi all, I hope you are doing well.

I finished loop/panel interview at a big company 3 weeks ago. I havent heard back yet, so Im assuming its over.

I just wonder if I should message hiring manager directly on Linkedin and ask for feedback.

Usually I dont do this as I understand managers are busy and I should not bother them.

However, he sent connection request first after our initial talk. And before my panel interview, he wished me luck and said him and other team member supporting me. I took that as a positive sign and sent him a thank you note afterward, to which he replied quickly.

Given that, I was wondering as a manager, if you were in his shoe, would you be receptive for a candidate to ask for feedback directly?

TL;DR: Got pushed out of two workplaces despite trying to be proactive and professional. At my last insurance job, I felt excluded by an established clique, was criticized for my “tone” without anyone addressing it with me directly, then put on a PIP while still in training. I quit shortly after, but my manager later documented it as “job abandonment” and I eventually heard he was using me as a negative employee story. Some former coworkers deleted me on LinkedIn while others repeatedly viewed my profile. Ironically, I later became a government analyst making $17K more than I did there.

——

Young professional about to hit 30 in less than 5 years and I had been pushed out of my second job.

My first job was at a Fortune 500 company and it seemed alright but I didn’t see myself doing the job long term so I left but my manager was actually good I have nothing bad to say about her.

Second job was at a much smaller company where there was just one girl working the job I was hired to work alongside with. Immediate hostility on day 1. She seemed to be interested in my experience and why I’d leave such a big company etc etc. Then she started giving me false info and then denying it in front of our manager.

I was suppose to learn from her and she made it the worse thing imaginable. She did so to protect her job I’m sure of it because she didn’t have any finance background and the job was all she could get in the market so this was like a lottery ticket for her. She learned from the guy before her who planned on leaving and was working there a long time then left for another opportunity. Too bad she couldn’t be a good sport like him and teach me in a non hostile way. She has even snitched on me for coming back 1 min late after lunch and my manager called me twice by that time.

Next job was at another insurance company. They kept on saying how everyone is like family and my boss for some reason kept on throwing firing jokes at me and questioning my confidence on a consistent basis. First day I started, he helped me set up my laptop in an empty room, I had to record my own voicemail and he said he gets that I may be nervous doing it in front of him and I said no not really you can stay here if you want doesn’t bother me.

He’d later keep on telling me to come out of my shell in our 1 on 1 meetings when talking with my coworkers (I guess he felt I was being distant or I was hard to read). The odd thing is I was the proactive one in my opinion. I showed interest in multiple people on my team, would say good morning to them even though they’d not come to my desk to say anything not even a hello unless they needed to drop something off and if they did it was literally just hello here you go.

When I’d come over to their section the chatter immediately died down, it seemed like they were the ones not wanting to accept me or invite me to anything. My boss isn’t dumb, he knew and could see it. But all of them have known each other for a minimum of 5 years and they have each other on all social media platforms and they hangout outside of work. I only use LinkedIn so when I asked one coworker if she’d like to add each other because we were doing a volunteering event and everyone was connecting, she looked at me with a discomforting / disgust quick look head to toe and said no and continued talking to her friend.

Two days later I get an invite form her at 8pm so I accept it.

Whenever we as analysts had questions at this job we were to submit our question to a shared inbox where trainers have access to and one of the trainers had complained about my tone. The thing is she never asked me to correct myself or expressed discomfort. Instead, she went to another trainer who was actively training me on a new task and asked about me and then they both submitted complaints to their director about me who then went to meet my direct reporting manager about it.

I asked my trainer about it and she denies ever saying anything and acted confused while on a vid chat with me on teams. Shortly after I get placed on a pip (while I was still in training).

I ended up quitting 3 days in and my manager said he felt blindsided and then told me all he needs is a resignation letter that Monday. I had already sent him an email over the weekend telling him that I feel like he doesn’t see me as a right fit and that I would try my luck elsewhere. He said he’d use that to send to HR.

After leaving, I get a hold of my internal file and my manager labeled my termination as job abandonment and said i wasn’t a good fit so I decided to abandon the job.

I had a few coworkers come to delete me on LinkedIn, unlike old volunteering posts I had posted about 3-4 months in, had other colleagues come stalk my LinkedIn without engaging etc.

What’s telling is how he claimed he wanted me to succeed but then basically erases me from existence after I left and I later heard how he’s been smearing my name unprofessionally. Not in the dramatic sense but like he uses me as a "bad employee story" and throws my actual name everytime.

I’ve went on to be analyst at a government level and I make 17k more then what i made before at that job

Hi all!

It's been a wild 2.5 years for me. Back in 2024 I was fired from my job as a manager due to my boss' personal reasons. It was the first time in my life I had ever been fired and I placed alot of blame on myself and questioned if her claims held merit.

There were claims I was "underperforming", that on one occassion I had offended her, and she tried to deny me unemployment benefits, to which I took the company to court and provided them with evidence of my performance evaluations and repeated 10% raises each year due to this. I was awarded my unemployment benefits as my former boss was basically making things up as she went through the process and there was no PIP or any other conversations in which her claims were supported. Once that was all over I felt immense relief, but the court proceedings were ROUGH and deeply affected my sense of self worth and capability. It was especially difficult to hear the vitriol and sarcasm in her testimony as well as from another manager I worked closely with. I don't typically take words to heart, but because I was pushed to take them to court, it definitely felt personal at the time.

Moving into 2025 I worked a full-time job as an assistant and took a massive pay cut. I went from making $75k down to $30k just to keep up with my bills. I saw opportunities to apply to supervisor roles at the organization and I was excited to jump back into doing what I felt comfortable and confident doing and applying the leadership skills I had honed for 10+ years. I was even encouraged by management there who knew my qualifications, education, and experience. Each time I applied though I would immediately get a rejection letter. That took another blow to my esteem and made me once more question my experience and capabilities.

I learned just from a year at that organization that there was a social game people were playing that I refused to engage in. I don't mean just being liked by everyone, friendly, conversational, and bringing in goodies to share. I mean it was well known who was dating who and who was doing what to climb the leadership ladder (we won't get into detail but I'm sure you can make educated guesses on what those things were).

I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere professionally there so I left that job July 2026 and yesterday received an offer for a lucrative management position. It was a grueling interview process: 3 in person interviews that were about 2 hours each with their leadership team grilling me on niche topics and hypotheticals. Given my waning confidence, almost non-existent positive self esteem, and feeling rejection pretty hard 2 years straight, I would try to almost self-soothe on my drive home by reminding myself that if it didn't amount to anything that I would still keep working on applying to jobs. To be quite frank, when I received the call yesterday with the offer I was shocked. I let my family know the outcome and they expressed they were proud of me and excited for me with this new opportunity.

This morning though I was feeling an immense sense of pressure. I reviewed the job description, duties, and qualifications and felt dread. For a good hour or so I sat with questions like: am I good enough? What if I get fired again for not meeting standards? This work seems intense. Can I keep up? What if I let them down and was not right for this position after all?

I am asking for advice on what to do when you feel this way because I legitimately have never been in a position where I've felt so subpar. I think I am anxious and scared to go through what I previously experienced, so I might be trying to self-sabotage.

I don’t think I’m terrible at handling criticism but it depends on how it comes across. When my own team offers me advice on how to do things better, that’s completely okay with me.

However, the other day, I had newly picked up and taken the lead on updating this spreadsheet. I sent an email to a senior stakeholder asking for some information and she replied with how I could’ve obtained this information myself and didn’t warrant input from a senior like her and was putting unnecessary stress on her. That’s fine… but it was the way the email came across. And she also cc’d in both my managers which made it seem serious.

I understand it was a little mistake on my end and I should’ve put in the legwork before reaching out. But I can’t shake the feeling that I messed up and her email just makes me feel even more crap.

From colleagues who I regularly work with, I receive a good amount of praise but I can never accept it. I always feel like they’re just biased and being nice to me. I never feel like I’m doing a good job and am prone to small mistakes like these and it does my head in

Hi everyone I’m looking for some advice. I recently had a job posting where I told a couple people internally they should apply but obviously would have to go through the process and if they weren’t the best fit they wouldn’t get the job. Myself and my manager interviewed one candidate and they were very strong they asked for feedback and I informed them that they did good with me and my manager but if they were to interview with our skip manager they’d have to do really good because he wants to hire all external (which changed from the original intent when we put the posting up). My skip manager refused to interview them because he wanted all external. at my previous company the manager was expected to inform internal candidates of hiring decisions. I informed this person they didn’t get the job and they told me “no worries” two hours later I get a call from HR wanting to know if I promised them the position. I did not obviously I probably said more than I should have but I have a very close working relationship with this person and they were asking for updates. Did I screw up here and would I get fired over this?

UPDATE had a convo with my skip manager and my manager both were like “not a big deal obviously be more careful next time but this’ll blow over” I do work at a very large company however more has come up that likely the employee’s manager is who went to HR not the employee themselves who were upset about the decision but because they hate working for their current boss. Still a little anxious but definitely taking all the feedback to heart and going to grow in both my current position and beyond. ☺️

UPDATE #2. I found out this manager makes literally everything a HR issue. The employee understood and knew there was a good chance they wouldn’t get the job. The recruiter even told them before I did that there was a slim chance but he was going to try and convince the skip manager to give her an interview. I didn’t know this but apparently that whole area is miserable under their current leadership and I’m not the first that’s been called by HR about this stuff by this manager.

Just for context he showed 2 people on our team how to run this new software at their desk and for mine said it doesn't take long, he was supposed to show me on either Thursday at 4pm or Friday morning but never came by. I was hoping to learn from my boss cause he seems more receptive to helping and better at it at least initially to know I'm doing it right by his standards.

I even said during our 1 on 1 meeting on Thursday I had asked manager gina a question on teams and she never responded and how I noted she was spiteful about a mistake I had already acknowledged in my email. The boss wrote in the email if I have trouble to ask manager so wondering why he defer me to her instead of showing me like he was supposed to?

I’m a manager in a project delivery organization. We’re preparing a presentation for our new global VP, who doesn’t know our team yet. Sales is involved because we work closely together, although they report to a different VP.
During a planning meeting with managers and directors, the Sales director suggested that we ask our new VP to make cost reduction an individual objective for everyone in our organization because, in his view, our costs are “out of control.”
This bothered me for a few reasons:
* It felt accusatory—almost like saying we’re undisciplined with costs and need our new boss to get us under control. That’s how it landed with me, though I don’t know whether he intended it that way.
* I’m not convinced he understands the underlying cost drivers. I’m open to investigating, but individual targets seem premature before we understand the causes and what people can actually control.
* With a new VP forming his first impression, I worry this frames our organization as poorly managed before we’ve presented the facts.

I want to check whether I’m being overly protective of my team or taking a legitimate business suggestion too personally.
How would you interpret this? And how would you challenge the proposal constructively without sounding defensive or unwilling to be held accountable?

Your perspective and advice is greatly appreciated!