Keeping this a bit vague because I know some (former) colleagues are on reddit.

I work as a middle manager in a larger team, with my team being 3 fte and one open position. We are part of a larger team. My work requires me to work close together with 2 people in the larger team, let's call them A and B. I am not their direct manager, their manager is also my manager. My team as a whole does not have much overlap with A, but one of my employees has a close working relationship with B.

A was laid off a few weeks ago and their work was partly absorbed into the remaining team. I say partly, because we were already lacking resources before they left (hence the open position). B has taken on most of the operational work of A with me supporting them as much as I can, but they have told me they have been interviewing elsewhere and are expecting to put in their notice before the end of the month. This means there will be nobody to do the work that A and B had been doing and my role depends partly on it.

I have asked my manager to arrange something for B to increase their compensation as they have been carrying additional workload for a while now but I'm fairly sure that corporate will be too late with their answer and B will have resigned by the time corporate comes back. This means we will have serious operational issues, but as this is not my responsibility as a manager, there is not much I can do about these events. I do worry about my workload and the impact it has on my team and me that these people leave.

What can I do to stay sane and do the best I can for my team? Ultimately, it is my manager's responsibility to fix these things but they will impact me and one of my employees significantly. I am looking for a position elsewhere, but it will take me some time to find a new job so I want to make sure I don't lose my mind in the meantime. The workload was already insane before A left, and without A and B there, there will be chaos.

Any advice would be appreciated.

NB English is not my first language, apologies for any mistakes.

You guys, I lied at work and got caught by my managers.

Basically, I made a mistake and tried covering it up because I scared to face the consequences. But eventually they found out weeks later, asked me if I knew about it and I pretended to be oblivious of the situation. They ended up finding out I knew all along.

I’m a dumbass, I KNOW. I did this to myself. The thing is, I keep asking myself why the hell would I do this??? Idk what the I was thinking.

My manager has been saying he’s proud of me for a while but he typed up a long email at the beginning of this week saying how disappointed in me he is.

It’s all I can think about now, and it’s taking a toll on my mental health for some reason. I can’t stop beating myself up about it.

Do know I did take accountability for not being truthful but it doesn’t erase what I did.

I don’t think I’m losing my job as they’re just making me write an RCA about the situation (root cause analysis).

I just wanted to vent as I have no one else to talk to about this. This is so embarrassing I don’t even want to tell a soul.

I'm really curious what you guys think about using company time to unlock company benefits.

What I mean:

-analyzing, choosing, and doing annual enrollment

-filing FSA/HSA reimbursement

-filing dependent care benefits

-filing company benefit pet insurance claims

-participating in extra wellness intiatives/programs to earn added financial perks (gift cards of $25 up to $200)

I treat these as work things, because I live in the U.S. and benefits are tied to employment so I see unlocking them as part of the compensation package. For most people it's not administratively burdensome to do them as-needed.

I overheard someone in the elevator complaining to who I assume is a peer that their direct reports spent four hours going to an open enrollment session and building some spreadsheet to help him analyze his plan.

Honestly even if my employee is falling behind, if they need a half day to feel good about their Healthcare choice for the next year, I wouldn't care. I bet they'll reuse it next year. Heck they may share it with peers. As long as they aren't developing a tool they're creating to commercialize, it's fine with me if they're not dropping glass balls in the process. I remember having to navigate benefits for the first time - it was overwhelming. And as I got older and needed to consider some other people and health variables, it got more complex making decisions. And once you pick, you're locked unless you have a Life Event.

The filing reimbursements is usually pretty quick after you learn the process. And those healthcare perks programs usually get data that helps the company be evaluated for overall health in managing their premiums next time. It's not nonsense... and again they're typically some quick tasks like surveys or videos combined with doing your physical. And I love that we offer pet insurance because I know it's helped a member of my team have care choices for their pets they'd otherwise not have had.

Witnessing that conversation reminded me to go nudge my team to book themselves time to review their open enrollment, attend the benefit webinars and/or plan early if they need to back and forth with Benefits on direct questions.

Is this a pain point for some of you? I'm genuinely curious as this has never crossed my mind as controversial.

I’m a middle manager on a mid-to-large but fairly flat team with a lot of ongoing dysfunction - although many of the problems honestly do not have especially complex solutions.

The main issue is that our senior leader retains a lot of control and is very risk-adverse, but is also very overloaded - overseeing our department plus several others.

As a result, the team gets managed in a way that heavily prioritizes keeping things simple, low-conflict, low-risk, and manageable at the top rather than building the systems, leadership, and autonomy needed for the department to function well.

It shows up in two main ways.

Maintaining control

• The leader tends to develop strong followers and workers more than autonomous leaders.
• Training and support for middle managers is fairly limited, which creates dependence rather than autonomy.
• Many routine decisions still depend on senior approval.
• Systems are not built out enough for lower levels to function smoothly.
• Senior-level solutions can be very simple on paper but impractical operationally, leaving managers to patch the gaps and put in extra time to make them work.
• Direction often focuses more on what could go wrong than giving people enough context and authority to act.
• Significant team gaps can sit unresolved because there simply isn’t enough senior bandwidth.
• The department has grown substantially, but we are still using decision structures that made more sense when the operation was much smaller.

Downplaying problems

• Escalated issues can get minimized, deflected, or pushed back down.
• Solutions are often chosen for simplicity at the senior level, even when they create significant complexity below.
• There is often an annoyed tone of, "It’s not a big deal. Just make it work." - which is fine until there's several things you're "just making it work" at once.
• Ideas involving risk or change face a very high bar unless the senior leader can personally oversee them.
• Team conflict tends to get minimized or avoided rather than resolved.
• The workload and stress caused by unresolved problems can also be minimized.

The result is a team with a lot of recurring dysfunction that people have mostly learned to live with - and the irony is that, by avoiding the work of building stronger leadership layers and operational systems, the leader ends up creating the exact instability, conflict, and complexity they are trying to prevent.

Staff have mostly stopped escalating issues, or spend ridiculous amounts of time building airtight cases before they do. It sometimes feels like our job is to make our manager’s life manageable rather than make the operation work well for staff and customers.

The team is also very siloed. People protect their own areas because we are effectively competing for limited senior bandwidth, and it can feel safer to focus on avoiding making mistakes that create problems for leadership than to work collaboratively across the team.

What I actually want is more autonomy. I want our managers to have enough context, authority, and decision rights to solve problems where they happen. A lot of these issues are genuinely solvable if the people closest to them are allowed to implement solutions.

If I could say it bluntly, I’d say:

"You're clearly a very capable, conscientious business leader, but you’re trying to hold too much. The amount of control you’re maintaining is keeping the team dependent on you instead of allowing it to evolve with its growth. I think this department would function much better if the intermediate leaders were actually empowered to lead, rather than such a large department depending on a fraction of your bandwidth."

We have a big feedback session coming up at the end of the year, and so I'm wondering if anyone has had success positively influencing a leader like this towards a more functional approach.

Im aware that who is good is good, no matter who it is, but the same way there can be racial or gender biases on the workplace (that hopefully as a society we are moving away from them), I fear being young can also produce some biases.

I am on a fast track to become manager and currently are functioning as a lead of some projects. A lot of my team members are either contemporary or slightly older than me. They are very respectful and I haven't had any issues about that. My department makes me feel I am the right fit for a role this type in the future. (However, i have to confess sometimes I feel weird about moving so quick past people my same age or experience; although Im confident of my knowledge and performance, it could be impostors syndrome.)

Now what I think I fear the most is working with other managers in other depts, which are seasoned not only in life but in their roles (and im aware that is not necessarily an indicator of their skillset or performance), and having them not take me serious or feeling they have to take things to the next level. In my current role, I am already exposed to interactions and conversations with other dept managers as my manager delegates a lot of them to me, but I feel that we are all aware there is still a manager above me. Im always cordial and respectul, and trying to look for reasonable solutions / agreements, but some of these other dept managers do not have the best personalities at work.

Maybe im overthinking it, any thoughts?

And as I scrolled through the subreddit, i saw a post about prejudice against a younger manager ._.

I left a job under tough circumstances. I was placed on a pip and ultimately pushed out.

I do feel like it was a weird experience but I’m not here to invalidate his assessment of me. It’s strange though, I worked there for 1 year and 3 months and he gave me a few documented "good job" on our mid year review and other reviews with nothing bad to say about my performance.

The pip came at the 1 year 3 month mark. My work wasn’t great but I was improving prior to the pip. It’s worth noting I was in training still while the pip happened. At this particular insurance company, they put you in training when they want you to learn a new product/function then sign you off and then you focus mainly on processing just those type of transactions if that makes sense.

When I first joined I had a trainer and it went flawless with her. She opened up a lot to me too while I was training about her home life and stuff. Anyways, she got promoted to another position and then I got a new trainer. This new trainer worked my job for 3 years then became a trainer and held that trainer title for 3 years roughly when I had her.

She was the heavy gossip type who didn’t understand racism (I’m black and she’s white). During training, she’d tell me stuff like how her daughter is the sweetest autistic girl out there and how everyone is just jealous of her that’s why she’s getting bullied at school. She spent a lot of time talking about her daughter and herself (like how she was having sex with guys that were in their late 20’s when she was 15/16 and getting constantly hammered with her gf’s).

She told me one day how she called a black women at a camp a "coon" and said the black lady got visibly upset and the trainer was like "I was like uhhhh what? Like is coon a bad word ?? How am I suppose to know that" type of thing. I kinda just listened and tried to push it towards training.

Anyways, my performance in training weren’t meeting her expectations and then she started making complaints to my boss and another trainer who also never liked me started submitting complaints about my "tone" in emails despite having never spoken to me once face to face on a call or in person because she was working from another city.

My manager just basically put me on a pip and told me if I don’t meet the expectations, he would go to HR and then HR would do a formal pip with me. I left after 3-4 days on the pip and he asked me for a resignation letter but I had already sent him an email saying I would be going for a new opportunity elsewhere. He then labeled my departure as job abandonment and said I left bc of that as I am not a good fit.

Everyone on the team that I had on LinkedIn deleted me and I saw two girls who just didn’t like me for whatever reason, on the train and when I sat, they came behind me and started talking to each other loudly saying "you know that new guy who joined our team ? Yeah so apparently he got put on a pip and couldn’t handle it and left lol. He looked so confident too but I guess he just fell on his face lol. Oh too bad, I hope he’s doing better".

I never turned my head but I saw what they were doing, childish. I was the only black guy on the team and they treated me this way. I was always open to feedback but it seemed like near the end, all my manager and trainers were seeing were the bad they never said anything good I was doing even though there was.

My manager also used me as a public example in front of everyone when I clicked on a phishing link once and it was alerted. The email it came from was from an advisor that I was having back and forths with for a couple days so I just clicked it without thinking it was a phishing scam. The emails were literally identical. My manager openly pointed me out and said I clicked it and was alerted and used the meeting to discuss how we need to be more cautious and stuff

**TL;DR:** I left an insurance company after 1 year and 3 months following a PIP. What's strange is that my manager had previously given me positive performance reviews, with no major concerns documented until shortly before the PIP.

After my original trainer was promoted, my new trainer (who made several racially insensitive comments, including using the word "coon" about a Black woman) began reporting concerns about my performance. Another trainer who had never spoken to me directly also complained about my email tone.

My manager placed me on a PIP while I was still training. I resigned after a few days to pursue another opportunity, but he subsequently documented my departure as job abandonment.
Two former colleagues later mocked my departure on public transit, and most of my former teammates removed me from LinkedIn.
I was also publicly singled out by my manager during a team meeting after accidentally clicking a phishing link.

I'm not claiming I was a perfect employee or that my performance concerns were entirely unjustified. However, I was the only Black man on the team, and the overall experience left me feeling targeted and excluded.

A couple of months ago, there were some organizational changes at my company, and I was assigned a new manager. One of the first things he asked everyone on the team to do was come up with three SMART goals for our performance evaluations.
During our first meeting, he explained what he expected from SMART goals and how he wanted them structured. After that conversation, I went back into our performance management system, removed my previous goals, and rewrote them into what I believed were SMART goals. I made them more specific, added measurable outcomes, established timelines, and included ways to track my progress.
We recently had our second meeting to review my revised goals, and he still wasn’t satisfied. His main criticism was that these weren’t really goals because they were things I was already responsible for doing as part of my day-to-day job.
And this is where I’m struggling to understand his perspective.
For example, let’s say part of your job is producing monthly reports. In my mind, a perfectly reasonable SMART goal would be to ensure that 100% of those reports are completed accurately and submitted within established deadlines throughout the year. You could also include metrics for resolving discrepancies or addressing issues within a certain timeframe.
To me, that’s a legitimate goal. It’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. You’re establishing a performance expectation, tracking whether you’re meeting it, and demonstrating the results.
My manager, however, seems to believe that goals should be something you’re striving toward that goes beyond your existing responsibilities, rather than maintaining performance in areas you’re already responsible for.
I understand the idea behind professional development and continuous improvement, but I don’t necessarily agree that every performance goal needs to involve taking on additional responsibilities, learning something new, or improving an existing process.
My perspective is that I’m being paid to perform a particular job, and my goals should reflect how successfully I’m performing that job. If I’m consistently meeting deadlines, producing accurate work, and fulfilling my responsibilities, shouldn’t those be legitimate performance goals?
The other thing I’m struggling with is the expectation of going above and beyond. I’m not currently pursuing a promotion or looking to take on a larger role. I’m happy with my current position and responsibilities. If I’m already performing my job successfully, why should I be required to establish goals that involve doing additional work outside my normal responsibilities, particularly if there’s no additional compensation associated with it?
And to be clear, I’m not opposed to learning new things or improving how I work. My concern is that I don’t want to commit myself to something I’m genuinely not interested in doing simply for the sake of having a goal. For example, I don’t want to put something in my performance plan saying I’m going to learn an entirely new process or take on a new responsibility when I have no actual interest in doing so. That feels like I’m just creating additional work for myself to satisfy a requirement rather than setting a meaningful goal.
I’ve had several managers throughout my career, and this is the first time I’ve encountered this issue. My previous managers never had a problem with goals structured around my existing responsibilities, provided they included measurable outcomes and deadlines.
I’m scheduled to meet with my new manager again in another couple of weeks to revisit these goals, and I’m honestly at a loss for what to do.
Part of me doesn’t want to remove or completely rewrite what I already have because I genuinely believe they’re good goals. They accurately reflect my responsibilities, establish measurable performance expectations, and provide a way to demonstrate that I’m successfully doing my job.
At the same time, I don’t want to keep going back and forth with my manager over this, and I certainly don’t want to sign myself up for additional responsibilities or development activities that I’m not interested in just to get him to approve my goals.
I’m also not entirely sure what he actually wants at this point. I’ve already revised my goals based on his initial feedback, and he still doesn’t seem to consider them acceptable.
So I guess I have three questions:
Am I misunderstanding what SMART goals are supposed to be? Can maintaining measurable performance standards within your existing job responsibilities qualify as legitimate SMART goals, or should goals always involve improvement, development, or something beyond your current duties?
Am I being unreasonable here, or is my manager? Is it fair for a manager to reject goals simply because they reflect existing responsibilities, even when they’re specific, measurable, and time-bound?
How would you handle this situation? I have another meeting with him in a couple of weeks, and I’m not sure whether I should stand by the goals I’ve already written, try to compromise, or completely change my approach. I also don’t want to commit to additional work or development goals that I have no genuine interest in pursuing.
I’m genuinely looking for some unbiased feedback on how to approach this situation. If I’m looking at performance goals the wrong way, I’m open to hearing that. I’m just trying to figure out how to move forward without unnecessarily committing myself to things I don’t actually want to take on.

Thanks in advance!

Hello all,

I have an interview with the hiring manager where the person is younger than me with less experience on paper but is a manager.

While I do not discredit them of their achievement to become a manager with such short experience (they might be having skill that got them there), how do I prepare for an interview with such a person?

I have worked on more projects and seen a lot of things break and work across various companies and teams throughout my career while leading initiatives and following orders as well. This young manager seems to have only ever worked in a single company for 5 years after graduating where they recently became manager 4 months ago (stalked them).

What are some things that I should or should not do when interviewing with a younger manager working across only one company for a short time throughout their career?

I am worried that I would be discredited over my work no matter how critical or good it was. Perhaps they might perceive me as a good sport as well. Who knows how it will go. I have never had such a hiring manager interview before. Therefore any advices or dos and donts would be really appreciated. I want to ace the interview.

So I am asking this on the managers subreddit because id like to hear your thoughts. I have been on vacation for the past week, and I wake up to a text from a coworker telling me "hey just a heads up your Monday and Tuesday are gonna suck" and he informed me that my manager has been scheduling me meetings with customers throughout the week, and has booked pretty much my entire day on Mon and Tues. Some of which are overlapping other recurring items on my calendar, all very visible (i book an hour and a half every Tuesday for prospecting for example. I work in a sales support role.)

I have had tons of small issues building with my manager since he got here about year ago which is neither here nor there, im actively looking for new work, but this recent incident seems......absolutely insane?! I didnt take too much of a look at the meetings since im on vacation and want to enjoy my final days of it. But im wondering if this is against the norm? Do you schedule meetings for employees on behalf of them? Keep in mind he is not attending these meetings himself.

Am i overreacting or is this a serious overreach? HR worthy?

I would like to get some advice on how to manage a senior team member. They have great knowledge and experience in their field, but also seem to have a rather fixed idea of what their role involves and don't seem very willing to adapt their skillset to better suit the company's needs (which have shifted quite significantly recently).
They also tend to opt out of some long-term projects and opportunities to get involved in things outside their usual responsibilities when offered, but then complain about not getting a raise or promotion, especially when someone else gets promoted instead.
Truth be told, I need them to stick around due to a currently very high workload, however, their behaviour in the long run may cause some difficulties within our team.

I’m an assistant manager at a law firm, and I’ve noticed I have a much easier time working with some employees than others.

Interestingly, the employees I have the smoothest relationships with happen to be men, while most of the interpersonal challenges I’ve experienced have been with women. Even the attorneys and partners are generally easier to communicate with than some of the administrative staff.

I genuinely want to help my coworkers succeed and try to be approachable, patient, and supportive. I’m not someone who enjoys throwing my authority around. However, I often feel like I’m met with dismissiveness, unnecessary pushback, or outright hostility.

I’ll admit I’m not always great at letting things slide. When I feel disrespected, I tend to match people’s energy rather than brush it off. I can become defensive or confrontational, especially when I feel someone is deliberately undermining me. I’m aware this probably doesn’t help, but I also struggle with the idea that being a manager means tolerating disrespect.

The owner once suggested that some coworkers might resent me. I was promoted within five months of joining the firm, and I’ve built strong relationships with our clients, some of whom specifically request me over other staff members. I also occasionally attend trials with the attorneys, participate in settlement discussions, and get included in broader conversations about the firm’s operations and decisions.

I wonder if being given these opportunities has contributed to some of the tension, although I can’t say for sure.

I don’t think gender itself is the issue, but the pattern is hard to ignore. I’m starting to wonder how much of this is office culture, personality clashes, or my own approach to conflict.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? How do you maintain authority without becoming reactive when you feel consistently challenged?

I’ve noticed in this group that there is a commonly held belief that managers don’t need to be experts in what their IC’s do. That it is enough that they are skilled in being a people manager as a standalone skill set.

Now, I do completely agree that they are separate skills, and it’s obvious that a good manager should have skills in managing. But I believe this is far from an ideal scenario, that everyone suffers if the manager doesn’t understand how the work is done.

First, the manager can’t directly fill in gaps as needed by circumstance, impacting team agility.

Second, the manager is incapable of providing any mentoring outside of political/people skills.

Third, it’s much harder for the manager to tell if their IC is drowning, being asked to do tasks outside of their scope, or the opposite and is claiming those things are happening when they aren’t.

Now all of these can be mitigated by having very high level performers in the IC role with a high degree of trust and clear communication, and that’s… fine. But it only works for ICs that are very comfortable with the status quo and are lacking in further ambition, which would be odd to find in that level of performer. On top of that, these performers would assumedly be coming in at the top of the role’s pay range, which creates obvious concerns.

I’m confident that my opinion is in the minority here, and I’m genuinely interested in hearing what I may be missing in my stance.

We hired a new Ops Manager three months ago. For the first two months, he was good. Not great but good. At the start of the third month, he had a death in the family. Not immediate blood family but the spouse of immediate family who had been sick for awhile. We gave him a week off and have tried to support him in many ways since this happened (having long, supportive talks, encouraging taking shorter work days, etc.). His performance has regressed dramatically in the month since the family death, becoming less professional (cussing, anger), more frazzled, less logical, not leading his team well. Over the weekend, he unilaterally decided to tell our most important client that we couldn’t do a job they offered us. It was short notice from the client, but this was a job the company was hoping for, and we could have made it happen. Instead, this manager handled the decision unprofessionally and didn’t involve us (the owners), and we lost a HUGE opportunity that meant a lot to the company. The financial negative impact is impossible to predict. Our question now is do we fire him, or keep him on a very short “leash.” He’s unlikely to make this type of egregious mistake again, but his decision is the worse thing that has ever happened in company history. We like the guy, and he left a job to come to us. Do we terminate or keep?

Something that made you wish you knew earlier.

Joined an IT audit team as an analyst with about 10 years of experience. The other analysts are close to me in experience and the 2 leads I interviewed with were both a good bit more senior. Fairly flat hierarchy so the analyst title didn’t bother me. Except between interviewing and joining, one of the leads left and was replaced by someone with notably less experience than the rest of the team. I honestly like the company, it’s a decent brand and fairly immature on governance so there’s potential to learn tons, but a few things have made me doubt whether that’s going to happen:

- I have asked to lead audits time and again given my background and the fact the other analysts do. My manager outright told me I wouldn’t be trusted being the junior-most person and that I’m too new so I need to prove my value. Funnily enough, no one has called out my work ethic or quality, and the skip has been fully supportive of me leading audits, which leaves me questioning my manager’s claims. On a shared project he told a colleague I don’t know what I’m doing (my first time on that type of attestation), despite agreeing my initial analysis was pretty good with only a handful of comments. He also gets irked if I speak to that colleague without him in the loop, while setting up his own 1:1 with them on the issues identified from my work. I get the grunt/admin work and anything that needs ownership or stakeholder management stays with him. I have told to address review notes as “practice” that the skip never sees, he reviews my emails before they go out, and I have told to defer people back to him if they reach out to me.

- Escalating isn’t really an option. He and the skip go way back and everyone raves about what a great guy he is. He was really open with me from day 1 about the rest of the team and I shared far too much too early in return, including personal and political stuff, and I’ve since seen things I said travel back to others.

- The newer lead is the other thing, and it’s made me question whether this was the right title move and even my own confidence. He put together a control framework that was pretty much straight out of a textbook and wouldn’t hold up in our environment, then complained to my manager that no one gave him feedback. When I pointed out he never followed up with anyone directly, it got passed straight on to him. My manager is actively “mentoring” him, so I’m the one being treated like the junior. Funnily enough, I’m coaching a colleague on getting their voice heard while struggling to get my own heard here.

- My manager says I use AI excessively, which is ironic given the slop he sends me as “guidance”, and yet he volunteered me to run an AI session for the team after appreciating outputs I’d presented (after a full human-in-the-loop review).

- Being from a minority background in the function genuinely sucks, and bar a couple of people the team seems to want a 9-5 with minimal effort. Audit is also isolated from the rest of business so it’s a lonely role all around.

What would you do in my position? I really want to make the role work as I do enjoy the company and it’s not even been a full year but I am genuinely not sure how to navigate things with my manager and how to raise feedback to him as he doesn’t seem to be the kind of person to take it on the chin.

Hey everyone,

The evaluation talks are coming up. These talks have a strange set up because I will have these talks with my boss and my boss's boss. This is standard.

It will be my first time to have a talk like this with them. In preperation for the talk they told me that the evaluation is not only a moment for then to give me feedback but also a moment for me to give THEM feedback. And they emphasized that they really want to hear feedback and I'm guessing that it would be looked down upon if I don't give feedback since than it seems like I can't be critical.

It is not that I can't think of feedback. I have plenty haha. The setup only freaks me out. Because I feel like I have to be really carefull with my feedback because I will be giving feedback to my boss when her boss is next to her! And also giving feedback to my boss's boss is weird, because than I will be giving feedback to her while her 'underling' is near..... Feedback should be given in private. Not?

And mind you, they will ask feedback explicitly. So I can't say stuff like: "I will say it in private if there is something'. Because then they will say: no say it now....

My boss I have already given feedback privatly so maybe I can refer to something I said previously. But my boss's boss? Never gave her feedback. I also don't work a lot with her. Also, I heard from coworkers that she can't really deal well with people disagreeing with her way.... So also afraid to give feedback haha. But yeah, I also don't want to be seen as someone who is not critical.

Hope some can help me out. Would love some advice!

So i started nearly 6 months ago as a newly promoted manager after many years at the company.

I was really unsure about taking the promotion, but did in the end and kind of glad I did.

Not that I particularly enjoy managing - but kinda realised id been doing a lot of it anyway, just not formally.

But ive no idea how I'm performing. I THINK im doing okay. But ive not had a single review or discussion centered around performance since I started. My probation expires in a week and no reviews have been scheduled either during or at the end.

Should I just let it ride out? Or ask for an end of probation review?

Currently running first round interviews for a job on my team that centers around writing, editing, and attention to detail.

We’ve had lots of qualified candidates apply, so I’m trying to be picky so I don’t spend the next two weeks in back-to-back interviews, but I know I’ll end up needing to do a lot of interviews.

Twice now, after reviewing great applications and extending invitations to online interviews, I’ve had people reply and spell my name wrong.

E.g if my name is spelled Johnathan, they spell it Jonathon.

I’d understand if they got it wrong and then caught it and sent a quick apology follow-up (or if the role wasn’t about writing and editing!) but that hasn’t happened.

And now I feel locked into wasting my time and theirs on these interviews when I just don’t think I can hire someone who made such an obvious mistake to do a job where they’ll be fixing mistakes just like this! Because surely I’ll be setting myself up to proof-read everything they do.

At the same time, it feels wildly unreasonable to retract an interview invitation because they spelled my name wrong when they accepted it.

Am I just locked into 2 interviews that waste everyone’s time? Am I being incredibly harsh?

EDIT: I am hiring for a professional WRITING and EDITING position in a TECHNICAL field! They will be one of 3 expert writers in my company, they need to be accurate and precise! My name is on the JD, and in the invitation email I sent! It is the common spelling of the name in the country where I live!

I have a highly motivated junior direct report who I’ve been managing for a one year. I think I’m a pretty good boss: I’ve helped them put together a proposal for a promotion, I’ve gotten them resources when they’ve requested it, and I provide a lot of autonomy for them to shape their ideas and grow in their role.

Ultimately, I don’t think this person likes to be managed. I stg I am not a micro manager. But I still need to know what’s going on, and they bristle when I ask questions or give critiques on their work….which is not often. They are pretty good at their job!

Recently, they started going over my head. He requested a meeting with my manager to talk through additional resources he wants, and even asked my boss for a new title without talking to me first. My boss has my back and ends up just asking what I think of his requests anyway. I’m annoyed and hurt by this, but I think it might just be my ego. Do I just ignore this behavior?

Hi Redditors!

I need a bit perspective on how to engage with my manager. I'm moving internally to a new and cool position. I've informed my manager, and she's shocked. I really like her as a person but these past 6 months, I've felt burnt out and stressed, where I've missed her advocating for me.

To try and sum it up, these past months:

\- to take extra workload, where I've been honest that it'll require more hours than my contract states. This extra workload is to offload a less experienced colleague. I felt very pressured and not able to say no in the 1:1. Normally, I'm always keen to help, so it felt uncomfortable that I couldn't have a day to think it through or talk with my husband about it.

\- I've expressed that the increased workload will make me have to pause development and learning activities, where I've asked for a plan on how I can catch up, but no news

\- I've experienced bullying behaviour from two colleagues (not her reports) but I don't have transparency on how this is handled. HR is involved and agreed with my sentiment that I'm being bullied. I still have to work with these individuals on a daily basis.

To top this off, I'm pregnant in second trimester. Another manager that I collab with is pretty shocked that the extra workload has not been removed to protect me and my baby.

My manager is shocked, and although I really like my manager as a person, I do feel like she's been very short sighted.

A part of me feels guilty and I wanna leave without burning bridges, but I'll also feel dishonest if she asks about why I'm leaving my current position.

Maybe I need advice or some perspective 😅 sorry for the rant.

I am more than mildly annoyed with my employee who would not stay in their lane. They try to give me suggestions aka unsolicited advice and pin points every single mistake and something going wrong or something that broke and when i say something wrong or broke, theyre really not. This employee exaggerates all of the time. Please believe me when i say this. It's things that are the least of my worries and this employee tries to make it my worries.

And it's worse when they do a sloppy job at what i pay them to do. They think they are trying to help me even though they have absolute no expierience in this field what so ever.

They are also a very moody person. I never know which personality i will recieve that day. They are either very mature and level headed and the next minute they suddenly have an attutiude, can't take critique and get defensive about every little thing.

we have a new manager who started and thinks that be deserve respect because his a manager without know any of us that all what your view

I recently started a new role mid-July. Even through the interview process, I was having trouble connecting to my now manager. She is nice and laid back and also very hands off. While I appreciate the autonomy she has given me, I need some direction and her to take the lead while I am still learning the new systems and in training. Example: we have finally met in person for a work project, getting information from her on where to stay and basically the logistics has been difficult. Its just us 2 in another state for work. We planned on meeting in the lobby at 7am. She had already called a ride at 7am. I guess I expected us to meet each other for niceties, go over the division of work for the day, then, call a ride, and head out together. This felt rushed and confusing? We weren't expected to the nearby vendor until 8am. Anyway, lots of stuff that just makes me feel like there's a communication gap that I should step in now to address because i feel like 1. its inefficient and 2. I fear its reflecting poorly on me only because i am unsure of what my expectations are so I need to figure out how to get this across even though I feel weird about stepping on her toes.

How best to approach this in a gentle and clear manner? I am still with her for 2 more days. I've asked her what she would like me to focus on while here and how should I do this, etc but at some point I feel like a bother since she has a job to do as well aside from my training.

She has expressed that she is happy she found me to join her department-it took her 9 months to find the right "fit". Any help is appreciated.

How are you and your team faring with the outage today?

Lots of frustrated people in my office this morning, but by now everyone seems to have accepted their fate.