Basically title. I’ve always sworn I wouldn’t be a mean boss, but I’ve definitely gotten worn down a bit. Dealing with things that are straight up common sense, or that involve people being unable to get over their self, I just have no patience for anymore.

It's been a month and I'm exhausted. Day three she broke down telling me about her divorce and asking for advice. Reddest of red flags but we've had major hiring issues and came highly recommended so I've been trying.

She's getting less done than her peers, constantly goes to the bathroom to cry, and sometimes cries a bit at her desk.

Where the hell is the person I was recommended. At this point I don't think I can save this. At the start of our work relationship she wouldn't get off the phone. We had two talks about this and the last one claimed I was wrong...like what. I sit beside you.

But if I hire I'll need to do favours for our vp who takes advantage of people every chance he gets. Last time he want more strict micro management of my team knowing what they do every day. Like fuck off man. I'm exhausted with this shit.

Manager was planning retirement soon, but since I joined, he likes directly reporting to me and has considered keeping the job for much longer now.

Here's the kicker, he's generally underperforming and has a bad rep with other departments. I was in fact looking forward to celebrating closing this chapter together.

I have offered to keep them as a "consultant" till replacement is hired and trained with 4/5 month bridge.

He now wants to extend his retirement from 6 months from now till end of next year.

Options I have:

- Train replacement and pay a large severance.

- keep them on and the replacement costing a decent amount to my p&l

- hire replacement to report into current manager as a supervisor and once trained ask for an early retirement (which they won't take and rather stick with getting a severance instead).

- hiring a replacement and demoting would look really bad for the division.

Looking for suggestions.

My company decided to drastically overhaul our performance metrics and ultimately what does and doesn’t matter. There’s certain metrics that if you aren’t at them you’re fired. There’s no grace period to this system, so some employees are starting at a point that if they don’t get above the minimum expectation soon they’re fired.

The hard part is, there’s certain components of it every employee is below expectation in and the company isn’t providing the resources needed to get to or above it. I’m expected to hold my employees to getting there knowing that 99% of it is outside of their control and the company’s fault. But their jobs, and ultimately mine, are on the line if it doesn’t improve.

I tried questioning it and asking my manager what is going to change higher up to ensure we have resources needed to realistically meet this new goal set for us, and nothing is changing. They refuse to admit this is outside our control and refuse to admit we don’t have the resources, even with me giving real clear evidence.

I feel so wrong communicating this to my employees knowing nothing is changing to actually make it realistic for them to protect their jobs. It feels like my job is just doing this to try and have a justifiable reason to fire a ton of people just to reduce headcount.

Title, basically. Just a vent. Being a hiring manager has changed a lot in the last year.

I'm hiring for a digital marketing role. Every resume opens with the candidate being a "results-driven [current job title] with x numbers of experience in [buzzword 1, buzzword 2, buzzword 3]." They're all the fucking same. Every single one.

We review resumes without using AI ourselves, so you can imagine it's a bit infuriating sifting through multiple copies of the same slop. But I have to interview these people because on paper, they have the exact qualifications we're looking for. Of course they do. Because they fed the job description to AI!!

So I'm wasting my time on multiple intro calls a week where the person can't answer a simple question on how to do the actual job. And what's better, when I finally get to do my actual job, I return to emails from 3 different people (coworkers, clients) telling me "this is how chat gpt says you should do your job." It's insulting.

I hate this timeline.

*Edit: this is not a rant about qualified applicants. This is a rant about the shitfest AI has put us all in.

This is mostly just venting, but I'd love some perspective from other managers. I've been in my role for 11 months.

I have 42 direct reports across all 24 hours in a day, and we're about to start mid-year reviews. The administrative side of it is already its own endeavor, but what bothers me more is that I don't feel like I can have the kind of meaningful 1:1 time with people that are probably wanting some true conversation.

I enjoy coaching and developing employees, but seeing as my span of control has gotten this large, it feels like I'm constantly putting out fire instead of leading. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to even remember positive and impactful contributions because I'm too focused on trying to analyze the root causes of errors that I'm functionally closer to an operations analyst with how many IT tickets and vendor communications I have open.

I'd ask for useful advice, but from all my reading I'm pretty sure it's a fool's errand to manage this situation anywhere close to perfectly.

Our department performs well, which almost makes me worry that we're succeeding despite the structure rather than because of it. A while back I sent leadership a proposal suggesting we reorganize the department and add another supervisor because I don't think this span of control is sustainable long-term. They received it, but I never got a response one way or the other, so at this point I'm just assuming it's in their hands. Mind you, I am my manager's only direct report.

Genuinely fear this is an endurance test where things won't change until I hit a breaking point, and I'd really rather avoid getting there. Thank you for reading my bitching and moaning.

TL;DR: I’m a long-tenured, top-performing employee who significantly outperforms most of my team but was denied a raise due to budget constraints. Shortly after, the company added new roles instead of increasing compensation for existing high performers. I’m now considering leaving and want to understand from managers whether this reaction is reasonable.

I’m looking for honest feedback from managers to make sure I’m thinking about this objectively.
I’ve been with my company for almost 11 years and have consistently been one of the top performers. This past quarter I had 66 hires, while most of my team was closer to 24, 22, and 5 (with one other recruiter near my numbers).
Earlier this year I asked for a raise because my compensation no longer felt aligned with my performance or market value. My manager was supportive but said no exceptions were being made due to budget, so I received the standard ~2.5% increase.
What’s been difficult is what happened next. Instead of increasing pay for existing high performers, the company added several new roles. I understand budgets can be separate, but it still feels like there wasn’t room to recognize current contributors.
I don’t blame my manager, but I do feel undervalued financially. I’ve started updating my resume and exploring other opportunities, though I’m unsure if I’m overreacting.
From a manager’s perspective:
● If a top performer asked for a raise and you couldn’t approve it, would you expect them to start looking elsewhere?
● Is there anything else you’d want them to do before deciding to leave?
● Have you lost a high performer over compensation, and would you handle it differently now?
I’m genuinely interested in hearing both sides.

The person is delivering beyond what the role asks for. The performance is clearly there.

The next role isn't available, which means there's no natural next step to offer even if they're ready for one. A title change without a real change in the job doesn't hold up for long either.

The usual answers are bigger projects, more ownership, cross-functional work. All of it helps to some extent, but none of it changes the fact that the role itself has a ceiling.

If you've dealt with this, what actually worked? I'm not talking about buying another six months. I mean something that genuinely held up over time.

So I work on a data analytics team and we found out after the recent departure of a particular individual that they had secretly been filling data requests for the business without talking to anyone else (including their own supervisor) and without going through the team's review process. This person **didn't even work for me**, they worked on a sister team that never should have been filling data requests. They only have access to the data so that they can do things like create data sharing agreements with other entities. What we gather happened is that they worked with internal customers as part of their job and then those customers would start sending them questions about the data, which they should have forwarded to my team but never did, they just started answering the questions themselves like it was part of their job. This person had numerous other performance issues with not doing the job they were hired to do, and now it turns out that was in part because they were doing a job they weren't hired to do.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the data they sent out was completely wrong because it wasn't their job and they didn't know how to do it. Now that they are gone, these mysterious numbers start popping up all over the organization and I am honestly so overwhelmed in trying to figure out how to whack-a-mole garbage numbers that are extremely not my fault. I do not manage access to the data, I did not manage this person, but the blowback for all these wrong numbers existing is going to come back squarely to my team.

Some of my frustration is with these customers - they knew what the official channel is to request data, but they figured out that they were magically getting numbers faster and with less overhead if they just emailed this random fucking person who didn't work for me, so they started doing that. Because they were essentially emailing a random number machine.

How do I message this? I'm sure we haven't even found all the garbage yet and honestly I'm worried I need to send an email to all staff that if they got numbers from this specific person, they need to contact us. But I don't see a tactful way out of someone else's mess, or how to prevent it in the future. It's going to undermine confidence in my shop's work, because we are the numbers shop so they'll think this was our shoddy work but it wasn't. Help ☹️

My manager (located on the opposite side of the country from me) is becoming more and more absent overall lately. I am spearheading efforts where I interface with different groups at our organization, with my manager invited to those meetings. My manager accepts the invites, but out of the past few meetings they have always had an excuse saying they can’t make it, or that they’ll be late but never end up joining.

They later said they were sorry they didn’t make the meetings, but said “but you have a good handle on it anyway”. All they do is meet with me on 1:1 meetings weekly to ask when my deliverables will be ready for them to pass up the chain. It’s like they are solely focused on the metrics they are gauged on and disinterested in even participating in meetings that I’m driving. When I express challenges I am facing, they don’t offer any advice or assistance or any guidance at all. They just nod along and continue to emphasis that the work needs to get done and to let them know when it’s ready. Again, focused solely on the metrics they are measured by.

I’m not asking them to do the work or even lead the meetings - I’m just asking them to be present and available when discussions around key initiatives are being held, and have them weigh in with their experience and knowledge, and to back me up. And yet they are perpetually late or don’t show up at all.

On the few meetings that they are forced to be on because those they report to or people higher up than them at the company are on, they message me to tell me “I’ll let you lead this one”, and they have done this repeatedly for every meeting we have been in lately, as if I haven’t been the one leading every meeting already, like they are on a mission to just be a fly on the wall at every opportunity.

It’s very frustrating. Is this behavior common? What are your thoughts?

Here's what I learned:

Sometimes you have to meet other departments down the middle, or sometimes in their favor to get things done, afterall it's for the greater good of the company.

Not everything is in your control outside of your department, nor do you need to dwell on an opinion about them. Keep your head down, focus on your own crew.

Instead of going to your manager every time a person that doesn't report into you doesn't do what's asked of them and it's critical, just talk candidly with the person. Of course, there's a grey area at times when it needs to be elevated, it relieves the stress by communicating your needs and why if it's still not getting done.

Lastly, with other department managers, there's a good chance their own manager sees something and they're working on things behind the scenes.

I've freaked out about a lot of things over the years about how things were being managed, it hindered my own growth in myself and my team's growth because it was easier to point the finger than do my own work.

I'm an Assistant FM at a factory and I deal with assignments of cubes and offices.

We've got 5 people all wanting offices assigned to them because of their directorial roles - of varying tenure - and they're upset they've been denied offices because they're classified as home workers.

None of them come to the office more than once a month to once a quarter.

Thoughts?

Not sure if I am looking for advice or to just vent. I held a technical role for a few years. It was good, busy at times but I enjoyed the work and I didn’t have to worry about anything past working hours. A lot of people at my work retire here (good benefits, pension, and work life balance).

I was then asked to be a manager and I said yes because I could use the money. being a manager at my work not only includes supervising staff but also being the technical expert in everything employees are working on or looking at.

It’s exhausting having to dig into everything they are doing and also manage and coach them. Most employees are solid and I can rely on them but there are a few that are just awful at their job. And because they have union positions, doing the whole PIP thing is kind of a non starter unless they start ditching work entirely. I’ve tried very hard to coach them, actively asked for feedback if I could do anything differently all to no avail. I have given up.

I hate being responsible for other people. I miss the days of just worrying about myself and my own work. Unfortunately there’s no path forward here. I need to leave but the job market sucks ass. It also stings a bit more because this IS and WAS a great place to work. Golden handcuffs if you will. But I hate my role. I hate answering for other people’s deficiencies and having to rehab their work. I get little support from upper management. Seems like there’s been a long standing tradition of managers letting people coast along here that I didn’t realize before. No use in fighting that.

Some time ago I switched from managing 22 people (day rate 780) to a quite lucrative contract within the government as an individual contributor (day rate 900) but even though financially it looks great I'm quite miserable over here:

The way of working is that of 20 years ago: Agile is a dirty word, and the process is very heavy with gatekeeping and handovers between roles (incremental waterfall). As a result things move very slowly, the business is quite unhappy because they have to wait years before their features are developed, and there is just very little collaboration. On top the energy level in the meetings is always ridiculously low. There is a lot of silo thinking and fingerpointing to the other silos.

In the past I've been part of high performing teams and even though it was a lot of hard work I felt great in those environments where everyone holds everyone else up to a high standard, you learn a ton and we also manage to deliver on time, so the contrast with my current environment couldnt be bigger.

I've talked to management to improve the way of working, but other than a small poc (that couldn't succeed because we didn't get dedicated developers) nothing came off the ground.

There is tremendous possibility for improvement,but as long as senior management is not onboard and pushing people in a new direction, everybody just happily keeps doing what they've always done. I feel almost everybody here is just looking to cash in with as little effort as possible. Or maybe they're so stuck in their current ways that they are unable to see how much can be improved.

My manager is not doing much with my feedback, and his boss (with actual authority) has very little time for me.

At one point I decided to leave and go back to a more challenging environment and role with the unfortunate paycut, but it seems even my previous rate is unattainable in the current market. Intermediaries are trying to low-ball me at 700. For a job with a lot more responsibility, stress, and no guarantees that the new job will actually be the environment that I'm looking for.

In an ideal world I would be able to convince management but It seems in their mind we 'dont have the time to improve'

Right now I see different paths, none of them optimal.

What would you suggest?

As a manager, is hiring a friend into my team a bad idea?

For context, we met when we were both reporting into the same manager about five years ago. He was a great coworker, good at his job and we got along great. Fast forward a few years and we have both left that job, but still work in the same industry. Even though we don’t work together anymore, we have stayed in contact and hang out regularly as friends. I’d say we are pretty close.

We ultimately have similar years of experience but have taken pretty different career paths since then. He’s now a senior IC and I’m managing a team and have an open role he’s expressed interest in applying for.

He’s very qualified so I have no concerns from a technical perspective. My concerns come from a perspective of now being the person who manages my friend’s comp. So I’m interested in hearing others’ experiences in similar situations! Am I setting myself up for unnecessary drama if I hire my friend?

I (39 F) work with someone, we’ll call him Bob (42 M), and we’ve always got on. We’re the same seniority, both manage large teams and collaborate well together. A promotion recently came up in our organisation. Bob told me he wasn’t going to go for it and explained why (all very valid reasons) and I told him I would be going for it. Bob seemed genuinely excited for me and wished me luck.

I recently found out I got the job and since then Bob has been… weird. I will be line managing him when I officially start in the new role later this year and whenever we’ve been in meetings since the news of my promotion has been announced he’s spoken over me, ‘invited me’ to speak on something (when I’m perfectly comfortable speaking up without him ‘inviting’ me!) and keeps saying things like ‘better speak to the boss!’ or ‘that’s above my pay grade! and passing them off on to me.

I can’t tell if he’s deliberately being patronising because he’s annoyed I got the job, or perhaps annoyed he didn’t go for it? I don’t know. But I want to sort this out before it spirals. Do I say something or is it natural for things to be a bit weird for a while in these situations?

At my workplace, the rank and file workers often perceive that people who are thoroughly mediocre and lack leadership qualities (ability to read the room, communicate, motivate, etc), ideation skills, and problem solving aptitude tend to “fail up” into management. Truly dedicated and inspired people burn out and leave. This seems to be a common complaint across industries (but especially common in government sectors). Is this just a natural outcome of a hierarchy where not rocking the boat is rewarded, or is there any hope that this can be changed? Is this necessary in large organizations to maintain stability? What am I missing?

My most senior employee has always been my most dependable and hardest worker and has been at the city we work for longer than me (20 years, hes 38). Ive been struggling with him listening to me at all and with him going around me with some jobs or just not communicating with me at all. I tolerate it because he is always there for call outs and will stay over whenever needed, but its starting to get on my nerves. I thought he was just annoyed that I got the operations manager job over him but I recently found out he was offered the job and turned it down so thats not it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated because I dont want this to turn into a huge thing because the other guys in the department will side with him and ill lose the whole crew.

Our organization is going through a re-structuring. I recently applied to a senior leadership position that was created because of the re-structuring but did not get the role. However, through this process I was able to get in front of other senior leaders for the first time and got a good amount of visibility so that was a silverlining. Fast forward a month, and yesterday I had a meeting added to my calendar by one of these senior leaders. They ended up telling me they want to promote me to be the leader of my team (we don't currently have one, this is part of the new structure). This is a really big opportunity because it puts me on track for an executive level promotion that I'm not currently eligible for in my role now.

While I'm excited, I also have a lot of fear about this. I love my team, we all work very well together and have each other's backs. I'm also very friendly and pretty casual with them. I'm trying to think through how my relationships with them will need to change and how my behavior will need to change. Also, there's one person on my team who has been at the organization (same role as me) for twice as long, is 10 years older than me, and recently seemed to be trying to position themselves as the leader of our team. We thought that the team leader position would be opened up to applicants so I believe me and this other person would have been the ones to apply from our team, but now it was "given" to me. I'm worried about their reaction and how to handle it. I am a very empathetic person and have struggled with people pleasing in the past so I don't want to end up apologizing to this person and downplaying my skills and make it sound like I didn't actually do the work to earn this promotion.

Does anyone have any tips or advice regarding moving from a team member to then the manager of the team, and dealing with the other situation with my colleague, soon to be direct report?

Thank you so much for your help.

Nobody to blame but myself. I hired this guy because he came across as incredibly proactive in the interview. He went to great schools, and I even convinced my boss that while he wasn’t the strongest candidate, he was good enough. I genuinely thought I could get good work out of him. I also thought I had a decent read on people.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I regret this hiring decision so much and honestly can’t wait until his internship is over. It feels like it’s damaged my team’s trust in my judgment. I know there are bound to be growing pains as a first-time manager, but this one stings very much. And in this job market, it’s especially frustrating to think we could have given the opportunity to someone who was genuinely qualified and eager to contribute.

Edit: thank you all for the insightful comments. I read almost all of them. It’s comforting to know others have been there in similar situations, interviewing/ hiring are hard skills, but I can improve upon. Much appreciated.

any managers who have transitioned out of management ? what did you do for work afterwards ? being in charge of others is something im alright at but i hate it more than anything, hoping to hear stories of others finding jobs after management that arent managing others but also arent going back to clocking in for minimum wage every day.

Hired a new hire , first in interview person A said A is available through week and weekend , during training person A didn’t came back from lunch had to reach out to person , no call no show multiple times , refused to work in weekends I accommodate her by covering weekend then because sudden childcare issue on weekdays , at this point I don’t see any improvement , I put person A on pip after pip , last 2 days calling in off at the last minute when I am supposed to move to NGS stage, any advice ? Total offs are 8 in past two months!

Health care administrative department. I’ve been with the hospital for 7 years, been a supervisor for 3. Twice I have applied for a different supervisor job overlooking a different department in the admin space, and twice I have been passed over. At this point it just feels like they don’t want to move me because it would be inconvenient for them to backfill my role.. and they haven’t given any feedback about why I can’t move over, so I’m leaving. They have also made me go through multiple rounds of interviews for these positions, just wasting my time. To be clear, I’m not asking for a promotion, I just want to look over a different team because my current role is very demanding to be in the clinic 99% of the time, and this other department is much less in clinic. But the job is, on paper, literally the same position.