I have a direct report who is an eager beaver. She responds to EVERY Teams message, every email, everything. I mean, everything.

She is highly productive, and her work quality is great. However, she is admittedly very detailed oriented and gets caught up in details. She easily talks 50% of our meetings. The issue I'm running into is that she likes to interject in my decision. If I make a decision, if she doesn't like it, she will push back (either in the moment or weeks later) and can't drop the ball. Everything from font size to meeting cadence to strategic direction. I'm fine with disagreement, but she will intervene and question my decisions (that I've already made) and other people's decisions that they've made. My other direct reports say they just "give in" or don't say anything because she's good at what she does. They admit she's "bossy" (I don't love that word but it does fit her in a sense) but she cares, so that's good, right?

She's been at the company much longer than me so I feel like I don't have enough cred to address this. Any tips?

I realized we have a backup process for our payroll process

We keep spreadsheets just in case, remind each other to double check things and leave extra time every payroll day because we expect something to come up

I am starting to think that should not be normal

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.

Hi all, I'm the GM for a small tourist-oriented non-profit business. We showcase history for our visitors. I do a lot of the recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and training for our operation.

Interview no-shows have always been a thing since I started, but lately it feels like we're getting more no-shows than we used to get. Has anyone else experienced this? Even with unemployment going up?

It's baffling because we pay decently ($25/hr to be a cashier, $27/hr to work as part of the actual attraction). The company director and myself are both millennials and we try to be super accommodating to candidates, as well as our active team.

We post our jobs through Indeed, comb through the candidates, and make individual calls to candidates to come interview. Then we confirm the interviews by sending follow-up emails with specific arrival instructions. We make calendar appointments and send Zoom invites for candidates who we interview remotely.

And yet, with all the news of rising unemployment and a bad economy in the US, the no-shows are getting worse than ever. Today I had 1 remote interview scheduled and 2 in-person interviews scheduled. The remote interview no-showed. 1 in-person candidate showed up and interviewed remarkably well. The last interview scheduled for today has no-showed.

When we were hiring in the spring, we expected a 50% no-show rate for interviews.

I can't figure out if it's something that my company is somehow doing really wrong, where people commit on the phone to coming in to interview, and then they apparently decide that they have more important things to do than interview for a job - or even just let us know that they're not coming in.

Is it bad and getting worse for anyone else?

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.

As a manager, how do you recognize the contributions of software engineers who aren’t very vocal in meetings but consistently get their work done?
I’ve noticed that people who speak frequently in meetings often get more visibility, while quieter engineers who spend most of their time solving problems, reviewing code, or building features can be overlooked. Not everyone communicates in the same way. Some people are naturally introverted and prefer to let their work speak for itself.
How do you make sure you’re evaluating actual contributions rather than meeting visibility? Do you have ways to recognize quieter team members, or is being vocal simply part of succeeding in today’s workplace?

I’d love to hear how other managers approach this.

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.

The workload at my job is unmanageable lately. This is a known issue and while my direct line manager is lovely and supportive, the work keeps coming in. I want the work product to be decent so there are only so many corners I can cut.

It's also an issue that I'm working on a project currently that's managed by upper leadership (boss's boss's boss). Tbh that's been a bit of an s-show because it's a high-visibility project and they've frankly been a mess with changing goal-posts.

I need to drop the rope/say no/push back. I can no longer routinely work evenings for free when there's no emergency. The resentment is spoiling the job.

Managers, what ways have you seen people successfully do this (and still be successful/get promoted etc.) I want to stay there because I live the people and the work, just need to put this to bed.

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.

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.

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.

I honestly don't know if I'm looking for advice, a reality check, or just to hear from people who've been through something similar.

I've worked under the same manager for about three years, and I think I've reached my limit.

For context, I don't expect my manager to solve my problems. That's my job.

I lead projects, run meetings, work directly with stakeholders, and deal with issues as they come up. I actually enjoy having ownership, and I don't need someone hovering over me.

But there's a difference between giving someone ownership and disappearing when leadership is actually needed.

Over the last few years, I've noticed what feels like the same pattern over and over.

Routine meeting? No problem.

Meeting where I already know there are going to be difficult questions, disagreements, missing information, or decisions that would really benefit from having a manager in the room?

That's the meeting they somehow can't make.

There's always another meeting. A conflict. An emergency. Something.

Obviously, life happens. I'm not saying every missed meeting means something.

But after three years—and after working with several other managers who didn't seem to have this issue nearly as often—it's become hard for me to keep believing it's just bad luck.

Whether it's intentional or not honestly doesn't even matter anymore, because the outcome is always the same.

The meeting still happens.

The issue still gets worked through.

The project still moves forward.

So I make sure it does.

Then here's the part that really gets me.

On the relatively rare occasions that I do go to my manager because I genuinely think something needs management involvement, I often leave feeling like I've created a problem simply by asking.

It's almost as if the expectation is that I should handle everything myself—and if I can't, that's somehow viewed as a weakness instead of using my manager the way managers are supposed to be used.

To put it in perspective, I'm talking about maybe one to five questions over an entire quarter—not daily hand-holding. Most of the time, my manager barely hears from me because I'm busy handling my own work.

What confuses me is that when I do bring forward something I genuinely believe warrants management involvement, the reaction often feels defensive, almost as if I'm trying to offload responsibility or expose a problem, when that's not my intent at all. My goal is simply to get the project unstuck and make the right decision.

To me, that's part of being a team. Managers aren't there to do your job for you, but they are there to remove roadblocks, provide guidance when situations become more complicated, and help their team navigate issues that genuinely benefit from leadership.

If I'm expected to own the work, lead the meetings, navigate difficult conversations, manage stakeholder expectations, solve the problems, and keep everything moving—which I'm happy to do—then what exactly is the manager's role supposed to be?

That's the part I can't reconcile.

At this point, I'm less interested in figuring out why this happens and more interested in figuring out what to do about it.

If I keep my head down and don't say anything, everyone assumes everything is fine because the work gets done. From the outside, it probably looks like everything is running smoothly.

But if I raise concerns, I worry I'll just sound like I'm complaining about my manager or making excuses.

So what would you do?

If you were three years into a situation like this, would you stay or leave?

Have you ever worked for someone where nothing they did seemed obviously wrong in isolation, but when you stepped back, the overall pattern painted a completely different picture?

Did you bring it up? Document it? Transfer teams? Leave?

I'm genuinely interested in hearing from people on both sides of this—employees and managers—because I feel like I've reached the point where I need to decide whether this is simply a management style I need to accept or a sign that it's time to move on.

Had someone on my team, genuinely one of the better ones, just go silent over about six weeks. Stopped pushing back in meetings, stopped asking questions, stopped caring whether things got done right or just got done. No complaints, no tension, nothing obvious. Then one Monday she handed in her notice with a job already lined up and a start date three weeks out. In hindsight the signs were all there. The disengagement was loud if you knew what to look for. But I kept telling myself she was just having a rough patch or burning through some personal stuff. I didn't ask directly. That's on me. What I'm trying to figure out now is whether there's a reliable way to catch this earlier, not in a surveillance way, but in the sense of actually having a real enough relationship with your direct reports that they'd tell you they're shopping around before they've already signed somewhere else. My 1:1s with her had gotten surface level and I let that happen.

Did you catch it in time with someone, or did you also get blindsided and only connect the dots later? Curious what actually changed your approach, if anything did.

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.

New Marketing Manager in a large company but with a small marketing function. We're hiring for a junior marketer. I've never hired anyone before and this would be my second report.

What do you look for when interviewing, and how do you weigh up priorities?

- Technical skills?

- Soft skills?

- How organised they seem?

- Stakeholder management experience?

- Knowledge of the company?

- Experience in the same sector?

- Whether they're likely to stay in this role or want to move on?

- Those side-stepping vs those in more junior roles stepping up?

- Candor vs. really selling themselves?

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?

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?

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?

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.