r/askmanagers

My manager and I have a pretty chill working rapport. I’m a non eng program manager in tech and ‘career level’ so I am generally given autonomy to get my stuff done.

I recently got a new colleague. I have about eight years of work experience on them and am a higher ‘level.’ We both worked on a separate program and basically we are supposed to be merging our programs and working on both.

My issue is they are completely uninterested in work, apart from being told exactly what to do. I am up to speed on their program because I provided temp coverage while they were out on two separate extended leaves. They have not provided coverage nor even tried to learn what I do.

With regards to “my” program, when we first met I shared what I needed to train them on and they kept saying, “well I don’t even know what that is.” And I was like, “I know. That’s why I’m training you, I didn’t either when I first started.” They have since lost access and keep telling me they’re “working on it” when I remind them to get access back.

For “their” program, I am dedicating half my time.

They take the easy route on all the work. They will acknowledge that something is the right path but that they don’t want to do it. They will try to take shortcuts and say something is another teams problem (it’s not).

They use my name to sign off on emails they send from our team inbox because “it’s less confusing.” They ask me to weigh in on every decision or case they review. When they have to push back or share responses on items, they will ask me to do it because I “explain it better” or “(the person we’re responding to) likes you more and will take it better.” They will not do any updates and leave it to me. Then get annoyed with other managers ask them about their own work. They keep trying to give me more of the work despite them having 40 hours a week to work on this program.

I want to talk to my manager about their performance and its impact on my own workload. I don’t want to throw them under the bus but right now, I would literally rather do it all myself.

Is this a manager issue? Or do I need to learn to flex my own leadership skills as the senior level employee?

Hi all. I’m a U.S. based junior employee at a small nonprofit. It’s been a hot mess, especially since 2025, when all the craziness went down, and we’re down 20% staff over the last two years, which is significant when we already only had around 20 employees. The org is 70% management or higher, no one gets promoted out of junior status, and all juniors leave within 4-5 years.

I’ve been ready to jump ship for quite some time and this has been locked in ever since I got threatened with a PIP after asking for a promotion after nearly four years in the position. TLDR: No PIP and even got a performance bonus in March, same as every year. I’m broadly popular with everyone else in the office and the pinch hitter fix it all person for all the technical projects.

I’ve pushed back my two week notice because of I needed some health insurance things but I’m very fortunate to be set otherwise in terms of finances for several months and plan to move away from this godforsaken hellhole.

Now that I can submit my notice, I was wondering how much it’d burn bridges if I submitted my notice while both my supervisor and department head are on spring break next week. Our spring staff retreat is also happening the week after.

I’ll probably do it anyway since the relationship is beyond salvaging but I wanted to know what other DON’T DO THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BURN EVERY BRIDGE. I’m junior enough to be cautious despite wanting to leave this industry.

One of the areas I struggle with as a manager is a differentiation between supporting my employees, being empathetic, caring, flexible and supporting the business - what helps the bottom line, legal, what HR would do. Because of this, I am stuck in maybe a gray area and just want to double check here before I do the wrong thing.

An employee of mine has disclosed pregnancy, very early, the employee is overwhelmed and still sorting through and processing the news. Obviously, they have made it explicitly clear it is confidential and no one else in the office knows (including their co-workers that they have a good relationship with).

My instincts say - keep my mouth shut, don't pry but leave an open door if they need to talk, be supportive and flexible but let them come to me. Not worry if they are late in the morning or need to be in the bathroom (morning sickness can be rough). And then when they are ready to disclose, be supportive.

(It's too early to even think about staffing and planning)

As a manager - are these instincts right? As a manager, do I have any obligation to the company to disclose the information I have? I do not want to betray my employees confidence or put myself in a situation where my team does not feel they can trust me BUT at the same time, I don't want to put myself in a situation where I find myself in trouble for not handling this situation correctly (by upper management/HR standards).

Our team hired a Director several months ago who is also a friend of the senior leadership and also reports to this person. They also used to work together years ago and from what has been observed, they have a long-standing friendship.

The Director inherited a team of folks that has been with the company for many years. The Director recently hired a young manager 6 months ago, and our team can't help notice that there is favoritism. For example, the Director constantly gives recognition to this person during team meetings, and has also given this manager projects to lead that would have normally been led by a more senior manager or as a collaborative team. This new manager was also given opportunities to participate in fun off-site events that none of us were aware of.

It not only feels like favoritism, but that the Director is trying to build up this manager for fast tracking. The Director told us at one point that he/she came to this company to get promoted, so we believe this young Manager is being built up on purpose to show how well the Director developed this person. The rest of us feel ignored and have asked for the same opportunities only to be ignored. Everyone says it's because this Director hired this person (vs inheriting like the rest of us), and the Director wants to look good with the hiring choice.

On a related note, morale has been low for 5 years due to the Senior Leadership, same one that hired the Director. We also believe the Senior Leadership is gunning for the job of someone in the C-suite that is set to retire soon, which would give the Director an opportunity to move into his/her friend's spot. Recently, the Senior Leadership promoted a couple of people on a separate adjacent team and believe this was to show what a good leader he/she is, especially since this leader wants that C-suite spot. We think the Director is being coached by his/her friend in doing the same with the young manager.

Would like your thoughts on this because all of us (managers and non-managers) have really low morale seeing this.

This is a question about meetings. I'm not salary like most of our small team, so my hours are pre-determined and fixed. However, my manager regularly schedules team meetings at days/times that I'm not scheduled without asking me first. The first couple times, I mentioned that they were outside my work hours, and they seemed apologetic. And not wanting to miss out, I moved my schedule around or joined from home. However, it keeps happening, and I feel frustrated. Am I obligated to attend these meetings if they're outside my agreed upon schedule?

Hi guys, I’m relatively new to management, I’ve been running the facility I work at smoothly for about a year and a half. During that time I’ve hired a team of 4 to work under me and had almost no employee turnover. The issue I’m running into now is one of my employees who’s been established as my right hand man and I’ve promoted to assistant manager has had 3 separate court cases within a month, DUI, driving without a license, and domestic battery (no charges being filed but in our state any domestic altercation is legally required to go to court.) He’s been a major part of restructuring how our facility operates and has years of technical experience that have been a great help in the assorted repairs that we deal with in our industry. However with the recent amount of court cases and an increasing number of missed days due to personal reasons, family issues etc, it’s seriously affecting our production since we run such a small team and is turning into an escalating pattern. Additionally we work in a niche industry and sourcing a replacement is not an easy task, I’ve talked to him multiple times over the last several months and every time I feel he’s got his personal life sorted out another big event happens.

So what would be your advice? I need him on my team but is it worth the headache to keep him on?

I just started a new job that was supposed to be simple but faced a pace and a team oriented cleaning job (March 21st) It is also my first graveyard job

I havent worked in a team since highschool and was really excited to work in a team again.

I have found it is filled with drama, open toxicity that is met with praise, teammates not telling the entire truth/story, a self-claimed supervisor misrepresenting my words to a team lead that she's friends with. Overall, I feel like I'm just becoming a scape-goat from unrealistic expectations due to upper management wanting things done quicker

I am expected to be as fast as everyone else who had been here a whole month or longer. Steps in my hands-on training were skipped and made to second hand.

I am still too slow, where co-workers openly negatively comment on it, despite working through my sickness and even working through lunches to do my part and be quicker. I find it uncomfortable to take my lunches here

Today, I was assigned a new team lead who said they were doing an "anonymous survey for their team leads" and made comments. Among the lines, the big boss wants to know why you're slow. as well as only spoke to me.

why do the team leads who are complaining about me just talk to me? "we don't want to be confrontational."

told em that would just brew drama. and then he said they claimed I'm late from coming back from lunch, which wasn't even true.

I want to find a proper way to document my work, job in a quick manner that no one can say "oh you altered it to fit your narrative."

Im not perfect, and I've messed up more than I'd like to admit, but I feel like my co-workers don't want me around after the first week. some of them are cool, though. They just arnt in leadership.

I'm pretty confident their trying to paper trail me for all sorts of stuff without fully talking to me. as I walked into a conversation to sign out on a paper and their conversation left me knowing my first week I had 3 complaints on me no one told me about or addressed and I have no absolute idea what those could be about but with simple self-education from that conversation it was very clearly about me.

unfortunately, I have some financial constraints, and I've never had to worry about this before. I didn't get a chance to make a good impression on upper management as far as I'm aware I'm just a bad case all around to them. I haven't gotten any praises for anything I've done.

TLDR;

Need documentation method one cant say I altered

how do I navigate a job where I feel people have been trying to get rid of me since week one?

How to navigate an area that seems to think I'm a bad employee when Ive never had a poor job performance before?

Went through an interview with the manager. First he told me that I'll hear back from HR, then he said if I have any additional questions, to email him or that I have his number so I can call him. He was the one that called me on my phone to schedule an interview.

I'm just trying to respect a manager's time so would calling him be considered rude?

Hi. I will try this explain this strange situation.

Team1 and L1 role-my current team. My work is very complex.

Team2 and L2 role-promotion w/ 20k+ more comp but team's work is dumb af!

I ofc want more $ and promotion, but I feel sad af that I will not use all my skills. I really enjoy Team1 for that. imo Team2's dumb work will fuck up my career. I think I will need to lie on my future resume about skills at I used for any work at Team2. Team2 is just for more money and promotion. I think Team2 would be for a few years until I find smart team with L3 role.

What do ppl think? Stay Team1 to continue to grow skills rather than Team2 for $ and promotion? I wish Team1 would promote me, but I think I need to continue to wait for promotion season? I am career-dumb new grad lol. Any help is good.

and why…! or is it ever good practice to expect someone to problem solve an area and procedure in which they have less experience or knowledge of than the staff they are problem-solving for…