r/managers

I’m asking because this just happened on my team and honestly I’m still replaying the last few months in my head wondering if I completely missed the signs. This employee was the person everyone relied on. Always hit deadlines trained new hires handled difficult stakeholders without drama never caused problems. If you looked at performance alone you’d think everything was great. Then out of nowhere they put in their notice and during the exit conversation they admitted they’d been emotionally checked out for almost a year
Looking back, the signs were there, just subtle. They stopped volunteering ideas in meetings. Went from “here’s how we can improve this” to “sure, I can do that.” Still productive, still professional but the energy completely changed. Less excitement less ownership less spark. I think managers are trained to look for obvious performance problems but high performers seem way harder to read because they keep functioning even when they’re unhappy
For those of you managing teams what were the signs you noticed too late with someone valuable? And has anyone actually managed to turn it around before the employee resigned?

Hello everyone. I’m a psychology student working on a research proposal about workplace behavior in corporate settings.
Before I finalize my topic I wanted to ask people who actually work in organizations:

What’s the one people problem you observe repeatedly at work that nobody seems to have a good answer for?

Even a one line response helps. What do you wish someone would actually study?

I’m an IC. Been with a company for 3 years and have gotten raises every single performance cycle. I’m trying to understand what went wrong. I have the highest metrics out of anyone on my team. Got a new manager a couple months back. Manager told me I’m on track for a promotion next cycle. We didn’t have very many 1:1s and he would take weeks to respond to my slack messages. Said he was very busy. I thought everything was going well, as I was working hard and even got recognized positively by other members of my team and adjacent teams. Performance reviews then came. Manager gave me a very low rating in my performance review over something that was never communicated to me. Something that I verified was an unclear standard and other people were doing as well (documentation issue). Created a narrative out of it to justify a “needs improvement” on almost all sections. A week later he schedules a 1:1 with me, where HR told me I was being terminated. I’d like some perspective from managers on this sub about what may have happened and how I can better protect myself in the future.

We don't have emergencies, here. The work is not urgent. We do nice work helping the community. It's great! I have spent a lot of time in miserable industries working for abusive bosses, and I have spent more than a decade building a compassionate, family friendly culture.

Long story short, I have a very productive employee who loves to work like there's a gun to her head, and expects the rest of us to be the same way. I say absolutely not. She knows we're the kind of place she can (and does) call in any time if her kid or her dog gets sick, and vacation requests are freely granted. Not a grind!

I am at wits end. We had our big event last week, and I thought she would calm down (after six horrible months leading up to it) when it was over, but the next day she was calling me on her day off demanding to know when we would meet to discuss the event. (Uh, we will do it during work hours, chill out.)

This is culture fit stuff. If she insists on making life miserable just because she has a belief system that life is meant to be miserable, I am not going to work with her, AND I DO NOT HAVE TO! But I would rather have her here.

Ideas?

I manage a small team and I'm about to lose my best intern because finance won't approve a permanent headcount until next year. She knows our systems inside out, works hard, and the whole team respects her. Meanwhile I have another intern with two written warnings who just doesn't show up sometimes, but his contract runs longer so I'm stuck with him. I've escalated this up the chain and hit a wall every time. It feels backwards to reward the person who barely tries while someone who earned a spot walks out the door.

Has anyone successfully navigated this kind of situation? Is there anything else I can do for the high performer besides offering a reference and fighting for an extension?

I work in a professional services firm, in the marketing department.

I currently have a manager with less experience in this sector than me, who seems entirely steeped in corporate jargon. I will luckily be transferring away from her in the next month, but I would really like to offer her some feedback.

In one example (I am Jewish, which she knows), she ended a meeting with "and there is something else I want to say..." (in that pause, I thought it was going to be that I was fired), "I and [company name] want to say that our thoughts are with you at this difficult time for the Jewish people." - context being a recent attack in London.

I responded with a thanks, but it just felt like such an inappropriate thing to say, as if she had used ChatGPT to figure out a response. I would have felt much more comfortable if she had just said nothing.

And in work situations, or when offering constructive criticism, she always hides behind policy which she can never talk about in plain English. It always has to be corporatised.

How can I feed back to her that her approach is grating? That she needs to understand that although words may seem neutral to her, that they can mean different things to different people, which is why it is safer to treat employees as individuals.

I do think she would benefit from some feedback, but I'm not sure about thr best way to go about it!

I have a very good employee Putin extra efforts and hours continuously and I am worried she might get so tired and burns out and maybe quit..
I have offered adding members to her tasks for supports , or if she needs a days off but she rejected both offers.
She prefers doing task alone and saying she enjoys the silence
Her task is getting the not very systematic and messy warehouse organized
Any extra inputs on how to manage her with this sort of character is really appreciated..
i am used to having employees whom are working just for hours and this is very new to me.

I have to let a team member go on Friday, and HR just sent me the script I’m required to read. She’s been with the company for years, and the whole thing feels incredibly cold and impersonal. I care about her a lot and feel like we’ve built a real relationship over the years, so part of me wants to call or text her afterward just as a human being, but I also don’t want to create legal risk for the company or say/do something that unintentionally makes things harder for her. What makes this even worse is that I have a scheduled 1:1 with her the day before, and I’m expected to act completely normal like nothing is happening. That part feels especially wrong. For those who’ve had to do layoffs or terminations before, did you reach out afterward, or keep strict boundaries? Any advice would really help.

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I joined a consulting firm straight out of engineering college as a fresher. ADuring my first couple of years, I generally tried to work hard and maintain good relationships, although I had started noticing some favoritism and passive-aggressive behavior from certain seniors.

A recent incident really affected me.

During a work discussion about a report, a senior colleague said something along the lines of:

“If you don’t update me properly again, you’re dead.”

It was said aggressively in front of others during a tense meeting. This wasn’t the first uncomfortable interaction either — in earlier meetings, this person had often been dismissive and passive-aggressive toward me.

After the meeting, I emailed my manager explaining the incident and clearly stated that even if something is said “as a joke,” such comments are not acceptable in a professional environment. My manager apologized and said she had escalated it to senior leadership.

I later had multiple meetings with leadership where, instead of focusing only on the behavior, the discussion kept shifting toward:

how hardworking this senior employee was,

how much responsibility he handled,

and concerns about my own work/performance.

I repeatedly said that performance feedback and workplace behavior should be treated as separate discussions.

Eventually, leadership said the comment was made “in the heat of the moment” and “not meant literally.” I asked that the employee apologize directly and also requested written confirmation that such behavior would not be tolerated going forward.

What I eventually received instead was a carefully worded email from my manager saying the comment was “not directed only at me,” along with reminders about taking feedback seriously.

After this incident, I also started receiving unusually detailed feedback/documentation emails about my work — something I had never experienced in my entire time there before raising this concern.

Over time, I felt the trust between me and management had broken down. I finally resigned recently.

The strange part is:

even after resigning and moving on to a better opportunity, I still replay the situation in my head. A part of me feels angry that the behavior was minimized and that people in leadership seemed more focused on protecting the senior employee than addressing the issue itself.

Has anyone else experienced something similar in corporate environments? How did you make peace with it and move on mentally?

How do I make peace with the fact that people got away after doing this with me?

TL;DR: A senior colleague made an aggressive/threatening comment toward me during a work meeting. I reported it to management expecting support, but the situation gradually shifted into discussions about my own performance instead. Leadership minimized the incident as something said “in the heat of the moment,” and after things became uncomfortable, I eventually resigned. I’ve moved on professionally, but mentally I still struggle with the feeling that the behavior was brushed aside.

I have a mostly hypothetical question. Neither I nor any of my direct reports are on or close to a Performance Improvement Plan, but I've seen them used throughout my time as a manager and I've always wondered about outcomes.

Probably 75% of the time it's a precursor to the employee being fired, and the rest of the time the PIP is "completed successfully" but the employee usually leaves soon after.

I'm wondering if anyone has examples of someone being on a PIP, completing it successfully, and eventually going on to thrive at the same company.

Former tech lead turned engineering manager here. I'm new to the role, so seeking guidance from those who have done it.

Before being promoted, half of my day was meetings, the rest was filled with pairing with more junior devs, peer reviewing code, and doing my own coding.

But in my new role as a people leader, yes I have more meetings and yes people message me on Slack, but I find I have periods of time where I do not have anything on my calendar and everything is quiet on Slack (eg nothing is on fire, stakeholders are content, etc).

So what should I be filling that time with?

I have a direct report who is incredibly skilled but struggles hard with anything administrative or collaborative. Project managers can't get estimates from him, he ignores emails that aren't technical, and new teammates are genuinely afraid to ask him questions. He's not trying to be difficult - I think he just doesn't see the value in anything that isn't deep problem-solving. I don't want to push him out because his work is exceptional, but the friction is wearing on the whole team.

How do you coach someone like this without killing what makes them good?

Hi everyone,
I’m a manager who is neurodivergent, and I’ve been finding work increasingly difficult. I joined my current organisation during COVID, so I never really had the chance to learn the team’s working style or adapt gradually. Since then, I’ve been dealing with a lot of “invisible” expectations — tasks that aren’t clearly communicated but are somehow assumed.

In meetings, people often speak over me, and recently I’ve started to stutter from the stress. I’m constantly burnt out, and I feel like if something doesn’t change soon, things won’t end well for me. My default response has been to take on even more work to prove I’m capable, but that’s obviously not sustainable.

I’m not sure what to do next. Has anyone been through something similar or found strategies that helped? Any advice would be appreciated.

I've been doing a bit of hiring lately and the whole process kinda feels broken.

CVs are always perfectly polished, LinkedIn doesn't really tell you anything about how someone actually performs, and interviews are basically just a test of who can be charming for 30 minutes. The most confident guy who presents himself well gets the job, even if he turns out to be useless at the actual work.

Then there's reference checks. Completely pointless in my opinion. The candidate picks their own references so of course everything is always great. The only way you actually get real info is if you randomly know someone who worked with them, but that's just luck.

And employment references don't help either, at least where I live they basically have to be positive by law so they tell you nothing.

Feels like my company is just burning money every time we hire someone who interviewed well but can't actually do the job.

Are we all just accepting that hiring is a coin flip and using probation as the real interview?

Ever since we got Claude and access to its latest models, i feel like my manager who is from a non technical background is heavily reliant on the use of AI to build platforms. It really annoys me because he knows absolutely nothing about the practicality of programming, best practices and so on but uses Claude to spit out mini softwares/scripts for the business. When we go on weekly meeting calls, the director, ceo is extremely happy because they want to be “AI first” or whatever it is but man when i mention my tasks done which i guess is the boring etl stuff or whatnot - it does not bat an eye.

Like my job is to plan out the backend and provide the best of my knowledge but i feel like i am being excluded from this current project. My experience mainly relies on Data analytics and data engineering (context - i work for a smb so our internal office headcount is low)

But man i just feel like negative about the situation not being included in projects. AI spits everything out for him and now he thinks he understands it all. Yes i am salty/bitter about this but i do notice there is actually lack of skill.

I guess what really triggered me was that we have an active database/server and i suggested to use this since everything is set up and we have a subscription but he wants to use Supabase whereas we have Azure.

Like let the people who have the skills to do the work why is he taking over everything :/ . Maybe i am being replaced and its time to find a new job i guess 🤷‍♂️

I may be overreacting and i feel bitter rn but i hope to hear opinions from you.

I work for a small company --- and yes I am looking for a new job already.

I work under 3 project managers, one of whom is the owner. But one of the other ones and I had a dispute. We were working on a project together, and there are some aspects of projects that she almost always systematically does. I assumed it was done. Turns out it wasn't and we almost had a huuuuge issue with a client over it, but luckily it worked out by pure chance. The client never knew.

When the PM let me know, I responded with "I have never been responsible for doing x thing, so I wasn't aware" to which I got reprimanded because my job is to "check all the PMs' work to make sure it gets done" and that I should've thought to ask if I see parts of the project that I am not responsible for.

I argued back that I can not reasonably be expected to check every detail of every project. That's partly because I also have my own workload, but especially because I am not allowed to talk to clients, be on calls, or even cc'd in emails...nor am I a manager or supervisor.

Anyway this company is a trash fire with a micro managing owner who doesn't actually manage anyone except the minute details of every task (missing the forest for the trees). There's no real hierarchical structure. Everyone does a bit of everything, multiple people involved in the same project but only the owner ever actually has full ownership of a project. I only get to do bits and pieces of each one, often with no global understanding of the project.

I think this issue is going to be escalated further, so I just want to make sure that this work dynamic is not normal...because it feels very off. When I was a manager I would never, ever have expected a subordinate to make sure MY work is done...And in the time I've worked here I've seen two lower level employees like me hired and fired (within 4 months) for making newbie mistakes that are really management's responsibility.

May not be super polished since I'm on lunch. I work at an F500, and our company announced we were being acquired a year ago. It's been hell since then.

My team has always been small and understaffed. We had an onsite last May where the written feedback from all 4 of us (3 senior managers + me, a senior analyst at the time) was that we took on way too much work, the workflows are disorganized, the work ends up being useless/unapplied, and we need more headcount. Our team lead (director) agrees - every team meeting she echoes the sentiment and vents/complains with us. But nothing changes.

Things got worse after the acquisition - 2 of the 3 senior managers left for other roles and the remaining senior manager was moved to a different team. Instead of backfilling the 3 senior manager roles, they promoted me to manager and hired a new grad/analyst. So it's been our director, me, and an analyst running the ops for the last 8 months.

But to make matters worse, the work has probably doubled in the same time span. The budgets of the teams we provide reports to (mostly marketing) ballooned, so they have hammered us with double the amount of projects.

I've said taking on this level of work with limited capacity after the brain drain of losing SMs who had been here 5, 6 years each is unsustainable and unworkable in team meetings and weekly 1:1s with my manager. She will agree, vent herself about how burnt out she is, how overwhelming the workload is, how unreasonable the deadlines are, how she finds it hard to say no, etc.. then literally adds more. She says yes to every single new project request. Never pushes back, never load manages, doesn't even hint to upper management that we are a skeleton crew and can't feasibly do this volume of work.

I've said I'm at limited capacity multiple times to my manager, and her response is consistently: "can you just get the analyst to do it?" The analyst has no training in the work that I do - she was hired for an entirely separate function and skillset. To train her to do the task would take more time than the task. Manager will respond to this: "Well let me know if I can do anything" but nothing short of her literally doing the projects end to end or... not accepting them would really help here.

I'm not sure how to more firmly push back on the workload when my manager is really frantic/last minute/forgetful/disorganized herself and seemingly has no ability to resource manage for our team to upper management. I'm already interviewing for other roles, but for my health and sanity in the meantime, what advice do ya'll have here?

 I manage a small creative team of five. One of my direct reports is technically excellent and always meets their deadlines. The problem is they constantly jump into other people's tasks with unasked for advice or critiques. They do not do it in a mean way, more like an overeager helper who cannot help themselves. But it is starting to irritate the rest of the team. I have heard quiet complaints from three other people that they feel micromanaged by a peer. I sat down with the employee and explained that while their input is valuable, they need to wait until someone asks for help before offering it. They nodded along and said they understood. A week later, nothing changed. I do not want to kill their enthusiasm or make them feel punished for caring. At the same time, I can see the team dynamic fraying. For managers who have dealt with this type of person, what actually worked? Do you need to get more direct and put something in writing, or is there a softer way to redirect that energy before it becomes a formal issue? I feel like I am failing both the team and this employee by letting it drag on.

This is just a vent, but I’d appreciate and thoughts or support.

My admin assistant started in September, just before our busy season. My previous admin was promoted to a high level role in my team.

Today, she let me know that she accepted a role elsewhere. She told me that she knew early on that this was not for her, but she wanted to give it a shot because she likes and trusts me and she did not want to job hop. She knew almost immediately that she disliked the industry and gradually came to dislike the company. She said that she thought I might leave or promote to a different area and take her with me, but the new opportunity works better for her and her family now. I fully understand.

I nearly cried. I felt like I was being broken up with. She is one of the best employees I’ve ever had. She knows it would be 6-12 months before we made a major change.

She made so many things function properly. I am going to have a tough time moving on and replacing her.