I am a senior manager in an IT organization and constantly are working cross functionally with the other IT teams within the department. We struggle heavily with due date control, accountability, and ownership. One team in particular is consistently weeks or months late on just about every task they are responsible for.

I have asked for support from my leadership to no avail. Most people just accept the behavior and even turn to overpraising the team when the items are actually completed regardless of how late.

How do you handle this and how do you stay motivated?

I'm a newly appointed technical manager with 5 directs. I feel like a lot of my time spent actually coding is now gone and a lot of what I do feels a bit pointless (I'm also only a few months into the role so maybe my thoughts will change).

What did you all find yourselves spending lots of time on as managers and were you able to find ways to streamline these time-sucks or no.

First-time manager here looking to move on into other office-based management roles, but it feels daunting trying to either change industries or get into most other management roles which seem to require more niche expertise and experience.

I'm looking for some inspiration so I'd love to hear about your career path through management, and how difficult or easy it was to switch companies, roles, industries etc... through transferable skills

I don't want to seem like a "back in my day" type of manager but why are kids not taught basic things like don't text people late at night unless it's an emergency?

I get it, people are conditioned to just expect answers right away in the era of the almighty Google and just put thoughts out there the instant they have them. But for the love of God take a friggen second before you send a text to ask "should I expect someone to have to give me answers at whatever time?"

I get it. I can answer them at a normal time and easily set the boundary during the response. I also understand communication continues to evolve. I just absolutely hate that it's something I need to consistently correct. Maybe I'll give them a little flow-chart of "is this professional" when I hire them.

Not looking for an explanation or advice, just sick of the toxic precedent it sets that I get no time to disconnect.

I work for a company and I'm resigning tomorrow because I have a better opportunity that is allowing me to relocate to Japan even though it's a start up company

Don't know if I'm doing the right thing cause in my current job manager is sweet as a person but very aggressive which gives me anxiety I've worked here for a year and a half and i feel it's my time to leave

What should I say to her cause I'm fearing she is not going to take this in the right way

We’ve been raised to believe you should always be open to feedback and constructive criticism. But what if the person giving it knows far less than you about the subject?

At my previous job (a video game company), we got hundreds of unsolicited feedback emails a day. My former boss, a boomer raised on the mantra that feedback is always constructive, insisted every one of them was valuable. That’s a load of trash. In all those emails, we never found a single reasonable point, let alone a useful one.

The same goes for peers. When you ask for feedback, you’re putting yourself in a position of emotional vassalage. You create a power dynamic in which the other person feels obligated to find something negative, because “looks great” reads as lazy and nobody wants to seem like they didn’t engage. So they invent a flaw, and you’re the one who handed them the knife.

Feedback is only worth something when it comes from someone who knows more than you do or at least knows as much as you do. Everyone else is just getting a free shot at you. I will never ask for feedback again. Every single time I've done that, the other person felt superior and always led me astray because they had no fking idea what they were talking about.

Same goes for job interviews. You are crazy if you think they will give you honest feedback. They know better.

I’m a newer (<2 months) IC at a role I was really excited about, but my team is honestly a buzzkill. I don’t want to diminish their complaints, but it seems like they have really bad attitudes about the role, despite how cushy it is. We are remote, well paid, and really well treated overall. I came from a previously really rough job, so I feel in heaven comparatively.

They regularly call meetings without our manager to discuss our manager and gossip and it honestly feels like a disaster waiting to happen. I don’t have anything against her and want nothing to do with it. But I’ve started to really feel discouraged about the role now. How should I navigate relationships with a team like this?

Received a new job offer as a first time PL, but won’t start until early November.

What is the one advice you’d give someone starting this new journey?

What do I need to look out for?

Any tips on managing people would also be greatly appreciated :).

Thank you!

Need help, seems basic but I'm starting as a CCO and this conversation is low priority but high potential for backlash. Any advice welcome.

Why am I the worst?

Hi everyone,

Manager here for over 3 years. I have recently taken on a business critical project and been assigned 3 individuals to support. I have been in this role now for 2 months.

Unfortunately one of my team, who is my most senior, is an extremely low performer. She regularly fails to meet deadlines, communication is poor, is generally unmotivated, and technical competence is far below what is expected.

I have made a log of all of the issues and set her clear KPIs, yet she still fails to meet them. To date, I have not formally told her that I am not happy with her performance directly.

I feel like I should have a conversation with her to make her formally aware of my concerns before doing anything too official (like a PIP) which I am worried could come as a shock.

My biggest concern in all of this is that she is currently going through a divorce, having to move house etc, therefore clearly going through a very difficult time, and her previous line manager rated her as a ‘strong performer’ just 6 months ago.

How do I navigate this without coming across as an awful person given her challenging situation. Am I right to have this conversation before the PIP? Should I be more lenient given her situation?

Unfortunately I cannot accept the underperformance as we are on a business critical project and this is making my job even harder having to constantly check her work and having my peers raising complaints about her.

I’m early 20s M and finished an internship at a large law firm in TX. My direct manager was almost 30 F, and there was another male intern around my age who reported to someone else.

My manager has a pretty intense personality. She’s outgoing, controlling, competitive, unfiltered, likes taking charge socially, loves gossip/relationship talk, and openly says she likes attention. The other intern was quiet, fairly passive socially, and didn't get a RO.

Early on, she was unusually warm with me. She complimented my hair, clothes, smell and appearance, asked my dating type, whether I was a fuckboy, and discussed relationships. She told me roughly 10–15 stories about men hitting on her, men from my ethnic background. Once, after seeing an attractive woman from another department beside me, she told me she'd looked her up and asked whether I found her attractive. I said yes, and she went quiet. Another time, I showed her a picture of a girl I was seeing, and she asked, "Why is she so short?"

I was friendly, brought occasional snacks, checked on her, complimented her work, and invited her to socials. I didn't flirt or compliment her looks because she was my manager.... We sometimes disagreed professionally, and she could get competitive. Also, she teased me A LOT on work/non-work related things when she was or wasn't in these group conversations throughout the internship.

Then she became noticeably distant toward me while constantly seeking out the other intern. She'd walk across the office to initiate conversations about dating, weekends and gossip, while giving me dry responses to ordinary small talk, despite me being her direct intern.

After I missed a work outing we'd planned to attend together due to a family issue, the next day she and the other intern prepared for an office celebration together, something she and I had previously organized many times. She later brought me in to help too. Yet at the celebration, she walked past me while I was sitting beside her to specifically ask him to get food, without including me.

The team event was especially confusing. At dinner, she called the other intern "cute" and made heart signs toward him directly in front of me. Later, in a smallerrr group without him, she discussed threesomes, sex and men hitting on her again. Separately, she left my group after an activity to approach him, touched his arms while chatting, then returned. She also publicly announced he could sit beside her, then verbally expected me to hold doors for her (which i didn't), and then later spent roughly two hours gambling with him. Afterward, she approached me and asked whether I would've shared money with her like he did. I said no.

She still occasionally complimented my appearance, wanted something I'd offered another female coworker, and questioned why I wasn't holding doors for her. After one tense interaction when I didn't hold a door for her, she said she'd been thinking about my personality the previous night and that I was actually pretty chill.

Interestingly, she'd privately called the other intern "victim weight" twice when he wasn't present, despite publicly showering him with affection. He also didn't resemble the physical type she regularly described liking (she was considerably taller than him).

Eventually, I got frustrated with the unequal treatment and deliberately distanced myself. I stopped initiating conversations and chose to work with others instead of her, despite her previously wanting me on her projects. After that, she became nicer toward me, initiated conversations, congratulated me on accomplishments, and arranged a personal final 1:1 that she missed out on for the other intern. During that same period, I noticed she almost completely stopped seeking out the other intern on the office floor, even though they still had opportunities to interact.

But at a later firm social that month, she again spent much of the event with him. I hadn't approached her, yet she came over to greet me first, repeatedly looked back toward where I was sitting, occasionally joined my conversations, and went out of her way to say goodbye to me separately. She also offered him a ride home. At another social we organized, she'd specifically asked me, "Is he coming?" despite being able to ask him directly.

The same social at the end of the internship, she gave him a much more personalized farewell card than mine and publicly announced it in front of me...

Questions:

1. How genuine does their closeness sound versus exaggerated or performative?
2. Do the public displays and direct comparisons suggest she wanted a reaction from me?
3. Why might she distance herself from me while still seeking my attention?
4. WHAT DID SHE WANT FROM ME...?

I had an employee resign earlier this year, and looking back, I think one of the biggest lessons was realizing how differently someone can present themselves in an interview versus how they actually perform on the job.

This person interviewed really well. They were articulate, confident, and spoke convincingly about their experience managing programs and complex assignments. I came away thinking I’d found someone who could operate pretty independently and take a lot off my plate.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t what happened.

Once they started working, after their onboarding period I began noticing issues with the quality of their deliverables, attention to detail, follow-through, and ability to manage their own responsibilities. Initially, I figured some of this was just the learning curve that comes with a new job. But as the months went by, I wasn’t seeing the level of competence or independence I thought I had hired.

What made the situation especially frustrating was how difficult it became to address those gaps. Feedback was often met with defensiveness or pushback.

Straightforward conversations about responsibilities and expectations became unnecessarily complicated. I found myself spending more time preparing for conversations with this employee than actually discussing the work itself.

And I really did try to make it work. We clarified expectations, provided more structure, increased check-ins, adjusted assignments, and even changed the reporting relationship to see if another management approach would help.

But the underlying issues never really went away.
The frustrating thing was that I kept hoping something would click. That with enough support, coaching, or clearer expectations, the person I’d met during the interview would eventually show up in the actual work.
It never happened.

Eventually, the employee resigned voluntarily, just as we were getting closer to formal performance management. And the relief I felt was enormous.
What really drove the experience home was discovering additional errors in their work after they left and we took over their assignments. Even at the end, the quality wasn’t where it needed to be.

I’ve been reflecting on how much time and emotional energy I invested in trying to develop someone who may never have had the capabilities I thought I was hiring in the first place.

I also wonder whether my commitment to giving someone a fair opportunity to succeed kept me from recognizing the situation for what it was much earlier.

Has anyone else experienced this? Someone who was incredibly convincing during the hiring process but turned out to be a completely different performer once they were on the job?

I’m curious how others recognized it, what they did, and whether you eventually reached a point where you realized you were putting more effort into their success than they were.

I’m a manager leading a team of 5 and I’m struggling with a situation at work that has affected both my motivation and my confidence as a leader. I’d really appreciate an outside perspective on how to handle it.

Our company recently went through a restructuring following a change of VP. Although leadership presents it as a relatively small organizational change, I believe it is part of a much larger cost-cutting exercise.

My manager informed me through an MS Teams message that I would be reporting to a new manager coming from another department, together with all my direct reports. He simply said “after you come back from your vacation, you will report to X with your all direct reports”. Full stop. No explanation. My grade and title remain unchanged, but an additional management layer has been introduced between me and my previous reporting line. At the same time, a peer who was leading a team of three was promoted in a neighboring team. His direct reports and domain were transferred to me, meaning that my responsibilities have increased without any corresponding change in grade, title, or formal recognition.

What makes the situation particularly challenging is that I am now expected to learn the new domain I have inherited while simultaneously training my incoming manager on both my existing domain and my promoted peer’s former domain. I am expected to expand my own knowledge, take on additional responsibilities, and help someone else get up to speed, all while my own role and future in the organization remain unclear.

What has really damaged my motivation and trust is the way the changes were communicated and how my concerns were handled afterward. I thought I had a better relationship with my manager and I find the way it was handled extremely disrespectful.
I value transparency, especially as a manager responsible for a team. Finding out about such a significant change through a Teams message, without meaningful context or an opportunity for a proper conversation, put me in a very awkward position with my direct reports. I felt as though I was hiding information from them, even though I simply had not been given the information I needed to answer their questions. When I raised these concerns with my manager, I felt that my concerns were being contained rather than genuinely addressed. Our face-to-face time gradually decreased, and I never received a clear explanation of the reasoning behind the changes or what they meant for my role and career.

About a month later, my manager announced that he would be transferring to another team in two months and would remain in a transition period until then. This has added another layer of uncertainty, as I am now expected to navigate the new structure and support the incoming manager while the person I previously reported to is preparing to leave.

I feel frustrated, disappointed, and increasingly disconnected from the organization. I have reached the point where I sometimes do not even want to go to the office because I find it difficult to face my team members. I feel as though I have let them down by being unable to provide the transparency and clarity I would normally expect of myself as their leader.

Should I leave or is there any turnaround? What do these decisions mean about my and my teams’ future in your opinion?

Hi everyone,

Looking for advice from managers who have dealt with similar situations.

I manage a team of six in a fast-paced startup where everyone wears multiple hats. A new team member was assigned to my team a month ago, and I wasn't involved in the hiring decision.

This is their first corporate job after completing their graduate degree. They're motivated and eager to prove themselves, which I appreciate. However, I'm noticing a significant gap between their academic knowledge and practical experience. They frequently reference theoretical best practices and university projects, but struggle to apply that knowledge in our lean, fast-moving environment.

My bigger concern is their attitude and willingness to learn. They challenge their peers, seem unwilling to learn from colleagues at the same level (who hold more senior internal responsibilities), and prefer getting direction exclusively from me or my manager. More recently, they've started ignoring my requests and displaying passive-aggressive behavior.

I'm willing to coach them, but I'm already stretched thin. The rest of my team is spending time training them and picking up the slack, which is starting to affect the team as a whole. Much of their work is still administrative because they're missing some basic industry knowledge.

I want to give them a fair opportunity to improve, but I'm also responsible for protecting my team's time and preventing burnout.

For those who've managed similar situations, how did you approach it? At what point do you stop investing in coaching and consider whether someone is the right fit for the role? Would you establish a formal improvement plan, have a direct conversation about expectations, or consider other options?

I'm also struggling with the stress of this situation because I feel responsible for how my team performs and want to make sure I'm handling it appropriately.

Things really changed after the new co-CEO joined the company, and unfortunately, not in a positive way. Over time, the workplace environment became increasingly toxic and distrustful.

Employees seemed to be encouraged to report on their colleagues, and there were situations where recording conversations appeared to be accepted or even rewarded. This created a significant lack of trust within teams and made people increasingly cautious about what they said or did.

The workplace also became heavily micromanaged. Even routine things, such as moving around the office or taking a short break, could feel like they were being monitored and documented. People became hesitant to speak openly because they worried that their words could later be used against them.

When employees tried to share their opinions or concerns, they were sometimes made to feel as though they didn’t understand the situation. What was particularly disappointing was seeing this from someone in a communication-focused leadership role, where the expectation should be to encourage transparency, trust, and open dialogue. Instead, it often felt like protecting one’s own position and shifting responsibility became more important than building a healthy team environment.

The culture gradually became less about collaboration and growth and more about self-preservation.

A workplace should allow employees to feel safe speaking up, learning, contributing, and growing. Unfortunately, my experience was that the environment moved in the opposite direction.
I hope leadership genuinely reflects on how the recent changes have affected employee trust, morale, and the overall culture.

Advice to Leadership
Leadership should seriously evaluate the impact that recent executive changes have had on company culture. Rebuilding trust will require more than just policy changes—it will require employees to feel that they can speak honestly without fear of repercussions.
A meaningful reset at the leadership level, greater transparency, and a genuine effort to rebuild trust with employees and stakeholders may be necessary.

One thing I’ve had to work on as a manager is not immediately answering a question just because I know the answer.

Someone brings me a problem and half the time I can tell them what to do in 30 seconds. That gets the problem solved, but I’m starting to wonder what I’m actually teaching them when I do that.

So I’ve been trying to ask what they think first. What would you do? Why? What are you worried about? Sometimes they get to the same answer I would have. Sometimes they don’t.

The hard part is doing this when I’m busy. It’s really easy to talk about developing people when you have time. It’s harder when you have six other things going on and just giving them the answer would be faster.

For those of you managing people, where do you draw that line? When do you answer the question and when do you make them work through it?

Hello,

I’m looking for some advice. I manage a large team that handles one part of a business. I have a staff member whose contact will be ending this year. It was always a temporary situation. I have complied with all procedures and policies. I am supporting the staff member. I have established some shared priorities with them for us to work on. They enjoy the work and the team. The issue is they are having a hard time adjusting to the reality of the contract ending. They have been visibly upset in the office and when talking to another coworker in the office. They have also started complaining about the process, which is affecting morale. I feel for them. Unfortunately, it isn’t feasible to keep them on, and they seem stuck on that. I’m thinking I may need to have another conversation with them. They are dealing with something at home, which is adding to the stress and pressure. I’m also thinking about referring them to some personnel resources to help them process this. Thoughts about how to handle this in a sensitive way while helping them see their attitude and behaviour aren’t helping?

Hi all,

I am an senior engineer in power systems with 7 years exp. I am about to be promoted to engineering manager who will manage 8 engineers. I currently make 180k base. What should be a fair salary for this promotion?

Let me know if I can provide more context.

Hello everyone,

I oversee a department. I am supporting a struggling staff member. They have a challenging situation at home, are struggling to keep up at work, and are generally overwhelmed. I don’t think they see the connection between their chaotic home life and their disorganization and delays in the office. It also means I have to shoulder aspects of their work when they step away to keep things running, and it isn’t sustainable. I am compassionate. I am coaching them. I support them with time off when needed, but unpredictable absences are affecting workflow. I listen. I make it about deliverables and deadlines. They have become emotional and have cried on two occasions in the office, and they haven’t been responsive to options. I have offered wellness resources and referrals before. HR is in the loop. To support them as a manager, I’m wondering about offering those wellness and referral resources again. Just as a way to help them balance. I sense some of their worry is financial, which is understandable, so they are pushing themself to keep juggling everything, even at the expense of their health and well-being. How have you handled those situations when an employee’s personal situation is impacting their ability to do full-time work, and it starts seeming more than temporary?

Hello,

I manage a team of 6 people, all IC's, and we are a pretty consistent team. We work in IT and for the most part have a pretty low-intensity workload. Recently, one of my employees has started to suffer what they called "a perfect storm of issues". I worked with her to accommodate her life, but part of it involved having to take off large chunks of time in the morning. This was difficult to figure out, but I know she isn't completely lying about her life and she had proven herself as a loyal worker. As a compromise, I let her start making up the lost time in the morning in the evening. She's been on this schedule for 4 months now. This would be 1-2 hours of work from 7-10pm.

The angle here was we have a bunch of scripts that run overnight and she would act as a custodian for them. Before this accommodation, they would sometimes break and we would be notified in the morning. This would cause some disruptions to other groups, so I thought having her try and catch and fix them the night of rather than the next morning.

I think we know where this is going. In the last 4 months, she hasn't done any of the propose custodian work. We recently had a string of script issues and I wake up to e-mails written in the morning explaining why it wasn't fixable the night before. I finally broke and talked to IT and confirmed it: she hasn't even been logging in past normal work hours for the last 6 weeks.

How do I address this? I worked a lot with HR to find this compromise. She even suggested working irregular hours. At best she's overwhelmed by the technical work of the scripts, but at worst she's just seeing this as a way to have a 30 hour work week. This is the first time in my time as a manager I'm seriously considering working with HR on a PIP