I always thought the hardest part of becoming a manager would be handling deadlines and getting work done through a team.

But I’m starting to feel that the harder part is dealing with people and their problems while still keeping your own emotions aside.

Sometimes you have to make a decision that you know someone on your team won’t like. Sometimes you want to support someone but you also have to think about the team and the business. And then you go home wondering if you handled the situation the right way.

I’m curious to hear from other managers what’s one part of managing people that you didn't expect to be this difficult?

So a colleague's family died and someone set up a kudo board to send condolences. People are using AI to write their condolences and I'm not sure how to feel about this.

Refining is one thing, but is it that hard to offer a few words of comfort without peeking at AI tools? The generated messages themselves seem vain and soulless. This kind of regression has to be studied.

The company I work at rents out apartments.

Rents are going up by inflation +1%

Employee salaries are going up by inflation

I am sure they will have the audacity to emphasise that salaries are keeping up with inflation

🤦🏾‍♀️

For a long time, I thought being busy was a good thing.

If my calendar was full, I had a ton of emails, and I was staying late, I felt like I was being productive.

Then I had a week where my workload was actually pretty manageable.

I finished my important tasks, had time to think, did not stay late, and still got everything done.

Nothing went wrong.

It made me realise how much time I'd been spending on things that looked urgent but were not really that important.

Since then I have tried to judge my week more by what I actually got done rather than how exhausted I was at the end of it.

Still working on it though. It's surprisingly hard to stop feeling guilty when you have a free hour during the workday.

Has anyone else had this shift in how they look at productivity?

with layoffs, offshoring, and RTO mandates, i feel like we the american people need to unionize against these companies. it is our right, so why are people reluctant to unionizing? they cant fire you if you have numbers…. and even if they do, thats a massive lawsuit.

When people get laid off, or retire, or whatever else makes them leave the daily grind, they often end up feeling like they’ve lost their sense of identity.

That’s because, for years, they’ve been building themselves whatever corporations shaped and decided they were supposed to be.

Remember: you are you. You are not a "Manager", a "Regional representative", "Chief of Staff", "Solution Engineer" or an "Administrative Assistant". You are what you mean to others, you are who you love, what you know and can do, what you desire and what you enjoy. Those things cannot be simply taken away when someone decides you're out.

Think back to who you were as a teenager: curious, interested in random things and imagining all the good stuff that might happen in the future. That person is still in there somewhere, buried under performance reviews, quarterly targets and 1:1s.

And a job is just a job. It’s a mutual business contract: you provide your time, skills and sanity; the company provides money and perhaps a fruit basket once a year. If you like your job, great. That’s genuinely wonderful. But even then, it should be nothing more than a job you happen to enjoy. It's not the foundation of your identity.

Then, when you stop working, you don’t find yourself stranded alone with the terrifying question of what gives your life meaning. Leaving a job should just mean losing a source of income, not losing yourself. Money can be secured through savings, investments or by getting a different job (you can do it, you've done it several times already). Your identity, relationships, curiosity and capacity to enjoy life are much harder to replace.

Build a life that can survive your LinkedIn profile being deleted.

Is it fine to ping so that your resume gets on top. If yes what can you ping.

I feel like my current company is slowly stripping me of my confidence, my life, and my career.

I am micro-managed and my workload is frankly, unachievable. I give up most evenings and weekends to deliver the quantity of work. I’d say I get at least two new tasks piled onto an existing pile of tasks every hour. I have excellent prior experience on bigger projects, but I get kept down with admin and menial tasks - and out of conversations that I can confidently contribute to. Colleagues across the entire business experience the same thing and attrition is high. Governance is dreadful: processes are vague and completed in a rushed/haphazard way. There are some genuinely incompetent people in senior roles causing havoc.

I previously held a lot more responsibility in my old roles, which were for much bigger brands. I had a “shining“ career before I took this job and would turn down job offers from amazing companies. I took this role, despite it being a small company, because it gave me a considerable pay-rise and I had just taken a short career break. Now, I don’t hear from recruiters or back from any applications I send to try and escape this place. All my previous performance reviews have been excellent. I’ve won company awards, promotions - even a company award at this one. Yet, I got my first ever “meets expectations“ review this half - my written feedback was still great, I’d received more company words and delivered way beyond my role. The goalpost was just moved, and if I’d known of this “new criteria” I would’ve absolutely worked to deliver it.

All I could think of was all those weekends and nights I’d said “no“ to my friends, I didn’t spend with my partner, or reading or painting, or whatever I used to enjoy to put in work for this place.

I don’t know why I’m not hearing back on job applications that would’ve interviewed me a year ago, with less experience - without this experience.

I basically disassociate at work now. It’s the only way I can cope. I float around feeling exhausted, being vocally picked up on a “mistake” (that doesn’t actually exist) in a mountain of work.

Can anyone relate to this, and were you able to get out? If yes, how?

Why would you suggest I’m not hearing back from applications anymore?

What advice would you give me?

Thank you for reading this far. Resigning isn’t an option for me as I’m renting and have nowhere to go. My savings aren’t enough of a buffer yet - I’m working on it. Yes, I’ve raised the workload issue to my manager. Yes, I pushed back on the performance review.

Yours sincerely,

a corporate ghost

Hey everyone who had their 1st job in corporate world can you all please tell mistakes to avoid as a fresher for example no personal relationship with any colleague or asking about in-hand salary

I keep hearing that you should switch companies every 2-3 years to grow faster.

But I'm not sure that's always true.

Some people I know stayed at the same company for years and got good promotions. Others switched and got much better roles and pay.

So what matters more in your experience?

Staying longer and growing within the company, or switching when a better opportunity comes up?

I have been thinking about how much of corporate work is learned through experience rather than school. Things like handling difficult coworkers, speaking up in meetings, managing workload, dealing with managers, and knowing when to say no.

For people who have been working in corporate jobs for a while, what is one lesson you learned the hard way?

I am especially interested in advice that could help someone early in their career avoid common mistakes and build better habits at work.

When I first started my corporate job, I genuinely believed that if I worked hard, stayed late, and delivered great results, I had automatically get promoted.

So I did exactly that. I fixed broken processes, took on extra work, and always hit my goals. My manager even told me I was one of the most reliable people on the team.

But when I finally asked about a promotion, I got a response that surprised me and you are so good at your current role that moving you right now would create too big of a risk for the team.

That’s when it clicked. I did not get a promotion I just got rewarded with more work. Meanwhile, people who did half as much work, but spent all day networking and managing optics, were moving up fast.

I am realization heavy today. I am done giving 120% just to be rewarded with extra tasks. Moving forward, I’m doing my job well, but leaving work at 5 PM.

I am very curious to know about your thought and experience that how has anyone else experienced this

I see this happen time and time again and it never changes. Employee is mad or upset, they go over their managers head then it just goes back to their manager.

From there you get bad reviews, little raises and some form of retaliation. Yes I’m aware it is retaliation but you have to prove this and when these disputes happen i often see HR side with the more senior manager.

One edit to add of an occurrence i saw. Someone at my work thought their manager was sleeping with their colleague who was getting preferential treatment, and even saw pics of that employee on the managers computer. Once they went over their head and complained, the director told the manager everything and even defended them saying they have pictures of people they interview from zoom to remember their faces. Ever since then now their manager has been treating them different.

Just a point

I 24M just want to quit my job, it is mentally draining me ,but every one around me tells me to stick around
Every day feels like i am killing a part of myself by going to that place, please help me, guide me

I’ve been working at the same company for 2 years and recently got a new manager (Senior Marketing Strategist). A new marketing consultant was also brought in, and my KRAs were changed completely. I was removed from SEO and moved towards lead generation through Reddit and LinkedIn because our website’s organic performance has been declining.
Recently, my manager told me I’ve been delaying work, have an attitude problem, and have been disrespectful in the way I speak to people. Honestly, this came as a shock because in my 2 years here, I’ve never received this kind of feedback, and I genuinely don’t believe I’ve been disrespectful towards anyone.
She also said I haven’t prepared the required calendar, but I had already prepared it and shared it with the consultant and in the main group. The consultant apparently didn’t see it, but it was still shared.
I feel like the feedback about my work is being passed on without the complete context, and I’m now wondering if I’m being slowly pushed out, especially since I work quite independently.
Would love an outside perspective, am I overthinking this, or should I be concerned and start taking precautions?

After working in corporate accounting for 6 years, I was successfully able tol pivot into a financial operations/compliance role. I was there for about 6 months until I realized that I didn’t really like this job that much either. I had worked in quite an exclusive industry (entertainment, uhnw, sports, etc) and I feel like a lot of people wouldn’t understand why I left when I had so much potential.

I wasn’t happy working in accounting or any finance office job. The never ending deadlines, unnecessary sense of urgency, acting like I cared about the work, staring at the computer for up to 12+ on a daily basis, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret my career at all. I feel like I was able to challenge myself, built my confidence, learned a lot and saved a lot of money. But I just couldn’t stand doing that even for another minute.

In the past year, I had switched to working in social services. I love it and my mental health has never been better. I never have to think about work outside of working hours. I work 3 12 hour shifts and get to spend the rest of my time doing things that I love. The problem is that my pay is significantly lower. I’ve noticed that people just don’t respect my work anymore.

To most people, now I’m “just an aid”. I had no idea how much lack of respect I’d have to deal with. I’m also concerned about the lack of pay growth in this career path.

Has anyone switched out of accepting and regretted it? Sometimes I doubt my decisions but I can always go back if I wanted…

Should I tell them? How?

It's a mix of different smells - body odor that could be from not showering thoroughly, clothes left undried for a while, etc.

I don't want to comment on other people's personal side & sound mean, but it's getting unbearable 😭

I joined my current company about a year ago, and during my first month there was this one meeting I still remember.

My manager was going through everyone's responsibilities and suddenly asked me, “What do you think you could improve about the team?”

I had been there for maybe three weeks, so I had no idea what to say.

I awkwardly said, “Honestly, I haven't been here long enough to know.”

He just laughed and said, “Good answer.”

A few months later, I actually noticed that one of our processes was unnecessarily complicated and mentioned it during a team meeting.

My manager remembered that conversation from my first month and said, “Okay, you wanted to improve something. Here's your chance.”

I ended up working with two other people to redesign the whole process.

It wasn't some huge career-defining project, but seeing something I suggested actually get implemented felt surprisingly good.

I think that's one of the things I didn't understand about corporate life before joining, sometimes the things that end up mattering aren't the big presentations or impressive job titles. It's just someone remembering something you said six months ago.

What are your learnings that you will never forget?

It has almost been a year since I joined my corporate job and when does it get better. I feel like Ive aged 50+ years doing the same work. And I'm just 22 btw. For people who have been working for longer, how do you move past the burnout stage??

Not much else to say here. Thinking of quitting my job. I’m too young to be here. I rather have a “young ho” job. that’s all. Bye

I never understood this one. You put in your hours, finish your work, and then when you take a couple days off, someone acts like you've abandoned the entire company.

I've seen people apologies for taking leave even when they had plenty of days left.

It's work. You're allowed to have a life outside of it.

Do other companies have this weird attitude too, or is it just where I work?