I went from chasing a promotion to being scared of getting fired in 12 months, all because of one exec. Anyone been through this?
Three years at this company. In that time I’ve watched an incredible number of good people walk out the door, and almost all of them were leaving the same person, an exec I’ll call Mark.
Mark is genuinely brilliant at his job. Hyper-performer, delivers, the business loves him for it. He’s also a bully. There are multiple open HR tickets about him and everyone knows it. Nothing happens. We’ve lost 50% of the team this year alone that’s under him.
My first taste was month two. I was presenting to the entire company and he called me out mid-presentation, publicly, demanding content I’d already flagged as not having in the deck and something I would share as a “quick-follow”. I tried three times to defer it politely. He kept going. In front of everyone “your boss has asked you for something - do it”.
For a while I was insulated. I had a manager who knew how to handle Mark and consistently made me look good to him. Then that manager left.
Within weeks, one of my direct reports went straight to Mark and told him I get stressed and that it lands on the team. Honestly? Probably true. I do carry stress badly in an environment like this and I own that.
Here’s how Mark handled it. He moved me sideways to lead a “new and exciting team,” sold to me as an opportunity. He gave my actual old role to the person who had complained about me. Then, two months later, he took the new and exciting team off me and handed it to someone with about two years of total work experience, roughly ten years less than me, and moved me again. This time into something with no scope, no team and no remit. In practice it was doing admin for him. So he built a role for me, watched me get it running for eight weeks, then gave it to a kid and parked me. They left shortly after anyway. Obviously.
I’ve been in a different role six months now and I actually like it. But lately Mark has started calling me out again. Notably, he’s also been getting called out by one of his bosses, so I think I’m just downstream of his stress. My current manager’s advice is “water off a duck’s back.”
The problem is I’m terrible at that. I don’t even know what it means in practice. Everyone says it like it’s a switch you flip, and I genuinely do not know how to be a person who hears that stuff and lets it pass through. Every comment lodges somewhere and stays.
So here’s where I’ve landed. This guy has enormous sway over decisions and headcount. Twelve months ago I was building a case for promotion. Now I lie awake convinced I’m getting fired. I second-guess every email. I’ve stopped taking risks. The anxiety has quietly become the main thing in my life.
I know “just leave” is the obvious answer, and maybe it is. But I want to hear from people who have actually worked under someone like this.
How do you stop a person like this from living rent free in your head while you’re still in the building? And what does “water off a duck’s back” actually look like when you’re bad at it?
Did anyone survive one of these and come out okay? Did anyone stay and win? Or is the only real answer the door?