r/CareerAdvice101

Did I completely torpedo my standing here from my manager?

I had my mid-year review yesterday. I’ve been grinding non-stop for months taking on extra tickets generally carrying a massive workload. I knew I deserved a good review but I was also running on pure caffeine and sheer burnout from working 50+ hour weeks.

My manager was listing off my recent deliverables and we had this conversation

Manager: "How do you feel about your overall impact on the team so far?"

Me: "Bringing me onboard was the best decision this department made all year."

The words left my mouth before my brain could even register what I was saying.

There was an agonizing five-second silence. He just kind of blinked leaned back in his chair and went "Well... confidence definitely isn't an issue with you." He chuckled and moved the conversation along but I’ve been sweating bullets ever since.

Part of me knows I’ve been delivering but another part of me feels like I just permanently branded myself as an arrogant unhinged weirdo in front of leadership.

• being right doesn't matter as much as being liked by the right people
• your work only counts if someone above you actually noticed it
• never be the smartest person in a meeting who also has zero allies
• managers protect their favorites first, performance comes second
• always volunteering for extra work makes you the first name they think of when cuts happen
• staying quiet in a meeting still gets read as agreement, not neutrality
• staying late doesn't prove commitment, it just becomes the new baseline they expect from you
• the people who climb fastest are usually the best at managing perception, not necessarily the best at the actual job

school never teaches any of this, you just get thrown into it and learn the hard way after getting burned a few times...

Every time someone posts about hating their office job the comments fill up with "have you considered the trades" like it's a cheat code nobody has thought of. Spent time in that world and the reality is harsh conditions every single day, weather that doesn't care about your comfort, nowhere decent to eat or wash your hands, and supervisors who still operate like it's 1987 expecting you fifteen minutes early while finding creative ways to short your hours.

The physical toll alone is something people genuinely underestimate until they're living it. Your body takes real damage doing that work consistently over years. Joints, hearing, lungs, eyes. The safety gear helps but it doesn't fix everything and by the time you're forty you'll know exactly which shortcuts your body paid for.

The money argument also falls apart under pressure. The good pay either requires union commitment, running your own business, or both and the business route means the job follows you home every single night. If you actually want to go into the trades, electrician is probably the most defensible choice. But let's stop packaging it as an easy alternative for people who just want out of something difficult. What's a career path that gets romanticized way more than the reality actually deserves?

I work in manufacturing, and my boss recently blamed me for a pretty expensive mistake involving one of our machines. The problem is, I knew I didn't cause it. I checked the system logs and they showed that my boss had disabled the safety setting and forgot to turn it back on. He had already called me out in our Teams chat, so I replied with a screenshot of the log showing what actually happened.

Now I'm wondering if I handled it badly. I wasn't trying to embarrass him or start an argument, but I also didn't want everyone thinking I caused the problem when I had proof that I didn't. Looking back, maybe I should've messaged the operations manager privately instead of posting the screenshot in the group chat. Would you have defended yourself publicly if you were in my position, or kept it private?

I applied for a software engineering internship and figured I'd try the standard "be proactive" advice everyone preaches online. I sent a polite message to the recruiter asking if they had any tips for standing out among applicants. I was expecting either complete silence or a standard canned response about checking the portal, but

I definitely wasn't expecting this level of hostility.

https://preview.redd.it/hrsc8csr73kh1.png?width=279&format=png&auto=webp&s=b492c77abe9dcc73efb1a1faf85b0d5627afcefc

they immediately hit me with "3000+ applicants, my advice? Hope." When I tried to roll with it and just asked about a timeline for hearing back they told me "if not, you'll figure it out," and then edited their last message mid-conversation to basically tell me "never mind, save yourself the trouble."

I get that recruiters are drowning in applications right now but the absolute lack of basic professionalism is insane. To tell an entry-level candidate to "hope" and then soft-reject them over LinkedIn messages within two hours of applying is a whole new level of cooked. Is this just the new norm for tech hiring now?

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Now I'm in my third year in tier 2 IIT in CSE

I got shortlisted for 5 interviews of big companies but got rejected for all, some are my skill issues others I don't know

I got shortlisted for this Goldman Sachs intern, I finished all 3 rounds quickly and they went very well, that was my lucky day but then I also had Salesforce interview on the same day, then GS HR asked who has Salesforce interviews so I informed them, and she told me to go

Then I ruined my Salesforce interview due to exhaustion, I didn't eat breakfast or lunch and waited for 3 hours after completing my 3 rounds at GS, and I thought I got GS and ruined interview

I heard two rejections in 1 minute

Then I lost some other interviews which was my lack of DSA

But later I'm not getting shortlisted for other companies and now there are less companies left

Atp idk what to do and I'm blindly continuing my grind, I may get the next interview or I may not even get intern

After going through a few layoffs, I’ve started looking at extra work, just extra work.

When someone leaves our tech team, our management says everyone needs to “step up” till they find a replacement.

Then weeks passed and nobody got replaced. You’re doing two people’s jobs for the same paycheck.

Before, I used to think I had to prove I was reliable. I picked up extra tickets, covered support, and took on projects that weren't mine. Just led me to burnout with no salary increase.

But take note that I still do my job properly. I just don't think it's my responsibility to work like two engineers because they wanted to cut costs.

Already coming in an hour early unpaid to pick up the company vehicle before every shift. Already driving 35 minutes home after a 7pm to 4am schedule which puts me through the door around 5:15am. Four months in, no complaints, just doing the job.

New guard starts and suddenly I'm required to drive him home after every shift because he doesn't have a car. No pay adjustment, no conversation, just "it's required." Now I'm getting home closer to 6am after dropping him off and returning the vehicle. That's an extra unpaid chunk on top of the unpaid chunk that already existed.

The job itself was already a grind. Night shifts, remote location, long commute. Adding mandatory unpaid transport duty for a coworker without even asking feels like a line that shouldn't have been crossed without at least a conversation about compensation. Not putting in two weeks over the guy himself, putting in two weeks because apparently my time outside of paid hours is just available on request. Anyone else had a job quietly expand your responsibilities without touching your pay and how did you handle it?

I am sitting here shaking and honestly don't even know what to do with myself right now. I just started my first junior dev job on Monday after months of brutal searching.

On my third day my onboarding ticket was pretty standard: set up my local development environment and run a script to seed my local database with test data.

The onboarding documentation was pretty outdated so a senior dev told me to pull down the latest repository and copy over the configuration files. I ran the local reset script that was supposed to drop my local database tables and re-apply migrations.

What I didn't realize and what no one told me was that the template config file they had me copy was hardcoded with live production database credentials instead of localhost.

The script executed wiped the main customer data schema and completely took down the live product for our entire user base.

I was pulled into a Google Meet with the Engineering Manager and HR. They told me that my conduct was negligent, revoked my credentials during the call, and fired me effective immediately.

I’m in total shock and terrified that this is going to follow me around or worse that they'll try to come after me legally for the downtime. Is my career over before it even got off the ground?

Hi everyone! This is my first Reddit post, and I'm hoping to get some honest advice from people working in IT or recruitment in the UK.

I recently moved to the UK, so all of my professional experience was gained in my home country. I have a degree in IT and around 3 years of experience as a Customer Support Analyst for an international IT services company.

Before that, I worked in customer service for a large logistics company. I believe that experience actually helped me get my IT position, because I was already using a CRM/ticketing system, dealing with customer cases, investigating problems, documenting information and following processes.

I also had experience in customer service, administration, reception and teaching/training IT, so my CV is quite varied. I know that might not necessarily be a bad thing, but I'm wondering if it makes my profile look unfocused.

I joined the IT company as a trainee and, after about a year, I became a Customer Support Analyst.

My role was mainly focused on supporting a large corporate account with mobile devices and services. My work was more focused on customer support, troubleshooting, processes and ticket management rather than software development or advanced technical support.

My day-to-day responsibilities included:

• Managing incidents and service requests through a ticketing system
• Providing first-line troubleshooting for mobile devices and services
• Supporting users by email, phone and chat
• Explaining processes and providing documentation to users
• Managing and updating tickets and following SLAs
• Escalating issues when necessary
• Assigning tickets within the team
• Maintaining device and service records
• Monitoring mobile data usage and contacting users when necessary
• Supporting requests such as new devices, replacements, lost devices, cancellations and number transfers
• Working with different internal teams and an external telecommunications provider

I used ServiceNow and other internal systems.

I really enjoyed this job. I worked from home for a significant amount of time and later had a hybrid arrangement, and I found that I was comfortable and productive in that type of environment.

I left my job when I moved to the UK after getting married. I expected finding another job to be easier because I had worked for an international company, but it has been much harder than I expected.

I have applied for quite a few jobs and have received very few responses. Some applications seem to be rejected almost immediately, and I haven't been able to get many interviews.

This has made me wonder whether my experience is simply not translating well to the UK market, whether I'm applying for the wrong roles, or whether my CV is presenting my experience badly.

I do have full right to work in the UK and don't require sponsorship.

Another thing I'm trying to improve is my English. Most of my professional English came from working in my previous job. I have a good vocabulary and can understand work-related English quite well, but I'm quite shy and speaking is still much harder for me than writing. Since moving to the UK, I feel that my everyday English has improved, but I still need to work on my confidence and grammar.

I'm also currently pregnant, with my baby due in January. I don't see this as something negative, but realistically it affects the timing of my job search. My plan is to use the next few months to prepare rather than simply wait.

Ideally, I would like to return to work around March, preferably in a hybrid or remote IT/customer support role. I really enjoyed working from home before, and I feel that this type of role would also work well for me in the future.

From now until January, I would like to focus on:

• Improving my spoken English and confidence
• Refreshing my IT knowledge
• Learning useful skills without spending a lot of money
• Improving my CV
• Understanding which roles I should realistically target
• Starting to apply more strategically

I'm also wondering whether I should broaden my search beyond UK-based companies. For example, should I look for remote positions with companies based in other countries, as long as they legally employ people who are resident in the UK?

So this is where I would really appreciate some advice.

If you were in my position, how would you use the next 5–6 months?

Based on the experience I've described:

1. What roles would you target? Service Desk, IT Support, Customer Support, Application Support, Technical Support, or something else?
2. Does my experience as a Customer Support Analyst sound transferable to UK IT support roles?
3. Does my previous customer service experience strengthen my profile, or does my overall CV look too scattered?
4. Is having all my previous experience from another country likely to be a major disadvantage?
5. What skills would you recommend I refresh or learn?
6. Are there any genuinely free courses or certifications worth doing?
7. Would you focus on ITIL, Microsoft/Azure, networking, or something else?
8. Where would you look for hybrid/remote roles in the UK?
9. Are there good job boards or companies for finding remote IT roles where the employer is based outside the UK but hires people who are legally resident in the UK?
10. Is there anything obvious in my situation that I might be missing?

I'm especially interested in hearing from UK recruiters, hiring managers, or people who moved into the UK job market from another country.

I would really appreciate honest and constructive feedback. I'm trying to understand where I might be going wrong and what I could improve. If there is something wrong with my CV, my experience or the way I'm applying, I'd genuinely rather know so I can work on it.

Thank you for reading! :)

Hi, I'm actually an Engineering graduate, got into an accident and had a physical injury, which led me to remote work to keep up with the bills. I had a remote job for 8 months. I'm also trying to up skill by studying data analytics. What are your tips on how to sound more confident with the things you just learned online? It's only been a few weeks of unemployment but I am dreading the day of an interview and I won't be able to explain what I learned confidently enough. They might give me a technical test and I might fold (hopefully not). Please don't bash.

I was thinking about changing careers and was wondering what jobs make alot of money that are either not common, in a niche field, or not jobs most people dont know about or think about.

Hi !! So I’ve just graduated from EE specialized in Power Systems, a market that is growing and is on demand. But I have been having a growing interest in Software Engineering as I started a course in Coursera about AI and one of the courses is around Python. I got into it and very interested that I know have been considering a Masters if the job I will have I don’t like it.
My biggest insecurity is having a job once I graduate. I will be moving careers and Iw would need to have experience in internships while pursing a masters, and the job market right now is very unstable and honestly I would like to have insights into whether my consideration is something valuable, or rather I should stay in my field?

I really like both things, but the pay, opportunity of jobs and also the flexibility is something that has been in my mind.

Hi,
I’m a software engineer graduated computer science in TU Kaiserslautern(germany) with a very good mark. And got a job later in one of the best companies in the world and did not last 6 months . Then now for 3 years working at a small-middle sized IT companies .

The catch is , I don’t think programming is for me . My first experience lacked hard work that’s why it failed but now I’m constantly praised . Still I was always very good at thinking and mathematics and don’t want to just be watching Claude program while fixing it mistakes . My job lacks good thinking and mathematics.

That’s why I’m doing master in data science at least I need to think and understand Mathematik concepts there. My questions , is it possible to move to an actuarial science job? As it relies heavily on mathematics and statistics ? Is there a way to change from IT to statistics/Mathematik related field ?

Thanks all.