r/InterviewMan

I feel terribly embarrassed, terrified, and honestly, I feel like I've been broken right now. I'm still sitting in my car in front of the office because I don't know how to go home and look my family in the face.

I'm trying to calm myself down enough to go home and pretend everything is fine tonight, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to do next. My mind is completely scrambled.

If you've been through something like this, please share what you did and how you dealt with it.

Every career comes with lessons, but some mistakes cost us far more than others—whether it's time, money, missed opportunities, or career growth. Looking back, what's one mistake you made early in your career that you wish someone had warned you about? Share your experience and what you learned so others can avoid making the same mistake.

I was working as an operations engineer on a 14-month contract in a very small department. There were only five of us, and the senior guys didn't want to go anywhere near any extra tasks, so whenever there was a new rollout that needed firewall rules, routing changes, or some random network cleanup, somehow it landed on my desk. I wasn't upset about the work itself because I was learning useful skills, but between the low pay and the complete lack of appreciation from the team, I started looking around once my contract was close to ending.

Luckily, an old employer of mine came back with a much better offer, and there were about five weeks left until the end of my current contract. My company still hadn't said anything about extending me or renewing the contract, so I thought I'd be respectful and tell them I was leaving instead of just disappearing when the contract ended.

My manager at the time had been promoted from engineer about seven months earlier, and the title had gone straight to his head. I went into his office, gave him my resignation letter, and told him I was willing to document everything, hand over the active projects, and train anyone who needed training before I left.

He read it, immediately got angry, and told me he wouldn't sign or accept anything until he decided when I was allowed to leave. Apparently, that was going to be after he found a replacement, after I trained that person, and after he was free to deal with it. In short, he was trying to trap me there.

I started to say, "But my contract only has about five weeks left..." and before I could finish the sentence, he shouted: No more talking. Didn't you hear me? I'm not agreeing to this until I'm ready. I don't want to hear another word about your resignation unless I bring it up.

This was a long time ago, back when email resignations weren't really a normal thing for us, so I thought I'd go back to him later and explain once he'd calmed down. Then I said to myself: honestly, screw it. If he doesn't want to hear a single word about it, I can do exactly that.

So I finished out the rest of the contract. I kept doing the work I was assigned, but there was no proper handover, no training sessions, no big knowledge transfer meeting, nothing except the usual daily work. He himself had told me not to bring up the subject again.

On the last day of my contract, I went into his office and handed him the laptop, access card, and the rest of my equipment.

"What's this?"

"My stuff. Today is my last day."

"Stop joking. I told you I still haven't accepted your resignation. And by the way, I've decided your last day will be nine weeks from now, because we need time to get someone in, get them up to speed, and do a proper handover. Take your things and get back to work."

He was looking at me with this smug expression like he'd won.

"No. My contract ends today. I'm not getting paid after this."

"You... What?"

"Yeah. I tried to tell you that from the beginning. The letter was just a courtesy because the contract was ending anyway, but you told me not to say another word."

"You're lying."

"No. Call HR and check. Bye."

I watched the expression on his face go from smug to angry to confused in about four seconds as I walked out.

Two months later, I heard he got chewed out badly by the director even though he tried to pin it on me. They had to bring in a dedicated network engineer who cost them almost four times what they had been paying me, and they missed several SLA targets while they were waiting for the new person to start.

edit: point of this never work for free ,do not let someone think he screwed you ,now I am happy in my new position especially when I got some AI help to be confident in the interview time like intervewman for example , ai sometimes could be very helpful

People don't talk enough about the honeymoon phase in corporate when you start somewhere new. The first few weeks, everything has this shine to it and looks polished. Everyone is nice, the meetings seem serious, and the projects feel much bigger than what you were dealing with before. You find yourself thinking: okay, this company is organized compared to the last place I was at. And then, little by little, the real operating system starts to show.

I also noticed at first that almost everyone assumes the processes are logical simply because they exist in the first place. Then you discover that a fair number of the workflows are designed around problems from four restructures ago, and no one can fully explain why certain approvals or handoffs still exist.

You start to understand which meetings matter and which meetings are still on the calendar because no one wants to be the person who cancels them. And you see that some decisions were almost settled before the conversation even happened. And there are initiatives that move fast not because they are the most urgent, but because the right senior person is focused on them.

As a PM, that feeling is strange, especially because at first you think the job is mostly about getting people aligned and bringing something to the point where it gets shipped. After a few cycles, you discover that a very big part of the role is reading the hidden org map that no one writes down for you.

Who shapes decisions. Which priorities will change again next month. Which teams are drowning but politically can't say no. Which status updates leadership wants straight, and which updates are supposed to look calm even if everything is messy.

And honestly, the biggest realization for me was that most companies are not internally coordinated at all in the way they look from the outside. A large part of corporate life is smart people trying to keep complex systems running through conversations, favors, relationships, and constant adjustments.

And I don't mean to say this as a complaint. It made me less stressed over time.

why is it that posts in this reddit are more about random unrelated stuff than InterviewMan software itself ?