r/OfficePolitics

I (mid-20s) started working at the Sydney office of a large international company, and our direct manager for the Asia-Pacific region is based in Manila. There isn't any local management in Sydney—everyone is basically on the same level, except for Junior and Associate titles.

The official company policy allowed employees to work from home up to two days a week.

When I joined, I quickly noticed something strange. Some of the senior employees were almost never in the office. Later I found out they had been exploiting the lack of local management. Apparently, some of them would work remotely almost the entire week, and coworkers who were in the office would swipe their access cards for them so it looked like they had physically come in. Since our manager was overseas, he couldn't easily verify who was actually present (He only had access to the access logs, he couldn't see the actual CCTV or other physical evidence).

The thing is—I had absolutely no idea this was happening.

As a new hire, I thought the attendance pattern was just... odd. I even asked a few senior coworkers about it, but they gave vague answers and never told me what was really going on.
But honestly, if they simply said, "Hey, this is how we've been doing things, please don't mention it to management" I honestly probably would've just stayed out of it.

About a month or two later, my manager scheduled a one-on-one video call with me. We normally had fortnightly check-ins anyway, so I didn't think much of it.

During the conversation, he casually asked how I was settling in and how things were going with my coworkers. I answered honestly. I said something like
"Everyone seems nice, but I wish I had more opportunities to interact with the team because people don't seem to be in the office very often."

I wasn't trying to report anyone. I genuinely thought I was giving feedback about my onboarding experience.

The following Monday, almost everyone suddenly showed up in the office. Then they were there five days a week.

It became pretty obvious that management had cracked down on attendance.

After that, things changed for me.

My mentor basically stopped talking to me, moved their workstation away from mine, and I felt like several coworkers started avoiding me. Since I was still new, losing that support made it much harder to ask questions or learn the job. I became increasingly anxious at work, my performance suffered, and months later I ended up on a Performance Improvement Plan before eventually losing my job.

I understand why my coworkers might have assumed I "snitched," but I genuinely didn't know there was an arrangement to protect. I wasn't trying to get anyone into trouble—I just answered my manager's questions honestly because I thought he was asking about my onboarding experience.

Feeling stuck in my career. Promotion got derailed due to constant manager changes. Looking for advice.

I'm feeling lost and demotivated. Lately, it feels like no matter how much effort I put in, nothing changes.

I'm currently an Software Engineer  in India, and my goal has been to get promoted internally. Over the last two years, I've had three manager changes, and I feel the lack of continuity has completely derailed my growth.

Here's how it played out:

• Year 1: Worked under Manager A for about a year. My annual review was average - not bad, not great. He gave me clear growth areas.
• I took that feedback seriously, improved on every point, took on more ownership, and documented my impact throughout the year.
• Next 6 months: Moved to Manager B after Manager A got promoted.
• Final 3 months before appraisal: Due to another reorg, I ended up reporting back to Manager A.

The appraisal was the most disappointing part. Despite all the improvements I'd made, my manager had essentially reused the previous year's feedback with a GPT rephrase. It barely reflected the work I'd done over the past year. When I brought it up, he gave a vague explanation and later edited the review. Four months after the appraisal, he left for another company. Looking back, I can't help but feel he had already checked out, and my growth simply wasn't a priority.

To make things worse, no one on my team got promoted this cycle, so I still don't know whether it was an organizational decision or something else.

My biggest frustration is that my work had very little visibility. Every time I built momentum, a manager change reset everything. It has made me question my own ability, even though I know I delivered good work.

After that, I decided to test the external market, hoping it would value my experience more than my current organization did. I applied for senior roles, reached out to hiring managers on LinkedIn, and got a few interviews, but no offers. One hiring manager (who previously worked at my current company) told me they typically expect candidates to already be one level higher in their current organization before considering them for similar roles. That was a tough pill to swallow.

It feels like a catch-22:

• I can't get promoted internally because of circumstances largely outside my control.
• I can't move externally because I don't already have that promotion.

There haven't been many positive changes in my personal life either, so overall it feels like life has been stagnant.

I know patience is important, but this phase has really tested me. I'm trying not to let these experiences define my self-worth, but it's difficult when years of effort don't seem to translate into progress.

For those who've been in a similar situation:

• What would you do differently?
• Would you keep pushing for an internal promotion or focus entirely on switching companies?
• How do you stay motivated when your work goes unnoticed?

I'd really appreciate hearing from people who've been through something similar and eventually turned things around.

I'm looking for some honest advice.

For several years, another colleague at my level has consistently been given the high-profile projects, executive exposure and stretch opportunities that I repeatedly asked to be involved in.

Recently, I realised the impact this has had. There have been a number of senior roles came up that I'd love to do, but many of the selection criteria are based on the exact experiences I never had the chance to build and my confidence has definitely deteriorated.

I genuinely feel my career progression has been affected. I've raised my interest in development over the years, but nothing really changed.

Would you tell your manager you believe favouritism has had a long-term impact on your career, or would you simply move on?

I'm interested in hearing from managers and anyone who's been through something similar. Bonus points if you can help me to understand why this might be happening if lm a high achiever.

I’m curious whether anyone else has experienced a situation where leadership unintentionally rewarded behavior that crossed professional boundaries, resulting in those behaviors becoming the expectation for everyone else.

This isn’t really about someone taking initiative or being ambitious. I appreciate coworkers who become trusted resources because they’re collaborative, dependable, and improve outcomes for the people we serve.

My concern is different.

I work in a counseling-adjacent role where we regularly interact with people experiencing significant mental health crises. These individuals are very vulnerable and we are often interacting with them on their worst day.

Professional boundaries, confidentiality, role clarity, and client-centered care aren’t just preferences. They’re fundamental to doing the job ethically.

Over time, one coworker has increasingly positioned themselves as an unofficial leader by inserting themselves into additional responsibilities, acting as the primary contact with outside agencies, communicating in ways that imply authority they don’t actually have, and taking on tasks that often extend beyond what the rest of us consider appropriate for our role. I have seen them leave our clients worse off with having limited skill in warmth, validation and rapport building.

Leadership has praised this behavior publicly and even referred to it as the standard the rest of the team should follow.

The problem is that many of us don’t believe those behaviors actually represent good practice.
Instead, they often blur professional boundaries, encourage unnecessary involvement in situations that don’t require it, prioritize visibility over clinical judgment, and create pressure for everyone else to operate the same way if they want to be viewed as high performers.

The hardest part for me isn’t that someone is getting recognition. I genuinely don’t care who receives credit. I wouldn’t be in the mental health field if recognition was a driving factor in my work.

What I struggle with is watching practices that I believe compromise professional boundaries become institutionalized simply because they’re highly visible. It leaves me wondering whether maintaining appropriate boundaries will eventually be viewed as doing less, even when I believe it’s the more ethical approach.

This person is very newer to the field and is younger. People have changed departments because they didn’t’t like this person and their ethics. It’s hard because our leadership only see the outcomes of our work in the form of documentation in billing. They do not see us work with clients and they are not around to see the miss use of databases that is going on.

Has anyone else worked somewhere that confused “doing more” with “doing better”?

If so:
Did leadership eventually recognize the difference?

Did these expectations become permanent?
How did you maintain your own professional standards when the culture rewarded something different?

For supervisors, how do you distinguish between healthy initiative and boundary crossing when evaluating employees?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people in behavioral health, crisis response, social work, counseling, healthcare, or similar professions where boundaries and ethical judgment are central to the work.

Is it time to start looking for a new job?

If there are any questions or need for specific situations, I will try to provide those.

I sort of slid into doing a new role for my company on top of my normal position. I am interacting with stakeholders now and they're asking my title. Its generic and moderately paid, I am telling them that title. I went to my boss and made a case, he had a million excuses and said to wait, which is fair, theres a lot factors that go into a decision like this. But now I see an "anonymous" company has posted this exact position locally offering 4x my current salary. We are in the middle of nowhere, it's him who posted. When I came to him about a raise and title change, he threw out a suggestion of an extra 200 dollars a month which I did not accept. There is work waiting to be done which I am being grossly underpaid for. I am considering quietly laying off those duties for now.

I'm frustrated and irritated. Help.

And for the record, he has a history of treating people like this, it's not personal.

Hi, I am an AI engineer with 1.8 yoe and in a startup based in Kolkata. My salary is 28k inr monthly which is about 280 usd.

I do possess patents, publications and a national hackathon victory. The problems I have are endless and I am planning to resign and would love your opinions (and if anyone wants an enthusiastic dev).

Our CEO barely gets clients and blames it on us. I am handling backend, QA testing, product management, HR and hiring and as well as, now making reels. I was fine with that.

But now recently, he started this blame game and overambitious dreams. He wants us to build our own Claude (yes lol) and our own Perplexity (yes again). He sees insta posts and says, "Why can they make 5000 usd and why not us?"

Apparently everything we build is a waste even though he's the one making guidelines. It's gotten to a point where the entire tech team (2 people including me), keeps getting fire threats even after doing everything.

Should I resign?

I work in a busy office in a big city at a cultural institution. I also have bipolar 1, GAD and SUD. I’ve been through many inpatient stays and medications for most of my adult life and the fact that I’ve managed to hold down a job is a miracle. But I’m starting to feel a lot of paranoid delusional thinking about my coworkers. There is some office politics that can be toxic but my thinking isn’t very strong these days and my meds aren’t working as well. My psych is adjusting the doses and we may even try new meds. But I’m wondering if I should talk to my employer about what’s going on. I told my employer that I had a disability but I didn’t disclose which one and I have not asked for reasonable accommodations. I’m also aware of the stigma my diagnosis has and that my coworkers may judge me or treat me differently based on that. I like my job and want to keep working there but my symptoms are getting worse and I feel like I’m being targeted and bullied at work and it’s really stressing me out and affecting my performance at work. I also want to avoid having to go inpatient again. What should I do?

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for honest feedback from other managers because this situation has really knocked my confidence.

I’m a new manager and recently asked two team members to cover our local distribution store because of staff shortages and the stores manager being on annual leave.

One colleague did this without issue. The other refused because they had come to work in shorts and hadn’t brought work trousers. Due to recent health and safety requirements, trousers are now required in the stores environment. I reminded them several times during the week that stores still needed covering, but they continued working elsewhere instead.

The colleague who had been covering stores then raised concerns in front of my line manager, saying my management was poor, needed to improve, and calling me “a pretty poor manager.” They also said it was unfair that they were doing the stores work while the other colleague wasn’t.

My line manager overhead and came through and stopped the conversation so they could hear my side. We then spoke with the other colleague about delegation, communication, and the need to wear work trousers, and they agreed to be more proactive going forward.

What also surprised me was that the colleague criticising me said the other employee had been talking excessively and avoiding work for around a year, but this had never been raised with me before. If I had known, I would have dealt with it much sooner.

Looking back, I wonder whether I should have escalated the refusal to cover stores earlier instead of continuing to ask the employee to comply.

I’d like to believe I let my colleagues organise the workload between themselves as I don’t want to be a micro manager and am there always for further guidance if they need it or need senior engagement. I also try to offer my on hand support with manual tasks as and when they require them.

This has really affected my confidence, and I’d appreciate honest opinions from experienced managers:
● Did I handle this poorly?
● Should I have escalated the refusal immediately?
● Would you have done anything differently?
● Am I being too hard on myself, or is this just part of learning to manage people?

I’m genuinely trying to learn and improve. Thank you for reading.

3 months into my joining new ARC company, the Deputy CEO (daughter-in-law of the company owner) asked me to accompany her for a meeting with another company. The month prior to this I had been single-handedly analysing a portfolio of this company.

At the meeting, the official started colluding with my senior. I was taken aback, since this was directly breaching the auction process confidentiality. At the end of this meeting, they disclosed to us all the commercial terms offered by other ARCs who had participated in the auction. Yes, they opened the sealed envelopes.

It was agreed between us that we were now going to submit a back-dated bid offer letter to them before the scheduled date of announcement of the auction result. Now that we knew the highest bidder’s offer amount, we could offer a slightly higher bid in our offer and win the auction ‘legitimately’.

The next few days the senior tasked me with preparing the required offer letter.

The next week, I had a big argument against all seniors over another matter, and in a fit of rage, on the following day I distributed pamphlets to many employees outside the office premises, in which I had written my detailed account of the unethical business practice she was involved in, and how she intended to cheat our competitors by committing fraud.

If I had an audio recording of the collusion, I could have disclosed it to RBI and both the companies would be answerable. Alas! It didn’t strike me when meeting was ongoing.

I was then suspended. She filed an NC against me at a police station, accusing me of defamation. After I didn’t respond to their show-cause notice, they appointed an Enquiry Officer who was supposedly ‘unbiased’. The enquiry was a farce. The officer pretended to agree with me but said he couldn’t reinstate me after my actions because I had attacked the promoter’s daughter-in-law directly and openly. He said that had I accused any other senior instead, they could’ve still brought me back. Eventually, I was allowed to resign.

It’s been 6 months and I’m still searching for a job. My resume is f’ked now, and so is my background verification.

TL;DR - In order to know who controls you, identify whom you are not allowed to criticise.

I don't speak much but I'm still getting pulled into the gravity of it being surrounded by asses. And now this is affecting mental peace and happiness. What would be the best advice to jump up to happiness mode and ignore the nonsense. Though I understand the best strategy on game theory is not playing it, yet, just being in a place is making me fall for it. Like if three gang up and to prove you are an idiot, what would you do ?

I applied for a role in a different department. People in that department were really excited. They put in a good word for me. They think very highly of me. The manager in that department reached out to my manager to let her know that I applied. I am currently in an administrative role. I was told five years ago that my current role would transition into a management role. And so I took on more task and more duties. I was told OK next year it will transition into management role and it never came into fruition and then I would be told the same thing again it wouldnt happen. According to my boss, it never happened because HR didn’t see it necessary to transition my role into a management role.
Now the role that I’m applying for is also an administrative role. It’s just a little bit higher. So my manager decided to go to HR and ask if my role could be transitioned into a management role HR has approved it now and so now that I’ve been offered a new role my manager came to me and said listen your current role is going to transition to a management role and I want to offer you the opportunity first to see if you would like to stay and it would pay more than the other job in the other department. Now over the past five years I’ve seen people around me progress and transitioned into supervisors management. I will admit I became a little resentful and discouraged. From a) not given what i was promised over and over b) i trained newly hired managers. I just can’t believe that now that I found a role to transition to now this offer is presented to me. Im not sure if theres is an alterior motive or some kind of trick. It just gives me a really weird gut feeling. Is there an anterior motive lurking or what is the catch?

The role im currently in is very complex requires a lot of critical thinking and problem solving. And it has new projects coming down the pipeline and im already managing 2 warehouses and my boss has become very authoritative and not very understanding of the complexities to have an open mind about somethings i need support in. i have made it to where the burdens of my role is not felt by anyone else and/or the organization.

I’ve felt here lately like the door is slammed in my face sort of speak. When I ask her for support or when I go to her for something she doesn’t listen at all and she just rattles off what she thinks is a solution but she has absolutely no clue what she is talking. Or sometimes I feel like she is just going around in circles not really trying to listen to understand.

I just realized that I have an issue with my Team Lead. I loved her laughter and sunny irreverence the first few weeks. But now I'm asking for guidance and being met with a stormy face and kicking the can down the road. I'm not thrilled about not getting my work done properly. I'm even less thrilled with being blamed if deadlines are not met.

I've tried approaching with a smile, with a gentle tone, with seriousness. Nothing has really shifted the dynamic. Does anyone have suggestions on how to smoolth things over with a Lead who has structured herself as the go-to person, then gets irritated when I repeatedly go to her throughout the day?

cofounder (35M) and i met (24F) in 2023, always had good relationship and camaraderie, we had complementary skill sets as well, we both quit our 9-5 to work on the startup full-time right after we launch our MVP.

conversations with him was always great cause we connected and shared the same alignment on things and life. we also shared personal and fun stuff together to build trust in between. however, he pulled back and became distant and professional after we raised our seed round, i shrugged it off cause i thought he just wanted to lock-in on the startup, this went on for a year.

fast forward 2 years later, he was making moves on me and we briefly dated, but it turned sour real quick, so i ended things.

post-fallout, we are in a weird in between space where 0 communication exists between me and him personally. the only visibility we have on each other is a 30 minute team huddle (consisting of other team members) every Monday.

i also had a few cofounder check-ins with him, but had to cancel last minute due to conflicting schedules, but he never bothered initiating or checking in on it. basically, if i don’t initiate, there will be radio silence from him.

am i overreacting? what do i do?

Two jobs ago (I quit in January 2025), my manager placed me on a pip at the 1year and 2 month mark.

I say this neutrally, he has no spine. He is one of those managers who has no degree, stayed at a company for nearly 2 decades and played politics to finally land the manager title. He is liked by most I’ve seen and is very unprofessional with jokes when you work with him everyday (like he’ll joke about firing you regularly).

He also doesn’t know how to keep things private. Not even 4 months into the role, he’s already telling me about one of my colleagues going through a tough emotional battle after losing his wife a few years back (he told me this voluntarily. I didn’t even ask). I wouldn’t want people airing out my business like that especially in detail with a new hire.

Anyways, the pip came after a few women didn’t like me and started collectively complaining behind my back and would deny they said anything when I asked them out it and started to gaslight me.

Idk why they didn’t like me (not going to say they hated me but they definitely did not like me and didn’t want to show any kind of support even but they would support almost everyone else around me). Saying hello in the office? They do that with almost everyone except me even. If I come up to them they all stop talking and act like I’m carrying a bomb.

The pip was the tipping point. Yes, there were parts I could improve on I admit but I have my reasons. One of which being the new lady who was training me on a new function later on in my role just wouldn’t shut up about her personal life about her autistic daughter and her sexual orientation.

I ended up quitting one week into the pip and landed another role at another big company and thrived pretty well there. I made sure to humbly share my wins on LinkedIn since I still had a few of them who were connected with me (the women immediately come to my profile to delete me and unfollow me).

Point being, I’m sure everyone is busy with their own lives but I’m curious to know. Do some managers who thought poorly of your performance reevaluate you if they see you thriving in a new environment or could they not give a single fck ?

Will you resist in same workplace if you see favouritism and racism in front of your eyes?

I was flabbergasted and I didn't know what to say I was stunned and I had to walk away.