r/managers

After the employee was notified they were fired, they just stood up from the office and walked out. I told them they needed to sign papers to formally end the contract the next day.

I managed to make them sign the paperwork I hand on hand, but nothing important at all. The real paperwork was supposed to be signed the day after. (Process specified by the lawyer).

Higher ups are not releasing severance and liquidation until they sign the final paperwork.

The employee didn't show up the next day, formally the last day of work, and when trying established communications basically was told that they are crossing state lines and are not interested in any paperwork.

Multiple people are freaking out, despite being warned that this employee had a high chance of not showing up after that notification.

Now, I'm in hot water cause I followed what was asked from me by the lawyer, separating paperwork in two days, and that I should've signed everything the very day the employee was fired, especially after seeing how eager the employee was to leave after being notified.

Looking for views on reporting a manager through an anonymous Speak Up/NAVEX channel
I’m considering raising a concern about my manager through my company’s Speak Up process, which is handled by NAVEX as a third party.
The concerns are mainly around:
What I believe is repeated favouritism towards one particular person in the team.
Limited focus on the development and progression of other team members.
Concerns around psychological safety and how people feel about challenging or raising issues with the manager.
A management style that, in my view, focuses more on internal politics/gossip than team delivery.
Similar concerns about management, development and team environment have apparently been reflected in survey conducted by company roughly the past 12 months.
I’m trying to be objective and would only report specific things I have personally observed rather than making accusations about the manager’s motives.
My main questions are:
Would these be considered reasonable concerns to raise through a Speak Up/whistleblowing channel, or does this sound more like a normal management/HR grievance?
If I report anonymously and the investigation finds that the evidence isn’t strong enough, could there be any negative consequences for me?
How does the investigation normally work when the person being reported provides a different version of events?
Has anyone here used NAVEX or a similar anonymous workplace reporting system? How was your experience?
I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who have actually gone through a similar process, rather than just general opinions.

Without giving to much away, I received a call on the radio last night to bring a nurse to the shop. Upon arrival I spotted a guy that reports to me laying in the floor seizing. I did what I could and ran everyone off that wasn't needed to help him and I went to him talking to him to keep him as calm as possible while others kept him on his side. He recognized my voice because when I started talking he looked directly at me and quit struggling against the others that were trying to help him.

Whe the paramedics were carrying him out he was pleading for someone to help him. I reassured him that they were going to take care of him as they loaded him in the back of the ambulance. Then I saw them start chest compressions as they drove away. I was informed about an hour later that he didnt make it.

Now im getting ready to go back to work and I really dont want to go back to that place. Not today, maybe not ever.

I have this guy, he’s pretty crap at his job but has been there since the dawn of time. He’s got a great sense of humour and we get on. It did take me a while to get him to respect me as a manager.

It’s our first day back in the office after 5 weeks away from each other. I was bombarded with questions at this mornings meeting. This guy loves to get you flustered by asking loads of random stuff and making small things seem important. Anyway, in the meeting he started firing away. Now these employees don’t understand it’s my first day back too so I have as much clue to the changed as they do. I just stopped the meeting looked at him and said “who put 20 cents in the dick head”. Anyway he laughed and put his middle finger up and immediately retreated. I then continued.

Then in the manager office I was talking to another manager who has a guy who behaves the same. I told her what I said and she was shocked 😂 is it really that bad?

I work in an environment that went from being a small team, to a group of 20 with several management changes and teams created. I frequently face vitriol on anything I suggest, have push back on work I audit and find errors on, and am getting little help from our management chain or human resources.

What have you all used to successfully combat this issue? And for anyone asking if it's my management style, I am always open to new ideas and techniques. I was always a great team player who people would rely on for help. The move upwards has really shifted how my colleagues treat me and their work. I am not the only manager, but we all face this issue and it's getting worse.

I’m an MTS-level electrical engineer IC with 20 YOE. I’ve spent ~5 years systematically training our India team remotely. At this point, that training is complete, everything is documented, and any intern-level engineer could be trained remotely using the foundation already built over those five years. They have been carrying out the process for years now without issues.

Despite this, upper leadership (3+ levels above me) has repeatedly suggested me spending 1-2 weeks in India. Now the India team’s new manager is pushing it as well.

The justification is always some variation of: “We really think face-to-face can have benefits.” That is it, nothing else. No specific training topic. No technical problem. No defined deliverable that requires me to physically be there.

I was tempted to asking the new India manager to quantify the expected ROI of flying an MTS engineer across the globe for 1-2 weeks, including the definitive schedule impact. I ultimately decided to just nod and move on.

The irony is that having me gone for 1-2 weeks would directly impact major project schedules here. My new focus is pathfinding and automation proof of concept, which requires me here locally.

I also have family obligations that make extended international travel a nonstarter anyway.

My direct manager is vocal about keeping me local, but they only have so much say.

Is this kind of pressure normal at other large tech companies for senior ICs when nobody can articulate an objective business need beyond “face-to-face can have benefits”?

One of my direct reports died unexpectedly a few days ago. She was in her 20s, and I’m having a really hard time processing it while also trying to manage my team. Honestly, it still doesn’t feel real.

I cared about her a lot, although we had more of a manager/mentor relationship than a friendship. She was incredibly hardworking, smart, and genuinely sweet, and I was really proud of how much she had been growing professionally. It was completely unexpected.

My team is struggling too, and I’m trying to give everyone space while also figuring out how much work actually needs to continue. Some people are having a hard time even opening the projects they worked on with her, which I completely understand.

I’m also finding my own grief really unpredictable. Sometimes I feel totally normal and functional, and then suddenly I’m crying and can barely hold it together. I had to keep my camera off during our team meeting today because I’d been crying beforehand, while everyone else seemed relatively okay.

I know everyone processes grief differently, but I’m looking for advice from other managers who have been through something similar. How did you support your team while also giving yourself room to grieve?

How did you handle continuing to work when everything suddenly feels so unimportant?

I think I mostly just need to hear from people who have been through it.

Small org. We have a "data scientist" who vibe-codes his way through everything — process is a mess, but he somehow gets results. When he hands off modules to the dev team, things break, and instead of owning it he blames the devs for "not doing it correctly."

Normally you'd escalate, but he reports directly to the CEO, who isn't technical and just sees "results delivered." So devs eating the blame with zero leverage to push back up the chain.

How do you handle this when the org structure protects the person causing the mess? Document everything and let it speak for itself over time, try to get the CEO educated on what's actually happening, or something else entirely?

Curious if this is a common pattern.

Over the last year my formal authority hasn't changed — same title, same salary, no write-ups. But operationally, my actual decision-making has been quietly shrinking the whole time. Decisions I used to make outright now get looped through someone else first. Projects get redirected before reaching me. People technically report to me but increasingly go around me.

Nothing was ever said directly — no meeting, no formal change. Just death by a thousand small cuts that add up to me being a manager in name only at this point.

Context: I'm a C-level exec (COO). This started right after I mentioned a competitor had approached me with an offer. I told leadership I wasn't planning to leave, just that I expected a raise given the offer on the table. Ever since, the sidelining began — feels less like coincidence and more like quiet punishment for being upfront instead of just walking.

Before this, I'd always been recognized for my contributions — employee of the month/year awards, consistently praised for driving growth, helped scale the business 3x. So this wasn't coming out of nowhere or after some slump in performance — quite the opposite.

Anyone been through this? Is it usually a prelude to a layoff, a slow push-out, or just dysfunction with no clear endgame?

When I first became a manager, I thought the difficult part would be managing people.

Having tough conversations, dealing with performance issues, keeping people motivated, balancing what leadership wants with what the team needs. All of that sounded intimidating when I started.

But after doing this for a while, the thing that drains me out most isn't any single problem. It's feeling like I am constantly reacting to things.

Most days I am bouncing between Slack, emails, meetings, approvals, questions from the tea and random things that suddenly need attention. I sit down to focus on one thing and before I know it I am doing something completely different because another message came in.

By the end of the day I have touched lot of things but it rarely feels like I have made real progress on any of them.

What catches me off guard is how much of that follows me home. I will get home, eat dinner and tell myself work is done. Then an hour later I catch myself replaying a conversation from earlier in the day or thinking about something that's coming up tomorrow.

It could be a team member who seemed off in a meeting. A project that's moving slower than expected. A decision I am not completely sure about.

None of it is an emergency. I am not even trying to solve it. The thoughts just keep showing up.

I have noticed something else too. After spending the whole day jumping between things Instead of actually relaxing, I will switch between Reddit, Instagram, messages and random articles without paying much attention to any of them. A couple of hours go by and somehow my brain still feels busy.

Would be interested to hear if other managers deal with this too and if you have found a way to actually switch off when the day ends.

I’ve been in the role for about a year now and was previously a supervisor for a few years. I love what I do and consistently get positive feedback from my team and the regional directors/reps we work with.

However, we’re currently experiencing high turnover rates due to limited growth opportunities and pay gaps. We try to do what we can but as we know, only so much is approved for out of cycles or promotions.

All of the teams within our department are short staffed, so it’s difficult to pull someone from one team to another for assistance. I’m delegating as much as possible between my tenured associates and my team lead but I’m trying to be mindful to not burn them out as well. Beyond the limited raises I could provide a little while back, I try to incentivize our bonus programs we have as rewards for all the help and additional responsibilities they’ve taken on lately.

With that being said, I’m taking the brunt of the hit. I know it’s currently a season and won’t be forever, but I’m so beyond exhausted that it’s the first time in years thinking if my job is worth it. As dramatic as it sounds, I feel like I can feel myself fading away. The blank stares, the inability to form a thought at times, feeling more irritable than my normal happy self, and just feeling like I’m failing both my family and my job. I can’t just quit because I have bills to pay and a family to feed. Realistically speaking, I don’t want to quit. I love my team and my coworkers. Plus, I put a lot of time into this company working my way up. However, my mental health is taking a major hit. I already struggle with migraines and sleep issues, but it’s gotten so much worse over the past month. I can’t take a bunch of time off as much as I would love to and therapy only helps so much.

Have you guys successfully found ways to cope when experiencing burn out?

I have always been one of the “top” employees in my company - I am calm, reliable and a genuine team player and I do my best to grow junior team members. I get things done and do not complain much. My manager has been advocating for me to be her successor over the last few years and other senior management seems to be onboard with this plan. Now that my manager is on her way out to the next role, this long-discussed succession plan is finally coming to fruition.
While the promotion may sound exciting after 10years in this organisation, deep down I know it does not align with my current life stage. I have 2 toddlers and I want to be present for their growth. Taking this promotion means I will need to lead a much bigger team, take night calls, manage stakeholders in different time zones and inevitably, be involved in politics (which I hate and am bad at). Looking at my manager and her peers, they all work til late at night and over weekends (coincidentally none of them have kids) I just dont think there is a role model that I can relate to and this will not be a sustainable lifestyle for my family.
I have been telling my manager both explicitly and subtly that i am not ready for this promotion, and I need to be present for my family but she doesnt seem to get it. She keeps thinking a promotion is the solution to all problems (because financially i will earn more and i will have a bigger team to rely on). After a while, I just gave up trying and simply remained silent every time we talked about promotions.
Recently a new opportunity came up - It s a new area which will undoubtedly be a steep learning curve, but it is a local role which doesnt require night calls and I only need to manage a small number of team members. The hiring manager seems to be an empathetic person too and understands my need for flexible work arrangements. I will vey likely pursue this opportunity, but I have this deep sense of guilt - jt feels like I am betraying my manager somehow and all her support / advocacy over the last few years will go to waste.

If you were me, which opportunity would you choose? If you choose the new opportunity elsewhere, how should I manage my exit conversation/ transition to soften the impact?

I had a chat with my GM at a skip and asked him for improvement advice.

He says I am very calm under pressure, he wants me to match the energy of certain stakeholders who are more active/reactive.

I am not really sure how to implement this as I am naturally very calm and I like to project that with my team as projecting panic will be detrimental to the team's morale.

How do I project that I am passionate yet keep my calm demeanor to a specific stakeholder?

Need some advice, but also just need to vent to people who might understand this situation.

I’m in a senior leadership role at a mid-sized organization in the Midwest and report directly to the CEO. Like a lot of organizations, we’ve had financial challenges since COVID. There’s a longer-term plan to get back to sustainable operations by 2030, but the current fiscal year is expected to be particularly rough because of several major planned expenses.
None of this is a secret internally. Staff know where things stand financially.

I’m running into an issue with one of the managers who reports to me. He’s pushing pretty hard for raises for his entire team, and one of his employees is now threatening to leave if compensation doesn’t change.
I’ve brought the situation up the chain. The answer from the CEO/CFO is basically: we understand the frustration, but we’re not adding recurring expenses right now. Get through this fiscal year and reassess.

I’ve seen enough of the financials that I understand the reasoning. I don’t necessarily agree with every decision being made, and I suspect leadership is being more conservative than absolutely necessary, but I also don’t think the financial concerns are manufactured.

The problem is that this manager simply doesn’t accept the answer. Every time I explain the situation, it turns into another argument about why his department should be the exception. He frequently points to his 7+ years with the organization and the fact that some members of his team have been here 10+ years.

I respect that kind of longevity, but I also struggle with the argument that tenure by itself creates an obligation for an organization to increase compensation, particularly when the organization is openly dealing with financial constraints. Maybe that’s where I’m out of touch.

He’s also younger and has very strong opinions about compensation, employers, wealth inequality, etc. He’s brought up the “1%” and similar topics in conversations where I wasn’t expecting it. I don’t really care about his politics or personal views, but I do think they influence how he interprets organizational decisions around money.

The frustrating part is that I genuinely like and respect this guy. He’s a good employee. But I’m increasingly becoming the person he directs his frustration toward because I’m the one delivering the answer from senior leadership.

And that’s where I’m stuck.

Do I completely agree with the CEO/CFO? No. I think they’re probably being more conservative than necessary. But I understand their reasoning, I’ve seen the numbers, and realistically I’m not going to repeatedly challenge the CEO over raises that they’ve already said aren’t happening this fiscal year.

At some point, isn’t the answer just the answer?
For those managing managers or working in senior leadership: how do you handle this when you’ve advocated for someone, received a definitive answer from above, and the manager below you refuses to accept it?

Do you keep explaining the reasoning? Eventually tell them the discussion is closed? Let them vent and just keep repeating the same answer?

We're a smallish business of ~30 staff (varies seasonally). There's the big boss, and four line managers with a team of 4-6 employees each.

I've been here for 15 years, worked up from the most junior role to manager. In the last 5 or so years the culture seems to have definitely taken a downturn. Whiny, is probably the best way to describe it? Lots of low level issues that people talk about, but if you offer to log it formally, escalate it, or take action to address it, people say 'Nah, don't worry about it'. We have a regular audit by our industry body that takes feedback from staff and anonymises it, and it never raises anything significant. Last one we did we scored 85/100 for development, 88/100 for health and wellbeing and 81/100 for support. Summary was 'Congratulations, your employees agree that you are a good employer'. 🤷‍♀️

Most people don't talk about these issues to the managers, just round the office when we're not around. We try to be very accessible to people, we have weekly team catch ups with opportunities for ad hoc one-to-one catch ups afterwards, we have formal quarterly one-to-ones, quarterly company meetings with a completely open agenda, we all sit together in an open plan office. Often it's someone else who takes it upon themselves to say so-and-so isn't happy about xyz. If you raise it with the original person they sometimes say 'Actually yeah, that is a problem' but very often it's 'What? No. I never said that/I didn't want that brought to your attention'.

I've asked a number of people why staff won't talk to managers directly and I either get shrugs or the answer from a few more outspoken staff is that people feel like they get 'shut down' too much. Someone said we look too stressed. We implement employee feedback all the time, including really major stuff. For example, our contracts are for a 40 hour week, people wanted to go down to 37 hours. We offered them the option to go down to a 36 hour week pro-rata, they complained bout the pro-rata bit. Our pay is above average for the industry and we couldn't just give everyone a blanket overnight pay rise.

We also implement minor stuff, like people complained they didn't like just going to restaurants for our quarterly socials, so we sent out a form to gather information on what type of socials people would like (weeknight or weekend, what types of activities etc) and based on that feedback we booked a private arcade. We got everyone to agree the date before booking. Almost no-one turned up to the actual event. When asked, people said they were too tired on the day.

Our boss is extremely conflict avoidant and will *always* say yes if he can. This has resulted in two staff members having their job titles changed to include the word manager despite not having any formal management responsibilities. One of them is regularly mistaken for my boss, which doesn't particularly bother me as I don't really care about titles, but it just demonstrates how much the business accommodates staff requests.

Recently we had a senior staff member (who has been with us about a year) complain that people were coming to her instead of the managers and she was becoming the go to person for everyone's problems and it was becoming an issue for her. We have another member of staff (referred to by others as the 'office mum') who also complains about this. We set up an anonymous digital suggestion box so that she could direct issues there if people didn't want to speak to managers directly. No one has used it to date. She came back after a while and said a few staff had been talking and they wanted to have a company-wide meeting specifically without managers present so that they could all air out their grievances and have a spokesperson (her) bring them to the management team. We talked a lot about this and decided it wouldn't be a very productive approach. Firstly it seemed like it might just become a cooking pot of discontent when she is the only person to have formally raised or requested this. To quote another manager 'If the want to do that, can't they just go to the pub?'. I spoke to my staff about it and two seemed pro and the other two were against (these two are newer to the company, one said basically our staff don't know they're born). Secondly she had expressly complained about being everyone's go-to and that meeting would formally cement her in that position.

We already have an employee led group (no managers involved) who formally convene on their own schedule for this exact purpose, so we said that while we appreciated her trying to proactively resolve the issue, we recommended making use of the existing group. She came back saying she was disappointed especially given that we've already got a reputation for shutting people down.

I feel like I'm at my wits end. I can't work out if we're being so permissive that it's creating this atmosphere. We don't have any KPIs or anything. I wonder if people have nothing better to do but moan? Or if I'm missing something and we really are shutting people down too much.

In this time performance overall has been dropping. We've made the least money since COVID and staff chargeability is at a record low. It's like all the momentum has gone out of the business. I've got one foot out of the door myself for this reason but I'm still trying to give it my all as a manger.

Is this normal? What should we do about the meeting request, if anything? Is their anything we can do to fit this weird vibe in the office right now?

Hi Team,

I've recently filled a team lead/manager role of a small engineering team. 2 months in I had 1 guy leave, I hadn't properlly taken over the team and as I have recently found out, he was somewhat pushed out. It took almost 4 months to find a replacement and get them onboard.

The end of my new hires first week, my senior has resigned on a friday. He requested access removal from prod (fair) to avoid liability, but I still need him to do a proper knowledge transfer and train up our new hire to replace him properlly.

After 2 work days after resigning, i've barely seen him online. His handover was honestly terrible (not that he should have even done one yet), and is WFH due to a medical issue impacting his mobility (which I confimed he could do, but I needed his support still). His medical issue does not impact his ability to do the job.

With his lack of engagement and support, and really, his lack of willingness to support, i'm thinking to simply ask HR to put him on gardnening leave instead of serving out his notice perriod of 1 month. I feel he will just be a liability and distraction to others rather than a productive or supportive team member.

Technically he is great, but his output for the last 3 months has been very poor anyway so I don't really see the value in keeping him around the office outside of the handover.

FWIW I have no ill will towards him, his reasons for leaving I fully understand and i feel are justified (nothing bad), at the same time, the performance i've seen of him, and his past reviews, I probably wouldn't consider him for rehire. He's a dedicated family man and ultimately the role (by his own admission) was a stepping stone to relocation and never a long term prospect for him anyway, so its run its course.

I'm interested in some other perspective, happy to clarify any points, but I want to assess if i'm in the wrong here.

TIA.

Anyone else been in their job long enough that the simplest tasks are now the most difficult and annoying? Scheduling used to be the easiest part of my day. Now I want to bang my head against the wall.

Currently dealing with -

• 7 employees scheduled for 24/7/365. Two night employees, five day employees
• WeekDAY rotations (my night staff is week 1, employee 1 does 4 days and employee 2 does 3 days, then week 2 they switch. Which affects my day staff schedule because one of them has to start their shifts at a different time)
• WeekEND rotations (weekend shifts are 2 people on Saturday, one person does 12 hours and other does 6 hours as backup, then 1 person on Sunday alone. We alternate people every other weekend so they don't work back to back weekends)
• Half of my employees are not seasoned enough to work alone, so I am restricted to scheduling them weekdays between 8am and 7pm when there is another staff member present, and that also means they are limited to working the "back up" Saturday shift since they cannot be alone for the Saturday evening or Sunday shift
• Virtually every single employee has some time off request to factor into almost every schedule
• One employee just took a part time job so now her hours are restricted during the weekdays, and she also happens to be one that cannot work alone so I cannot shift her hours to be picked up on the weekend

I want to scream. Technically, I am fully staffed. But I am currently working more overtime than any of my employees to fill in spaces that they cannot cover.

I would REALLY love to move everyone to 3-4 shifts/week that are 10-12 hours in length. But cannot due to the amount of restrictions. I hate how inconsistent everything feels, and how the workload falls to half of the staff because the other half simply cannot work alone yet to pick up some weekend/night slack.

How do you all cope with trying to balance hours, time off requests, restrictions, and so on?

I’m 25 and I've been working in finance/accounting in London for about three years now, and there's one thing I've genuinely been curious about.

From what I've observed, some of the people who come across as quite difficult, blunt or not particularly easy to work with seem to get promoted relatively quickly, even after only a few years. On the other hand, I've also met genuinely kind, approachable people who've been accountants for 10+ years and have never moved into management.

I know years of experience alone don't entitle anyone to a promotion, and I've seen plenty of younger people who absolutely deserved to become managers.

What I'm really trying to understand is: what actually separates someone who becomes a Finance Manager, Head of Finance, etc., from someone who remains an accountant for their entire career?

Beyond technical ability, what qualities or behaviours do companies actually look for when promoting people into leadership roles? I'd love to hear from people who've been involved in promotion decisions.

Just started today as a business office manager for a memory care assisted living facility.

I realized upon my few minutes there that they had added ‘greet visitors and residents’ and ‘answer phones’ to my list of responsibilities along with typical work such as payroll, medicare processing, financial processing, etc.

I thought that was a little odd since they didn’t really mention it in the interview or job description, but then on top of that, my office and desk.. are the front desk. Not even just me there either, it’s shared with another person next to me and nurses and other admin come and go as they please. The nurse cabinet up front is directly behind me. Nurses have to get behind me and possibly see my computer and paperwork to get to their cabinet.

What I really need help with is, is this normal, or even HIPAA or HR allowed for what I will be working on? And also, does that therefore make me the BOM & the receptionist (even though that was not mentioned in the interview process)? Hoping to see some responses to put my anxiety at ease about this, but it feels very off. Thanks for the help!

Over the past year I've been at an internship with a manager who's not a bad person, but is a pretty bad manager.

Right from the start they'd leave me unsupervised for long stretches of time (weeks on end) and ultimately I'd have to go to them asking for work, at which point they'd tell me to find my own workload but then give consistently negative feedback on it not being up to their standard.

As the year progressed things got worse as they started bringing up the possibility of terminating me if I wasn't going to have a steady workload, but they wouldn't give me tasks and they'd just tell me to ask other employees to work with them, which would still leave me with maybe three tasks a week.

They were also terrible at communicating around very important deadlines and I nearly lost my university credit because of the fact that they waited to fill out a form I needed and procure a signature I needed from higher up until the last minute!

Lastly, they were terrible at handling the human side of management: they would constantly renege on their obligations and there would be weeks on end where they would WFH and I'd see them on a zoom call once every other week (and they blamed me for not running around after them despite their calendar having 3 open spaces on a normal week).

But god forbid you needed to adjust your working hours for a doctor's appointment or anything else, then they were a stickler for the rules and they would go straight to HR asking to dock your PTO.

Basically, I did well in my internship in spite of my manager rather than because of them. And on my last day I'd like to schedule a feedback session explicitly telling them the idea is to give them some feedback on my internship and their management.

I have prepared a compliment sandwich, a very diplomatic way of phrasing all this and a list of critiques that is backed up by STAR examples, and as far as bridges go, I am moving on to a different sector and frankly don't care about keeping them as a mentor, if I ever see them in my reporting line again, I am refusing the offer.

As far as I know, there is no HR exit interview, and they're not a bad person despite their faults so I'd rather not air this out outside of a room with just us.

So, is there an appropriate way to give them this feedback? Or should I just leave on my last day with them thinking I actually enjoyed being their squire?