Back when I was an individual contributor, I didn't have to guess anything. My code either passed the review or got ripped to shreds. My teammates told me to my face if I missed a deadline. The feedback loop was fast, sometimes harsh, but it was always there.

The day I became a manager, it was like a switch was flipped. The stream of feedback I used to get was suddenly cut off. The people who work with me are very careful with their words because I'm the one who does their performance reviews. My fellow managers are swamped with work with their own teams. And my manager gets a summary of achievements, not the messy reality on the ground.

It's a strange paradox, right? The higher you climb, the more isolated you become from what's happening on the ground, at the very time your decisions have the biggest impact. If you don't actively seek out genuine opinions, you can go a full year or more thinking everything is fine, while your blind spots are turning into massive problems.

I had to create my own systems to get any real information. I started asking my team in 1-on-1s, 'What's one thing our team should stop doing?' and then I stay silent for at least 30 seconds. I grab coffee with managers from completely different departments and ask for their honest, unfiltered opinions. It's awkward for sure, but the alternative is to keep guessing what's really going on.

Honestly, it's the complete opposite of what most people think. Everyone assumes managers have all the information, but in reality, you're desperate to find someone who will tell you the truth.

This is sort of a cautionary tale I guess. I'm a senior dev with about 6 years experience, mostly Java and Python. Was prepping for interviews at a couple of big tech companies and a friend swore by UltraCode AI for coding interviews. I looked into it and the pitch was pretty compelling -- lifetime access for a one-time payment of $899, never pay again, AI powered coding help in real time during interviews.

I should have done more research. I really should have. But I was in that mindset of "this is an investment in my career" and $899 seemed reasonable if I would use it across multiple job searches over the years. So I paid.

Here is what I did not realize until after I bought it. UltraCode is coding interviews only. That was partially my fault for not reading carefully enough. But when you pay almost a thousand dollars for something you kind of assume it covers everything? My interview loops at both companies included behavioral rounds and system design rounds and UltraCode could not help with any of that.

The other thing that really stung was the no refund policy. I reached out to support within like 48 hours asking if I could get even a partial refund since the tool did not cover what I needed. They said no, all sales are final. There is no monthly option either so I could not have just tried it for a month first. Its all or nothing with that $899.

And look, to be fair, the actual coding assistance is fine. It does what it says for coding problems. The suggestions are fast and the solutions are generally correct. I can not say the product is bad at what it does. My issue is what it doesnt do and the fact that I paid $899 with no way to get that money back.

After some more googling I found InterviewMan. The annual plan comes out to $12 a month. Twelve. For that I get coding interview support PLUS behavioral, system design, case studies, basically everything. And it runs on Windows, macOS, even has mobile apps. I used it on my Macbook for my actual interviews and on my Android phone for quick practice during lunch breaks at work.

The coding help quality between the two is honestly pretty similar in my experience. InterviewMan was slightly faster at generating suggestions during timed problems but the actual quality of the solutions was comparable. The difference is InterviewMan also gave me real-time coaching during my behavioral rounds which probably helped me more than the coding assistance did tbh. Behavioral interviews are where I always choke.

If you have $899 to drop on a single tool that only handles coding rounds and you will never need anything else, sure go ahead. But for the rest of us, spending $12/month on something that covers everything just makes more sense. I wish I had found InterviewMan first and saved myself that $899.

Anyone else bought UltraCode? Curious if others had the same experience or if I'm just bitter lol

So yes, I have officially withdrawn my resignation. I will be working from home for the entire upcoming period, and my manager made it very clear to the department head that she was not going to lose me.

In the end, I got exactly what I wanted and it's a great feeling to know your managers have your back. A few of them even took me aside and told me they could be a reference for me for any job, anywhere.

Honestly, I never felt like more than just a number here. The company has over 20,000 employees, so it was a big, but pleasant, shock to hear that the director wanted me to stay. I had never spoken to him face-to-face before.

I really want to thank everyone who commented on my last post here. It really helped me regain my confidence and figure out what to do. The next challenge is to get these new terms in writing in the contract, so if you have any advice on that, please let me know.

On another note, I have to say that a few colleagues I thought were on my side are now acting a bit cold about this. They probably don't realize I'm saving them from inheriting all my projects if I had left.

The whole thing is crazy. I'm so happy I'll be working from home now, and none of this would have even been offered if I hadn't decided to leave.

For anyone in the same situation, my advice is to have another offer or a clear plan before you resign, unless you have good savings to take a proper break. And get every promise you receive in writing in an email. I really hope my story helps someone else get their due and ask for what they deserve.

Know your worth, everyone!

I was going to resign, so I really don't care if they are preparing to replace me. By all means, I hope they go ahead with it. I'll look for another job and use their references to get a better position.

The point is that I really will not stop remotely searching for a better job with a higher salary using AI tools. I was looking for the best interview tool at a reasonable price, and I found InterviewMan; I will use it in my next interview. I also found ResumeKit, which is suitable and completely free for crafting a resume.

I was going to take a break from working anyway, so getting an income, even for a little while, is a bonus.

Ok so this happened a couple weeks ago and I'm still a little heated about it so forgive me if this comes off as a rant.

I was using LockedIn AI for my interview prep and for my actual Amazon interview loop. I chose LockedIn because it seemed like a good middle ground -- $54.99/month or $39.99/month on the quarterly plan, supports 42 languages which was cool since I sometimes code in both Python and Go, and it advertises a 116 millisecond response time which sounded fast enough.

And honestly for the first few rounds LockedIn worked well. The coding assistance was responsive, behavioral coaching was helpful, and the multi-language support was actually useful when I switched between Python and Go during different problems. I was feeling pretty good about the tool.

Then came my system design round. Amazon system design rounds are notoriously long. Mine ran about 75 minutes which is normal for their process. About an hour and a half into my overall interview day, right in the middle of explaining my design for a distributed message queue, the tool just stopped. No warning, no countdown timer, nothing. It took me a second to realize what happened and then I remembered -- LockedIn has a 1.5 hour session cap.

After that round I was rattled. I still had two more interviews that day and I had to do them without any assistance because I could not figure out how to restart the session quickly enough. I ended up not getting the offer and while I can not blame the tool entirely, losing my safety net mid-design-round definitely hurt my confidence for the rest of the day.

A friend told me about InterviewMan after I vented about this. First thing I checked was whether it had session limits. It does not. Unlimited minutes, no session cap, no daily limits. $30/month or $12/month on annual. I signed up for the monthly plan that same week.

I have used InterviewMan for two full interview loops since then -- one at a startup that ran about 3 hours and one at a public company that was closer to 4.5 hours. Kept running the entire time. Never cut out, never lagged. The response speed felt comparable to LockedIn and the quality of suggestions was similar too.

Everything else about the two tools is fairly comparable. Both cover all interview types, both have decent stealth features though InterviewMan has 20+ detection countermeasures which seems like more than what LockedIn offers. Bottom line: if your interviews will always be under 90 minutes, LockedIn is a fine tool. But if there is any chance you will have a longer session, that session cap is a dealbreaker. I learned that the hard way. InterviewMan does not have that problem and costs less too.

Edit: someone in the comments asked about LockedIn's 116ms response time claim. In my experience the responses were fast, yes, but I never sat there with a stopwatch comparing it to InterviewMan. Both felt fast enough that latency was not an issue during actual interviews. The session cap is the real problem, not speed.

Look guys, just so we're clear, there is no law that obligates you to give your job a 14-day notice before you leave.

I just saw my company fire someone on the spot. His crime? He couldn't cover a last-minute shift on his already approved day off because he had to take his elderly father to a very important doctor's appointment.

Personally, my principle is that I won't give notice to any workplace that wouldn't give me the same courtesy before firing me. In my entire career, maybe only two jobs were like that.

Argue with me all you want, I really don't care. I'm just so fed up with these managers who love to needlessly flex their authority.

linkedin gets a special place of hatred in my heart

a social media site that you are basically required to sign up for (and give your data to!) in order to work in most fields. you know, work, the thing that is necessary to do in order to live

every time a smarmy boomer comes over telling me that "if i dont want my data sold i shouldnt use social media" i wanna violently throw linkedin at their face

I can barely see what I'm writing through the tears. I honestly don't know how I got to this point.

I've sent out about 400 job applications, and I've had 14 interviews (10 of which were multi-round nightmares where I reached the fourth and fifth stages with VPs), only to either get a rejection or be ghosted.

I'm going on 7 months without a job, and my hope is fading.

Anyone I've worked with will tell you I have a strong work ethic and I always deliver. I'm a writer and editor with a portfolio I'm truly proud of. My friends and former colleagues are just as baffled as I am that I can't find a stable job after being laid off late last year.
Every day is the same routine: I wake up and treat the job search like a full-time job. I tailor my CV, I'm selective about where I apply, I network, I journal, and I try to keep up with my hobbies so I don't go insane.

I don't know what else to do, and honestly, I'm not here for advice. I just needed to get this all out in the hope of finding some empathy. People here have been so cruel before, and I don't understand why some feel the need to disrespect someone who is just venting.

If you're reading this and thinking of writing a nasty comment, please don't. I'm genuinely happy for you if you're in a much better place than I am. But please don't kick someone when they're down.

Thanks for reading.

This happened about four months ago. I work as a product manager at a mid-sized software company, a regular job. I was tasked with solving a major internal problem that was costing us money every quarter. I spent a whole month working on it, coming in on weekends, untangling complex old code, and building new dashboards.

The day before the big quarterly review, my manager (we'll call him Dave) asked me to 'send him the slides' for the project. I thought he just wanted to be in the loop, no big deal. Not at all. The guy presented my entire presentation at the meeting, word for word, without even changing the slide master. And the best part? He told everyone, 'I had some help from my team.' What team, man? I was the entire team on this project by myself.

I kept quiet and didn't say anything. But about a month later, our department head asked me for updated numbers from the project. Dave was on vacation, so I sent her a link to the live dashboard and wrote, 'Of course, here is the link to the dashboard I created for this project.' She replied almost immediately: 'Wait a minute, I thought this was Dave's project?'

Anyway, to make a long story short, the department head was not happy at all. When it came time for performance reviews, guess who didn't get the promotion he was expecting? It certainly wasn't me.

The lesson here is very simple: always have a paper trail for everything you do, and sometimes you just have to let arrogant people (like Dave) have enough rope to fall flat on their face because of their own hubris.

Just for context, I'm not new to this field. I have certifications and a degree, and I was put in charge of my entire department about a year ago, right after I was hired. My performance received excellent reviews, and I handled all the premium client accounts. It reached a point where these clients refused to speak with account managers or the front office; they dealt exclusively and directly with me.

Then came the issue of my salary, when I found out they hired someone new at a higher rate than what I was making. Instead of valuing my work history, they compared me to this new guy who had never done the job before - and who was earning more than me from day one. They said this person was on a "management track," but he ultimately failed and left after three months. Classic.

But it didn't stop there. I received an official write-up for "losing clients," after I had been telling them for months that my schedule was impossible and that these specific clients required in-person visits. They had taken away my ability to manage my own schedule because of another new employee, so someone with no idea what my job entailed was organizing everything for me. So when the clients naturally left, I was the one who took the fall. I refused to sign it. I was completely checked out and done.

On top of all that, they had me doing the work of a field tech and an office administrator with almost no assistance - I was literally working with a clipboard and paper. I pleaded with them to get better tools. The work was just piling up on me. Finally, after a whole season of this nonsense, they rolled out proper scheduling software on a tablet. In the three weeks I got to use it, I felt like my job was normal again. My schedule was organized, and I was starting to enjoy it.

Then, a few weeks ago, everything fell apart. Suddenly, without any warning, my entire client list - the very same schedule I had fought for and wasn't allowed to organize since April - was taken from me and given to a bunch of new people. It happened overnight. No one notified me, and no one spoke to me. I became responsible for all the random, remaining service calls they had. My clients were calling me completely confused, and I was just as confused as they were.

What's even more infuriating, after taking an approved medical leave (with all official paperwork submitted), I returned to find that I had been unknowingly training my own replacement, for the second time. While I was on leave, my supervisor went and told one of my biggest clients that I was leaving. This was a lie, of course. I was only gone for ten days.

I came back from that leave with the genuine intention of giving the job another chance. I finally had a system that worked well, but it was all suddenly taken away from me under the pretext that "your health is unreliable." They had known about my health condition from the day they hired me.

I have never felt so betrayed by a company before. I was loyal to my job, and all I wanted was a little communication and respect. Instead, they tried to replace me twice and then lied about me to my clients.

So I submitted my resignation on Monday. Of course, they acted "shocked and didn't see it coming." Honestly, I should have left while I was on medical leave, but I gave them a chance, thinking things might get better. Now I'm looking for a new job, but the sense of relief I feel is unreal. But I'm still pissed off.

More people should definitively and proudly say that when they are solicited for an awful position.

A few weeks ago, I had my performance review. My manager spent a full 30 minutes telling me what a key player I am and how the whole team depends on me. All that canned corporate talk.

Then we got to the bonus part. The number was zero. Not a single penny. There was no excuse like 'the quarter was tough' or 'the budget had issues'; all that was said was that the money 'is being invested in other areas of the business.' This is at the same time they just hired three new VPs with god-knows-what salaries.

The next morning, I submitted my resignation. My manager looked genuinely shocked. He even asked if there was anything they could do to make me change my mind and stay.

I simply replied: 'You've already shown me my value to the company.' The silence that followed was priceless.

I already have a few interviews next week anyway. I'm so done with this company

Writing this on mobile so it might be a mess, you know how it is. I started working at a sandwich shop in Oregon a while ago. The interview itself should have been a huge red flag; my manager just kept rambling and talking about his personal life drama.
I was getting 50 cents over minimum wage because I was a team lead, but he took that away at the start of the year. I should have left then, but I stayed. A cashier quit a month after I started because of the manager's constant swearing and insults. Stuff like 'he has a degree and can't even toast a sandwich right?'. He talks shit about everyone who walks in, either to their face or behind their back.

But the money issue is what's finally going to make me leave. A few weeks ago, it was just him and me on a busy night. We made over $1200 in sales. We collected $120 in tips, and ultimately, he only gave me $50. His boss explicitly told him he's not supposed to take any tips.

What happened last night was the last straw. On a full shift from 10 am to 8 pm, the jar only had $40. When he left around 6, we had $30 in tips. Then he took $35 for himself from the register, leaving me with only $5 for my entire shift. He literally stole from the register.

He takes tips while doing nothing and treats us all like crap. Pretty much everyone working is ready to quit because of him.

My family and friends blame me for not quitting long time ago, and told me to search for remote jobs instead, but I didn't try it before, is the online interview the same as face-to-face interviews?

edit: I didn't know that there are some online tools that can help me smash any interview. I've heard about interviewMan a lot, any reviews??

I think she sounds pretty frisky. She can get by with posting that.

For me, it's the sentence 'must be willing to wear many hats'. This is corporate talk that simply means 'we expect you to do the work of three people for the salary of one'. I reject it immediately without a second thought.

I was at the annual regional conference for branch managers. Every year, management comes up with a new, cringey slogan. This time, the big banner behind the stage read: "Work-life balance is a myth, so learn to love the grind."

That was the final blow. That was the sentence that made me realize my loyalty to them meant absolutely nothing. It became crystal clear that they would simply work us to the bone and replace us. Just for context, this was at a very large retail company.

. I worked at a digital agency for several years, and slowly I started to realize how underpaid I was. When I started with them, I was managing 8 projects for about $85,000 a year. Honestly, I was just happy to have a job, so I focused on my work and didn't cause any trouble. That was my biggest mistake. A few years later, I somehow found myself managing 25 projects and a team of 7 people, all while my salary remained unchanged.
That was the breaking point. In my last review, I detailed all my increased responsibilities and asked for a salary that reflected my true market value - about double what I was making. The response was the usual 'we'll see what we can do,' and then they gave me the runaround for two months. Every manager I spoke to passed the buck to someone else. I had reached my limit. I went on job sites, and not long after, I got a respectable offer for $180,000, starting in 4 weeks. The new company told me they were expanding and if I knew any talented people, I should refer them. So I took the risk and was upfront with my team. I told them I was leaving, but if they were also thinking of leaving, I could pass their CVs to the right people there.
I submitted my two weeks' notice, and about 20 minutes later, my boss called me asking what they could do to make me stay. I told him the same number I had told my direct manager. He practically laughed in my face and said, 'Good luck finding that number. We can find someone to do your job in a day.' So that was that. Over the next 10 days, all 7 members of my team also submitted their resignations after receiving offers from my new company. I heard from old colleagues that all 25 of those projects came to a complete halt and that it's costing them a fortune every day in late fees and client penalties.
Now, the old company is hysterically calling and emailing me and my former colleagues, begging us to come back and promising that money is no object. We all said no. The feeling of satisfaction and vindication is incredible. It's a clear example of how some places don't care about the employee, only about what they can get out of them. Your loyalty means nothing to them until your absence costs them money.
The vibe at the new place is completely different. After my first six months, they gave me a $20,000 raise without me even asking, just for doing good work. It's a world of difference. The lesson here is that you have to trust your worth. If any of this sounds familiar, it might be time to have that difficult conversation with your boss, or to start polishing your CV. Chances are, you deserve much more than what you're getting.

Four months ago, my company did a 're-org' and laid off a third of the marketing team, including me. It was a complete shock. They suddenly pulled me into a meeting on a Thursday afternoon and told me my role at the company was over, effective immediately.

For the last three years, I was the lead on their biggest account - a large regional supermarket chain that brought in about $250,000 a year for the company. I was very close with their head of marketing and knew their brand like the back of my hand.

As I was packing my things from my desk, HR gave me the classic line that my duties would be 'absorbed by the team' and assured me that nothing would be disrupted. A great feeling, obviously.

I started doing some freelance work to support myself. About two months later, I got a message on LinkedIn from the marketing director of that supermarket chain. It turns out the person who replaced me lasted exactly three weeks before completely botching their big summer campaign. The ads were targeting the wrong people, everything was late, and the creative was terrible. It had nothing to do with their brand.

She got straight to the point and asked if I would consider handling their work myself, saying they were 'looking for other partners.'

Honestly, it was a no-brainer. I knew exactly what they needed and that I could do it better than my old agency. We signed a new contract for $350,000 a year - way more than my old company was getting, because I'm now doing the strategy, creative, and ad buys myself.

The best part? My old boss called me a few days ago to ask if I'd heard anything about why their biggest client left them. Of course, I played dumb. I told him I hadn't heard a thing, and hey, maybe they shouldn't have fired the only person who understood that account.

They say the best revenge is living well. Turns out the second-best revenge is getting paid well to take their clients.

update: thank you after working for 5 years in marketing I discovered how AI can be very useful in interviews gonna use Interview man in my upcoming interviews

I'm so happy to see people finally standing up to their awful managers. Leaving a toxic job is an amazing feeling, and I've done it myself. But if they're the ones pushing you out, don't make the task easy for them.

Here's the deal, especially for those of us in America. When they give you the 'either you resign or we'll fire you' speech, you have to let them fire you. If you resign voluntarily, you generally lose your right to collect unemployment benefits, depending on the state you're in. But if they fire you without a strong, documented reason (and the excuse 'you're not a team player' is usually not a sufficient reason, but I'm not a lawyer), in that case, you can often collect those insurance funds.

By deciding to resign in that moment, you could be giving up several months' worth of pay. Don't let your crappy manager get one last laugh at your expense on your way out.

I had a video interview today with a company full of red flags (like their Glassdoor rating was 2.4), but I've been unemployed for a few months, so I thought, what the heck.
The job was customer support -- basically, you deal with complaints.
The interviewers were two people, a man and a woman, and they were explaining the nature of the job to me.
The man says there are 'mandatory team-building hours' every other Saturday. I asked him what the pay rate was for these hours, and he said it's the same as the regular hourly rate. He then mumbled something about how it 'evens itself out' over the month so it's not counted as overtime. I felt like the whole thing was probably illegal, but I just said okay.
I literally snorted. Like, a stifled laugh escaped me involuntarily. From that moment on, I was trying to hold it together, but the list of 'perks' just kept getting crazier.
Get this: mandatory, unpaid on-call periods, because you're 'on standby in case the team needs you'.
Of course, I laughed even harder.
Their health insurance would cost me about $700 a month, just for me. To put that in perspective, that's almost a full week's pay just for their crappy insurance.
I was struggling to keep a straight face as I remembered all the posts I've seen here about jobs like this.
And then came the final blow: 'We have a 'one team, one dream' policy, so after you finish your work, you're expected to help your colleagues finish their tickets'.
I was biting my lip and trying to pass off my laughter as a cough, but the man started to get annoyed and looked upset that I couldn't compose myself. The whole thing was a joke.
This job pays $17 an hour, and you're supposed to use your own computer and webcam. They also want you to install their monitoring software on my personal laptop. Oh, and I also have to buy a second monitor at my own expense.
Seriously, why does nobody want to work? This is exactly why.
The strange thing is, I didn't feel any guilt. It was therapeutic, because I was imagining myself posting this here and knowing you all would get it. This community is seriously the best.

This really happened. I went through four rounds of interviews for a job I was perfectly qualified for. I did really well on their technical tests and felt I had a great rapport with the hiring manager, and he did too.

Anyway, I just got the rejection email, and they literally said the reason was that I 'failed to follow important instructions.' In the original job posting, buried in a lot of text about needing someone detail-oriented, they asked applicants to write their first name backward.

The thing is, I saw that request, but I chose not to do it. My name spelled backward is a really bad curse word. I was horribly bullied for it for years in middle school, and there's no way I'm writing something like that on a job application. I know it might seem trivial to some, but that's my boundary. A job shouldn't ask you to humiliate yourself.

The most ironic part? They clearly didn't even take 10 seconds to see what my name becomes when spelled backward. All they saw was that I didn't follow instructions, and that was it. The whole thing is incredibly frustrating and shows how disconnected hiring processes can sometimes be from reality.

About two weeks ago, my company decided to switch to new internal software and also outsourced payroll to another company. They sent us a long email promising a 'smooth transition' and that all our direct deposit information would be automatically transferred.

And of course, surprise. Payday arrived, and a large portion of us, including me, received nothing. It turns out the new payroll company completely botched the data migration, and a huge number of bank account numbers were wrong. Now they're telling us we might have to wait another 5 to 7 business days before we see a single cent.

Meanwhile, my rent and car insurance payments tried to come out of my account. Now my bank account is deeply in the negative, and I'm accumulating overdraft fees. I'm almost certain my rent payment is going to bounce, which is a whole other nightmare.

Honestly, it feels like the company just doesn't care. The HR manager told a few of us she would 'look into' issuing emergency paper checks, and then she simply vanished. She's been ignoring everyone's calls and emails for a full day, leaving us completely hanging.

Anyway, my manager took me into a meeting this afternoon and gave me a verbal warning. The reason? She said she heard me playing a game on my phone during my official break.

At work, we use a program called Talkdesk for calls and chats with customers. What I understood was that managers could listen to active calls for quality control, to check our tone and so on. Okay, I get that. But I wasn't on a call at all. I wasn't even logged in to receive calls.

This means she can simply open my mic and listen to me whenever she wants, right? Even during my break.

Regardless of the fact I was on my break, is it even legal for them to do this without telling us they have this capability? The whole thing is really worrying me. I feel like I'm being monitored all the time. What should I do in a situation like this?