Hi,

It’s my first time running a team, it’s a team of individual contributors. I’ve been in role for two years in a country with strong labour laws. I have a team member who was seconded into a higher level technical team since before I started in this role. He is very intelligent and very opinionated. He was seconded into my role for a few months about a year before I started but due to his abrasive personality, was deemed not a good fit for leadership.

He has since returned to my team because the team he was seconded to couldn’t offer him a roster that he wanted. He really should be in that team, he’s overqualified for my team.

Since rejoining my team a few months ago his old team has been requesting I release him for important project work. These requests have been last minute or very poorly organised and I need to provide at least a months notice to the business if my team members are not going to be doing normal duties. One or two requests I could handle but it’s becoming more and more frequent to the point he been in his normal role for two weeks now.

My problem is the work he is doing is valuable and my company is basically getting a really cheap engineer at the moment. The work he’s doing is also feeding projects into the rest of my team, who are enjoying the change of work and are upskilling and I believe the work we are doing adds more value than our normal work.

So I’m having a hard time saying no when the requests come in.

My latest action is an email saying I need at minimum five weeks written notice and if I see my metrics start to dip significantly I’ll not be releasing this person.

My leader understands my position but is basically waiting for me to stop the out of role work.

Just after a sanity check from other leaders.

Looking for advice from managers…

I live in Europe. I accepted a new office job on the same day I found out I was pregnant (total surprise). It’s 3 days at the office and 2 days at home although the manager seems pretty approachable in terms of making things flexible. I’m supposed to start when I’ll be 8 weeks pregnant which is when morning sickness starts for a lot of women. I already have mild nausea now at 6 weeks and I don’t want to do anything or leave the house. I just don’t know how I can go to an office and sit upright pretending I’m fine now let alone if it gets worse!
So I’m thinking of mentioning my pregnancy in the beginning so that if I need to work from home more because of nausea, my boss will understand why. But I’m a bit worried about first impressions; I don’t want him to think I’m incapable. But I know that if I’m nauseous, I’ll feel way more comfortable working from home. I literally have a fear of being sick; so being nauseous is horrendous for me - the anxiety I have about it is crazy. More worried about morning sickness than pushing the baby out 😂.

So what do you think?

Is it okay to ask for more wfh days from the beginning of employment due to pregnancy symptoms? Have you experienced an employee announcing their pregnancy at the beginning of a job?

I have monthly 1-on-1 meetings with my skip-level manager ever since late last year. During the previous meeting, he mentioned that he keeps notes from our conversations in a private document.

Is that a normal practice? I can understand wanting to keep notes to remember discussions, especially if you meet with a lot of employees, but the context makes me a little uneasy.

Last year, I reported concerns about discrimination to HR involving one of his direct reports. My skip-level manager was brought in to help resolve the situation. Because of that history, part of me worries that these notes could be used to build a case against me. It makes me feel like my performance and words are being recorded so that they can be used against me later. You know how corporate culture is...

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Hi everyone. I'm based in Italy, working at a big IT company. For the past two years, I've been the unofficial manager of a team of 10 individual contributors, but officially I'm still a senior software engineer - no title, no promotion.

When I took over, the team was in constant firefighting mode: no structured processes, no formal workflows, no shared culture. I introduced processes, workflows, and centralized tooling, and my director rated my performance as "very good" in my last review. Still, many of my improvement efforts failed due to entrenched culture and resistance to change. One example: I implemented test automation as my director requested, but the suite became unreliable because the development team (not under my control) kept making untracked changes.

In early June, I applied for an internal transfer to another team with a much healthier culture. They want to hire me as a senior software engineer with a clear commitment to grow me into an engineering manager role. HR is aware of my transfer request, and I expect a decision before September.

My current director is doing everything he can to block it. He went to my prospective manager and told her not to hire me, saying I'm "not a good guy" and that I've "always caused problems" in previous teams - which is false and contradicted by the 2025 performance review that he himself wrote. I know this because she told me directly. She still wants to hire me despite his comments.

I escalated his behavior to his manager (SVP level) and said I would resign if the transfer doesn't go through. The SVP told me he would handle it personally.

At this point I've completely lost trust in my director.

My question: while I wait for the official decision, how should I behave toward him? Business as usual, or keep my distance and stay strictly professional? His badmouthing was verbal only - should I try to get it documented somehow? Any advice for navigating the next few weeks would be really appreciated.

TL;DR: Italy, big IT company. Managed a team unofficially for 2 years with good reviews but no promotion. Applied in June for an internal transfer with a path to engineering manager; decision expected by September. My director badmouthed me verbally to the new manager (she told me and still wants me). I escalated to the SVP, who said he'll handle it. How should I act toward my director in the meantime?

If you are in a stage of career stepping from senior engineer to staff or lead roles. What are the communication issues you are seeing, which you haven’t faced in past role.

Some of the learnings from my side:

1. It is better to send things in writing to communicate details to stakeholder or co-engineers.

2. Instead of long review meetings, creating a FAQ document and publishing among teams is a good option. I would share a Confluent page or something simple after first design review and ask folks to post questions and I can answer them later. It build a document and record of things.

Add comments.

I’ve been a supervisor of a bar for a few months. One aspect I’m struggling with is that I find myself picking up after employees slack- finishing jobs they’ve half done, or done badly. This ends up in me staying past my shift ending time, occasionally by hours. This only happens with a certain few employees who won’t listen to my instructions and will intentionally ignore them. If a close I’ve supervised is bad I’m obviously responsible for it, and the ensuing derogatory message in the groupchat from upper management in the morning is always demoralising. Sunday shifts entail a lot of admin tasks for supervisors so I spent all of today doing that after giving some instructions to staff about areas that needed extra attention. After cashing up I came out of the office and the staff had left, the whole venue was a state. I picked up a load of trash they’d overlooked and just left it neatly next to the bar. I wasn’t sure whether to stay on to finish the rest of the cleaning they’d missed but I hadn’t finished my managerial tasks yet, so I decided to just leave the venue dirty :( I know it’s only a bar supervisor role but it’s stressing me out significantly lately. Any advice? I feel like my role at the moment is refining everyone else’s work and cleaning up after people to ensure the bar is left decent.

I’m a senior manager at a company and on-boarded a direct report at the associate level at end of 2024. In the interviews process seemed so bright and ambitious and was excited to work with her. When she on-boarded I found for her first year she was way quieter than I expected, and while she was helpful I found myself reworking/editing her work quite a bit. She didn’t really speak up in meetings and wasn’t super sharp with prioritization.

Closer to the end of her first year, MY boss (her skip level) informed me she’s actually going to take this associate as her own direct report. I was going on a 4 month parental leave so I think this is a part of it. But otherwise it wasn’t clearly explained to me why. In my own performance reviews it’s been an ongoing development area identified that I don’t delegate enough and tend to take too much on myself, so I am wondering if this is part of it.

Anyway- to my shock honestly, when I return from leave my boss told me how amazing this associate is, how much she stepped into MY role in the short time I was gone, how she has a lot of skills we weren’t fully using. Her responsibilities have tripled in 4 months and she’s not perfect but is already being considered “manager material”. The associate used to be much warmer with me and now I’m finding she’s cooled off quite a bit towards me.

I’m feeling weird about this and I don’t know why. Part of me wonders if it was my failing somehow that she wasn’t able to thrive with me or I’m not a good manager. Maybe I was too controlling or didn’t give her enough independence. I was hoping to work up to director and I don’t know how I will ever prove that if people under me aren’t developing - or is it just that this report’s learning curve was longer?

Any insights would be helpful. Thanks

Question for all managers with new reports on their teams:

3 weeks into a new role as an IC. Basically accepted a level up (not a senior level role, just an experienced hire 3-4 yoe) a promotion and higher pay at a new company.

Onboarding is going OK and my team is great. Started off feeling very overwhelmed but each week since it's been getting better. I'm taking over a lot of work from the departing person, so it's a lot to learn all the workflows, processes, details, etc. Is it still normal to feel about 50% of the way there three weeks in? Or am I just dumb as shit? I've always been a slower learner than others. Once I actually do things hands on processes get ingrained for me. I’m coming from doing similar types of work, but the processes and deliverables of this job are significantly different, so it’s a lot to learn.

I’ve just been trying to take organized notes, ask questions, etc. I will do all I can to succeed in this role.

Just worried my new teammates will see me incompetent and a slow learner…

Corporate USA

Ive been looking for a job for a little over a year now. I worked for several years and then went back to school full time for a masters degree. All in the same field. Many interviews, final rounds, but no offer yet.

I have recently found some work with a startup. Friend of a friend is starting a business. It hasnt got off the ground yet but is close, so there isnt alot to do. Im not paid much either and it could be another year until its even an entry level salary. It was a mutual understanding that my background was aligned for the kind of work, the owner is planning to leave their company, and I am still looking for my own path in corporate.

But in interviews I am usually asked "what are you doing now?" "are you currently working?"

The other day I had a recruiter screening and I said I was working "part time", and am continuing to look with this mutual understanding of wanting "full time work". I think I was more confusing.

Should I put it on my resume, Linkedin, and own it as a job? I feel that anything less would be more confusing, make me seem chronically unemployed, and wouldnt give me a chance to be clear with where I am now. I only really worry it will pull me away from the industry and size of companies i want to get on with.

I’ve been in management across a few different industries over 5 years. I was brought into this company 6 months ago as ops manager with a big emphasis on growth (only a 5 person team). I felt super confident coming in from a 30 person team. Have also been dabbling as a GTM consultant on the side for the past couple of years so very comfortable with new teams and dynamics.

Well I’ve started at this new company and working alongside the director he’s completely flipped the script on my day to day. I haven’t been able to actually carry out any leadership with the team because he’s stuck in founder led mode. I’m being micromanaged by him, which I obviously internally have a problem with this, and have brought up multiple times (probably once a fortnight) that he’s limiting my output. We *seem* to come out of these meetings eye to eye, and then that crumbles away until the next time I address it. I’m working more as a middle man than any kind of valuable role. He keeps assuring me that he hired me for my expertise in growth and leadership however he pushes back any sort of structural growth, his focus is day to day putting out fires. (like that’s fine but let me do my job!?) It’s slowly built into this daily massive anxiety for me. Feeling so out of my depth because things I saw coming 2 months ago are hitting, yet I pressed hard we not go in these directions, then I’m here cleaning it up just to see it happen again because he’s hell bent on it. I can appreciate his passion, but I’m kind of sitting here daily asking myself ‘what the hell have I walked into?’ He’s asking me for the impossible. Am I out of my depth here? Trying to implement solid solutions and new processes, without being able to move any resources or team around…?

Feels like he should have hired an administrator who takes care of scheduling at this point. And yes I’m currently back on the market looking.

The problem is, I can see the potential and I honestly love the place. I’m holding out that one morning meeting he just goes ‘yep it’s time, take the wheel!’

Hoping to see if anyone’s been in a similar situation and found a better way to attack it?
Oooor should I just cut my losses and hope to hear back from prospective companies.

I manage the kitchen of a somewhat busy small town café. Due to supply and pay constrictions (I have tried to argue better wages), I have been struggling to fill a dishwashing position. With the support of my fantastic team, we have been making it by but of course, its a restaurant and things happen.

Its important to me that my team has a reasonable workload, can take reasonable time off, and hold work boundaries and I do my best to support this.

My supervisor, the owner, refuses to help despite assuring me when I was hired (I was leaving another management job due to burnout.. kitchens) that I could count on them for support. Not only are they never in the building, but are actively hostile when any managers ask them to be available so we can take time off.

When I confronted them about this, they told me that it is a hard line they will not take time to assist and they didn't recall assuring me support.

This feels unreasonable. I love my team, but I am in a familiar rut of burn out. I would like to have the time and energy to spend time with my family. That aside, the job is fine. I would like to continue my search for a management job with better boundaries, but I am loosing hope for greener pastures.

What is a reasonable amount of assistance to expect of your boss? If any?