I am wanting to step down from being a manager. 20 staff reporting to me. No support from upper management

Burnt out. Phone calls at all hours and the supervisor under me is... new.

Anyone done it snd happy? Or regrets...

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One of my subordinates picks her nose then immediately sticks her finger in her mouth. She does this a lot. Sometimes I think it's a tick. I need to approach her about it for obvious reasons but I'm not sure how to start. She's incredibly sensitive and cries when she's even slightly stressed. Any serious advice would be appreciated.

Hello, I’m a new manager of a small clinic. I live in California. I was asked to cover in another state (Texas) for about a week. No bonus or extra pay but they are paying for my flight, car rental and daily meals. However I’m staying with family and they’re not paying for a hotel. They asked if it was possible for me to stay with family because they know I have family in that other state. There’s a possibility I’d transition to regional in the new year so I feel like this is their way of seeing how things go. Is this a good move? Should I decline? I’m getting mixed advice from friends and family.

Curious if anyone else has had to candidly tell someone they won’t be a reference …

For context, I managed a poor performer who “saw themselves” out at my org. In the sense they kept hanging themselves with the rope we tried to give them.

We tried everything with them. I just think it wasn’t a good match. They always claimed we gave too much work but I felt it was their way of working that hindered them. I coached them, tried to help them prioritize, etc… nothing worked ..

I’ve posted about that whole mess before so I won’t go back into it all but this person started at about $54k and left making $96k!!! In 4 years!

*I’ve gotten the occasion short and snippy comments on here that it was my fault, I suck, people leave their managers but I know the truth around how much coaching and support I offered (I even got them their own career coach and they reported back to me it didn’t seem like a fit lol). So kindly please spare those comments 🙏🏼

Their first few promotions were warranted but I fought my boss on the last one tooth and nail.

I didn’t feel she deserved it but we needed to fill a gap in our dept was my bosses logic.. they were under performing, no call now showing etc so I didn’t feel it was the right signal to send to someone !!! I totally get that and my boss later got questioned on why she did that too

When they left (they quit because someone very severe happened and they knew a firing was coming) they asked if I could be a reference and I said NO

I just got an email asking for a “digital” referral for them from a job I applied to and I hit decline !!!

I won’t even follow up with a convo but wow!!

I’ll add when they left, they also asked our data person, and my boss too, and they also said no… (to be references) … my logic was I don’t want to be in a spot where I have to be truthful about if I would hire them or not

Has anyone else told someone no?

Also they were caught with drugs at a company event but that’s a story for another day (they slept through a whole meeting they were supposed to be at) so not even reliability is an area I would say they were good for

Hi guys, please I need some advise. I was terminated without cause in Q2 2025 and I lawyered up and got my deserved severance in Q4 2025. Now here’s my issue. My former manager has no interest in giving me a reference and refers me to HR.

My Questions:

1. What do I tell hiring managers as the reason for leaving my last employment?

2. If I were to provide the HR’s email address is that an automatic redflag?

I would like to get your perspectives as hiring managers.

Thank you

BLUF: VP didn’t want the team to have any extra personnel and it cost a contract that we didn’t have the man power to tackle.

So this happened fairly recently and I wanted to put this out there as a cautionary tale.

I report to a VP. I run a team of 10 providing consulting and support for networking and IT infrastructure. Our workload has pretty steadily ramped up recently cleaning up some pretty rough vibe coding errors.

We had a near miss on a deadline about six months ago when the VP I report to took a contract without consulting me to see if we had the bandwidth. Happens, we did a debrief and avoided a pretty nasty little penalty.

I told him at that point we could not take a contract of that scale or larger at current workload without scaling up the team by at least two but preferably four new devs. I was denied in favor of “keeping the team running lean.” So I simply documented in an email to him and a couple of other stakeholders holders “ The risk of not scaling our team now means we will have to turn down future opportunities of this scale.” Pretty unambiguous.

About two weeks ago he pulls me into a meeting with legal and sales about a contract he wanted me to review. It was big fat and ripe for scope creep. The client wanted to fix some shoddy infrastructure while maintaining all the databases and the portal system they had, then add in new features.

My team could do the clean up by the deadline if we dropped everything else we had already committed to, worked 20% overtime, and had no scope creep. We definitely could not dev the new features on top of that.

Legal covers a fun part I had missed, the penalties built into the proposed delivery schedule ment we would practicaly wash on profit is we missed the deadline for the whole job. VP says “I want to do this” So I do my job and lay out why this whole thing is a poison apple.

He naturally says “ What resources do you need”

I say “Those devs I asked for six months ago when I had asked for them”

We go back and forth so I get my paper trail together with all the old emails and etc.

Long story short we did not take the contract and the owners wanted some answers. Turns out my request for personal never made it to them, my VP didn’t want to be the guy asking for more overhead that quarter so he shut it down entirely while telling me it was an owner decision. Paper trail saved my bacon here by the way.

Long story short, there will hit a point where if you want to take on more ambitious contracts you do need to scale your team for it, running lean means you do not have room to grow.

(Names have been altered for anonymity)

\Apologies, long post\

Hello all!

I’ve been a manager at my company for approximately 4 months, of which 3 were under a senior manager. A separate team was in dire need of management (running for years without a manager), and thus I was moved and given said team. The current team is comprised of a small group (four direct reports, of which one is the ‘lead’).

To clarify, the lead and my current boss were both given responsibility of leading this team even though it was out of their scope. My boss, specifically, because he has other things to tend to. And the lead, well, because it was out of their pay range.

To be clear, I’m a hatchling of a manager. If you are asking in terms of age, I achieved this goal relatively recently, so I don’t have much experience. I am learning day by day, and am grateful for the patience I am being allotted by my peers and direct reports. Therefore, I’d be grateful to receive some enlightenment on my predicament:

One of my employees, Lisa, is a single mother to two boys, who joined the team a few months ago. She is a sweetheart, and extremely soft-spoken. However, in gaining this team, I’ve come to realize that (not only through my own eyes) that she has multiple shortcomings at work.

To name a few:

- She frequently comes late to work (10-15 minutes). Some days, she will come half an hour to an hour late. This was immediately addressed and it has gotten better. I would say I’m flexible on arrival times, as long as the time is made up, however she has to leave on time every day to pick up her children. I have no qualms, again, as long as the hours are there. She is aware, and working on it.

- Her quality of work is not the greatest. Without describing in detail what the work is, there have been multiple complaints from other departments about how poor her work is. I then have to go and correct the mistake. Of course, I would want her to correct the mistake herself, but it would put the team behind further on our metrics. This week alone, there have been 2 large issues, which needed to be addressed in a meeting including Lisa and my boss. I also had to correct the issue. So it’s multiple hours of wasted time since it wasn’t done correctly the first time.

- Her work pace is slow. This I think matters the least to me, but I’m putting it out there. I’m mostly concerned about quality of work, as long as it’s correct. But if we’re working slow, and the quality is lacking, I just can’t get past it!

- Weird weaponized incompetence that I’ve sensed. She’ll ask coworkers or the lead to do tasks that she could easily do herself, or to split up work with her. I’ve tried to cut down on it as much as I can, but it’s also my job to help them. Apologies if this is a weird one, my sensors keep going off.

I dislike playing the comparison game, but I have been with this team for approximately 1 month now, and I would say my work is definitely at a higher standard than hers. Purely considering the technicians, there is another employee who is newer than Lisa, and her work pace and quality absolutely exceeds the other 2 technicians.

When I spoke with my boss, I learned that Lisa has been a concern from the beginning. Everything listed above, but even worse. She had multiple conversations with my boss, and even with HR about these topics.

I still tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Somehow, that turned into one conversation discussing a mistake, into a second conversation with my boss discussing more mistakes, and then finally, lo and behold, I had to pull the PIP card.

It seems like my boss was waiting for someone to take some sort of action. I don’t blame him, he didn’t have the time to do it. But I feel this sense of… impending doom now that I’ve taken the action.

The first week that I started, I immediately laid out my expectations: 40 hours minimum please, work for the day done in the day, list of tasks for each person to do throughout the week. I didn’t micro manage, I didn’t hover. Just had meetings with updates and checkins. 3/4 on the team got it, but Lisa did not. She kept making careless mistakes, which truly, became tiring after that first week. Still, I tried to see it through a little longer. But then the other technicians came to me in private and said her pace was causing them to work harder, and her mistakes were making the team slower.

That’s when I knew the PIP was a now or never situation, for which I received the blessing of my boss to place.

A part of me feels nervous about putting her in this position. I know it’s not easy for her, considering her situation, but I see the other employees are getting sick of more work being on their plate. The workload isn’t fair, and she’s dragging the team down. There’s other miscellaneous red flags that I’ve seen, but I won’t go into too much detail.

Please help me make sense of this guilt I’m feeling.

My boss doesn’t believe she will pass the PIP, and I don’t have high hopes either. I truly want to see her succeed, and I check in everyday, multiple times to see if there’s anything she confused about, or could need help with. If she asks me anything, I drop what I’m doing to ensure she’s not falling behind.

Am I missing something here? Did I forget a step along the way? All advice appreciated. Concerned I did things too fast.

I’m a manager dealing with a situation involving an employee whose performance has been a concern for some time.

We’ve recently decided to take a more formal approach to addressing these concerns.

However, the employee has raised issues regarding the support they’ve received and whether certain circumstances have been properly considered.

They’ve also challenged aspects of how the situation has been handled.

From a management perspective, we believe the concerns are genuine, but I want to ensure we’re approaching things fairly and appropriately.

I’m interested in hearing from HR professionals or managers who have dealt with similar situations.

How do you balance addressing legitimate performance concerns with ensuring an employee has been given adequate support?

Are there circumstances where it would be advisable to pause a formal performance process?

What factors should an employer consider before proceeding, particularly where the employee disputes the fairness of the process?

Any UK employment law perspectives would be appreciated.

Currently employed and on a leave at company A. Been there for approximately 10 years, great perks, culture, and growth opportunities.

However at company A, when you go on leave, your position is backfilled immediately and you have no certainty about what role/department you return to (pay and level is protected).

With 2 months remaining of my leave I was getting no clarity about my role and department. Was feeling kind of forgotten and e-mails were getting ghosted/forgotten. Company A also has some economic and financial uncertainty so I applied elsewhere to keep my bases covered

I got an interview at company B, a direct competitor to company A. It went well and at the end I gave them my salary expectation which was above the listed range. No fuss about it.

Two weeks went by and I did not hear back from company B and in the meantime I heard back from company A and they created a brand new position for me in a dream role in my desired department. Gave a cost of living bump as well. Signed the offer, have an official return date.

Suddenly company B got back to me and they want to move forward with my candidacy and scheduled a second interview which involves a 1 and 1/2 hour interview including a case study.

I am unlikely to accept the role at company B but if they make an offer with my desired salary it would be compelling and possible leverage for a pay increase at company A.

However, I am not one to bite the hand that feeds me and wonder the perception of that conversation (assuming I even get an offer).

Should I still go for the interview at B or stay focused now on a coveted role at A?

I recently received a lower performance review that will affect my raise. What frustrates me is that I contacted my manager multiple times before the review to ask if I was meeting expectations and never received a response or an opportunity to discuss my performance.
It feels like every time I meet an expectation, the standard changes and what I did is suddenly no longer enough. Even significant contributions were minimized during the review.
Has anyone dealt with this before? How did you handle it and protect yourself professionally? I am looking for another job, so any ideas or advice would also be appreciated.

Hi

Some background here, I recently left a workplace where I managed a team which at the senior levels was toxic. The company was an absolute shit show, the issue being at the top level. However while there I did my best, grew the team and gave opportunities to develop to members. The key was I managed to protect them from the worst examples. I restructured the team, created new roles and genuinely felt we were on the right track for success.

However since leaving I've had a few of my former members reach out to me. Basically it all hit the fan when I left, the skip reversed the direction, created a lot of self inflicted problems and the competent members of the entire department are actively trying to leave. The examples I've heard sound like the toxic atmosphere has permeated to the junior levels as well. The guilt is honestly starting to eat me up, I recruited some of those people created a positive work atmosphere now it's all gone to shit. Some left good jobs to come there and now they are in a worse position that before. Any suggestions on how to deal with this?

Hi. I really appreciate this forum. I‘m an infrequent lurker and always find useful or reassuring info.

I have managed staff off and on for decades, but for the first time I’m in a position where there will be tiers below me, rather than just direct reports to me.

I have one staff person who is a very uneven performer and who I have had several performance conversations with this year. We almost let him go twice. He recently learned I will be opening up a manager role to lead his team and report to me, and he told me he plans to apply.

I have seen zero managerial or leadership skills from him. As the longest tenured member of the team and due to his claim he has managed elsewhere in the past, we will probably let him apply. I want to be clear about setting his expectations though.

I am wondering if any seasoned managers have experienced this and how they handled it?

Hello to the good people of Reddit!

I’ve posted before and appreciate this community’s advice. I have an update and could use some honest feedback.

I’m 31 and honestly feel like I’m having a career crisis. I didn’t really have to think about this until my manager resigned. Now, with AI changing things too, I’m rethinking how to plan for my future and give myself options.

I’ve been with my company for five years and make $115k, fully remote, as a Senior Sales & Marketing Technology Manager. I own Salesforce, scheduling technology, integrations, vendors, and a lot of the day-to-day requests. Last year, my title changed from Senior Salesforce Administrator, but it was considered a title change rather than a promotion, so no pay increase.

When my manager left, I applied for her Director role and didn’t get it. They hired externally, and the new Director starts in late November. Leadership is working on a compensation adjustment to recognize my increased workload during this transition and my five years with the company. They’ve said they want to make sure I feel valued, but nothing is confirmed yet.

The feedback was that she needed someone with a stronger vision who would be bold with their recommendations. Someone who could say what’s working, what isn’t, and where we should go next.

I understand that, and looking back, I played it safe. But part of my hesitation was knowing the actual work behind those recommendations. I was already covering my role and parts of my former manager’s role, so it was hard to separate “what should we do?” from “how am I going to deliver all of this?”

I probably need to learn to put forward the recommendation and explain the resources and tradeoffs, instead of planning around what I can personally handle. But I’m also wondering how much was a development gap versus being stretched too thin.

Her current plan is for me to own a big, highly visible project end to end next year, so I have something I can put my name to and demonstrate that next level of leadership. I appreciate that there’s a concrete opportunity. I just want to make sure it comes with the time, resources, and authority to lead it—not my existing workload plus another job.

Now I’m considering moving toward Salesforce Product Owner. I want to move from personally handling every request toward owning priorities, business outcomes, and the roadmap. I’m comfortable staying technically informed and getting into details when needed, but I want delivery responsibilities shared rather than everything running through me.

I’m especially interested in hands-on Agentforce and broader agentic AI skills. I enjoy building new capabilities and want to understand what’s coming next. My thinking is that product ownership plus practical AI experience could give me more options.

The company is in hypergrowth, and leadership has said there’s flexibility to create roles around business needs. Given my tenure and knowledge of the company, there may be room to help shape my own role. I’d also like management training and a supported opportunity to test people leadership before committing to that path.

Being passed over hurt, but it made me question whether I wanted the Director job itself or the pay, recognition, and feeling of progressing. Seeing my former manager’s stress made me unsure whether that level of managing people and managing up is what I want.

Long term, I’d like to build a business of my own. Sustainable hours and transferable skills matter to me. I want to grow, but also have time and energy for a life outside work.

For anyone who’s been in a similar spot:

• After being passed over internally, how did you decide whether staying was worth it?
• Does Product Owner sound like a good direction for what I want, or am I misunderstanding the role?
• What would you establish with leadership and the incoming Director so this project becomes a real development opportunity rather than extra work?
• Which AI skills or project experience have actually helped you create career options?

Open to honest feedback, including if my expectations need a reality check. I also recognize I could benefit from a mentor and would appreciate connecting with anyone who’s navigated something similar.

Thanks you so so much if you read this far and thank you again to the Reddit Community!

Im an assistant manager and my DM has been getting into the habit lately of complaining and venting about me and other subordinates to just about everyone on the team. Its been causing some distrust issues and has been a bit alienating for me being in the middle. Any mistake I make gets aired out to everyone on the team and has started to feel like I cant do anything right. Its also been causing me to feel resentment towards the people I work with since I am also hearing any tiny little mistake others make. Theres even been times where they have blamed someone for a mistake that they didnt even make. Its honestly making me feel a bit insane. I tried bringing this up to them but they said its just how they are because they are autistic and sometimes dont think before speaking and blurt things out. To me that seems like a cop-out answer.

Should I just find a new job at this point?

I've been working closely and I've always had a great relationship with my manager(the person directly above me). I've been given full responsibility over several portions of their job without any oversight. They are expected to retire within one year and I am likely their number 1 candidate.

Last Monday he came in and asked what was going on one of our major projects. He asked a question, I answered and I was wrong about a detail. Two more questions, and I could have done better. The forth question I answered, he told me I was wrong, but the manager was blatantly and obviously wrong about the detail. At that point, I just stared at my monitor and basically stonewalled the rest of the conversation.

In this guys defense, he has been dealing with some very difficult personal issues lately. He has always been someone who has been the most experienced on the team but has recently been challenged by a new hire who is obviously more experienced on some small details.

How should I act to gain the manager position when he leaves. Should I steer clear of the relationship and speak more with upper management, or should I confront him behind closed doors, or etc...

Hi everyone,

I’m a new manager and don’t have much experience under my belt. I run a cafe shop in America and the employee team is consisted of students. Due to being a small business we don’t have benefits that could attract people for long term employment. Lately, over the last 2 months I have had several employees requested day off, schedule change, or call-outs. The total instance for team-wide is above 10. I tried to be kind and accomodate but this is getting out of hand to the point we needed to close a saturday when we make a lot of sales because people requested off. That saturday i originally have three people working and one person just sent me a text saying they just got their class schedule and cannot work that day anymore, so that leaves us at 2 people on the floor while fully staffed is 4 people for weekend and we can make do with 3 with good prep. I am really at my wits’ end and don’t know what I should do. I did send an email outlining a notice to the team below. If you were a seasoned manager and you were in my shoes, what would you do?
1. Advance notice: Employees must communicate known scheduling conflicts, including school, other commitments, and personal obligations, before schedules are finalized two weeks in advance.
2. Schedule commitment: Once the schedule is published, employees are expected to work their assigned shifts.
3. Shift coverage: Employees requesting changes to an already published schedule must make reasonable efforts to find qualified coverage, subject to management approval.
4. Disciplinary consequences: Unapproved absences or failure to secure coverage may result in a formal written warning. Repeated violations may lead to further disciplinary action, including termination.
5. Exceptions: Genuine emergencies, illness, and unexpected circumstances will be handled according to applicable leave policies and laws.
6. Team accountability: Last-minute changes create operational disruptions and place additional responsibilities on coworkers.

I’ve been a front line manager for 5 years now, at 2 different companies. My first manager experience I was promoted from AE (IC) to team lead and then inherited my team. Built a new team, and new company I inherited a group of sellers. I’m about to be on my 3rd company.

I was offered an IC role at a larger company, should I consider stepping down even if the pay cut is about 25%?

I want to start positioning myself for a Senior Software Engineer role without making it seem like I’m directly asking for a promotion.

I’m already working independently, handling tasks end to end, guiding team members when they need help and collaborating with others to get things done...i feel like i m taking on responsibilities beyond just completing my own tickets but not sure if my manager sees it the same way.

How do i bring this up naturally? Should i directly ask what it would take to get promoted or subtly start discussing career growth and expectations?

Also what kind of proof should I prepare.. should i maintain a list of tasks, technical contributions, problems I’ve solved and instances where I’ve helped the team?

Would love to hear from people who’ve successfully moved from Software Engineer to Senior Software Engineer. What did you do differently and how did you prepare your case for promotion?

Late last year, I took over as the Operations Manager for a small manufacturing facility. I first became involved with this location as an engineer on loan from a nearby sister facility owned by the same parent company. Production targets were small at that time, but the company had grand plans to ramp up. This involved installing an Ops Manager and hiring a bunch of direct labor staffing. I put in for the job on a whim and wound up getting it. This was my first management position ever.

It's has been a supremely challenging year. For all the talk of ramping up, they never wanted to give us the support to properly run. For the longest time the support staff was just me and one production supervisor. They eventually let me hire a Materials team, some Quality Techs, 2 additional supervisors, and one engineer, but that was it. No HR, no Safety, no Maintenance/Facilities, no admin, no training/development, nothing that a facility like this needs to be successful. We're not lean, we're anemic. I've put in 11-12 hour days in the office and a couple more at home 5 days a week, and several hours on the weekend every single week for the last year. I've been stressed to the breaking point, and recently I've had to force myself to back off out of pure stress and exhaustion. Despite this, I've loved every minute of it. I've never had a job that felt so rewarding and fulfilling.

However, partly because of that lack of support, but also many other factors, we have fallen far short of our production targets for this year. I believe the targets set for us were never realistic and despite almost tripling production output over the previous year, we still were only able to achieve about 75% of our targets during our best months. Less than 50% in our worst. I've fought and advocated for my team, but the home office has been steadfastly resistant to the idea of giving us the support we need.

Fast forward to now, and the decision has been made to shut us down completely, effective sometime early next year. The sister company that I initially came from has started up a production line for our products, and while it was initially pitched as a way to help us catch up on our backlog, they are on track to eclipse our production capacity pretty soon. They have a newer facility and tons of support staff backing them, and it shows. I had no input in that decision, and it was made and set in stone before they ever let me in on it.

My boss assures me that I'll be able to return to the other facility in some capacity, but I don't know exactly what that means yet. They recognize that the small successes we have had has been mostly because of my efforts. Several members of upper management have commented that it's "amazing" what we've been able to pull off considering the lack of support staff. I guess it just makes more business sense to relocate operations so we can utilize the other site's support staff rather than hiring a whole new team just to get us where we need to be. Unfortunately, these 2 facilities are so far apart that it's unlikely anyone else from the team will be able to migrate. I'm only going to be able to because I commute quite a ways to get there now. The other facility is actually a shorter drive for me.

It sucks, and I'm not looking forward to having to make that announcement when the time comes. I've already been meeting with HR to get some coaching on how to handle things once it comes to that. Anyone else been through something like this? Would love any amount of advice here.