I have a manager who, whenever I make a mistake on a task, or something happens like me arriving late, tells me that my “punishment” is to buy him coffee.

For context, I’ve been late 3 times in the past 2 weeks because of heavy traffic. I understand that being late is my responsibility and that there should be consequences or at least something in place to make sure I don’t fall into the same routine. I’m not trying to avoid accountability.

The first few times, I honestly saw the coffee thing as a bit of a joke and thought, “Okay, I messed up, fair enough.” But now it seems like every time I make a mistake or something goes wrong, I’m expected to buy him coffee.

At this point, I’m starting to feel like it’s getting too far. Mistakes are going to happen at work, and while I understand being held accountable, buying my manager coffee every single time feels pretty strange to me.

What do you guys think? Is this just harmless workplace banter/punishment, or is my manager crossing a line?

Its a maroon chair at the end of the row by the window. Everything else on our floor is the same black mesh thing chair which broke its wheel after someday but this one is older and softer chair in the building and it has been empty for as long as anyone can know.

We hired a guy in august and in his second day he wheeled it over to a standup because it was closer. Literally 3 people said not that one at the exact same time. It was soo immediate. He put it back and later asked me what that was about and i realized i had no answer.

I been saying not that one for months without ever asking whyyy The longest person on our floor joined in 2019 She says the rule was already in place, and that she was told it was someones chair but she doesnt know whose. She asked once and got the sense she shouldnt ask again.

There is also a joke and i can't tell how much of a joke it is. Mostly will tell you its haunted in different tones.

Our office manager has been here 15 straight feakin years. I finally asked him YESTERDAY and he said who told you to ask about that and dont ever ask this infront of our boss ever and i said nobody and he said okay and went to work.

I FEEL LIKE IM IN A MYSTERY THRILLER SHOW NOW

Hi Everyone,

So I have been at my current job for nearly two years and it's time to move on. Leadership is beyond toxic and in this role I have felt gaslit, manipulated and had inflation of fault to a ridiculous degree. I even had to take an FMLA to deal with the mental health issues that this job has caused me. But I have been here two years. I have no reason to believe that either of my bosses would give me a good reference so...

In all realism, should I rage quit or two week them? Reasoned, non-visceral responses would be great!

​I work in East Asia, in a country classified as a developed nation. This barbaric culture isn’t unique to one specific workplace—it is widespread. The following anecdotes are based on real, reported cases.

​First, in the public sector, even if someone submits an utterly ridiculous complaint, you must answer them politely and cannot refuse. A parent complained to a teacher asking why children were allowed to play sports in the sun, arguing that sunlight is a carcinogen. The teacher had to write a formal response explaining the situation and report it to superiors. Even completely useless information must be investigated and provided if requested through Freedom of Information laws. Information regarding the specific brands and manufacturers of pens used at city hall isn't digitized, but if a citizen asks about it, staff must manually investigate each item, digitize the data, and provide it. Inmates in prisons, simply to harass corrections officers, demand data on the country of origin, price, and animal welfare certification of all ingredients used in prison meals over the past year. It is a complete waste of time, yet there is no legal basis to deny these requests.

​Second, greeting your superiors in the morning is strictly mandatory. Failing to do so is considered disrespectful. Even if a boss intentionally ignores your greeting to humiliate you, you must still greet them. Otherwise, you are considered rude. One boss told a secretary, "Even if I don't respond to your greeting, you still have to do your job. That's your duty."

​Third, those with management authority privately infringe upon employees' personal lives. Late at night, while drinking with executives from partner companies, a manager makes a bet. He calls a subordinate and tells them to come to the venue. When the subordinate arrives, the manager chuckles and boasts, "See? My subordinate was the fastest. Your staff lacks loyalty."

​Fourth, abusive and insulting remarks are made all too casually. Recently, a woman made a joke to an intern, asking, "Did you grow up poor?" When the intern turned red and couldn't hide their distress, she blamed the intern, saying, "You lack the basic fundamentals for professional life." No matter how insulting a superior's words are, employees are expected not to get visibly upset and instead just laugh it off.

​Fifth, job training is superficial, yet accountability is immense. When employees ask superiors about work procedures, they are told, "You should figure that out yourself—don't you even have that level of competence?" But when a problem occurs, they are blamed with, "Why didn't you ask before acting?"

​Sixth, large corporations exploit small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and subcontractors. They schedule meetings under the guise of an "idea workshop" or potential deal, only to launch a product identical to that idea a few months later. The SME eventually goes bankrupt while fighting a legal battle. If an issue arises with deliveries from subcontractors, executives from large firms call in the bosses of those subcontracting companies and make them stand in the hallway. These owners in their 50s and 60s are forced to endure the humiliating stares of 20-something and 30-something employees walking past.

This happened a few years ago but I still reflect back on it.

So I used to work as a junior engineer for a large engineering firm. This firm had over 1000 employees across 100 or so offices. One day, the head of IT tells us to immediately turn off our computers.

Apparently, a scammer had hacked our entire data base and would not release it back to us until an undisclosed ransom was paid. For two weeks, we were paid to basically stay home and read up on company material offline. Finally we were told that the ransom had been paid and the IT team would be going over everything to ensure everything was in working order.

Not sure how much was paid but less than a year after that, people started to be let go. Most were receptionists or lower admin level employees but soon, CAD drafter and designers were being let go. Since I was a junior engineer in a specialized trade, I thought my job was safe.

Well one day I get a Teams invite from my office manager (who I never interacted with much) and he said that they were letting me go. I was upset but later found out more than 70% of my team was laid off and we suspected it had to do with the firm trying to salvage money after the hacking incident.

What made it worse was it was never disclosed who caused the security breach. I mean I guess that isn’t my knowledge to have but still, it’s never fun when you’re let go due to someone else’s actions.

Any thoughts or similar experiences?

Today I finally mentioned to management about an issue thats been ongoing.

A co worker (ex friend now obviously), yanked my seat out from behind me whilst sitting (my bottom was literally on the edge as I was leaned in looking at my screen). I almost fell but quickly caught myself. He tried to pass it off as a joke but I made clear it wasn’t a joke and I didn’t take it as one.

This came the day after I addressed him about taking over work that was mine (marketing / sales / higher commission type thing).

I told him many times I didn’t like how he behaved - in the moment and after. No apology. Instead he started behaving strangely, theres like 4 of us on our team, he’d greet each of our team mates Individually with all 4 of us sat there and skip me each time. During this time he could have apologised, obviously was not sorry. After a week of this I tried approaching him again one on one to resolve the issue (should’ve been him but tried to be the bigger person). He wasn’t really interested in discussing how he acted and when he did kind of apologise, it was more of a “fine, whatever“ type apology.

After the 2nd attempt to resolve I tried to let things naturally cool down but he continued the obvious isolating.

There were other stuff too in between but I raised the main aggression issue. The managers did nothing.

He came out of his meeting with management practically singing. Later on during the day he was singing and chatting with people so normally it was clear he didn’t even get slap on the wrist. He was in a better mood after his meeting than after.

I shared a lot of specific details in my complaint with dates, times examples of hostile behaviour and then obviously the out right physical aggression which they barely read. The manager herself told me she didn’t read it entirely before she spoke to me.

im so disappointed and embarrassed that I even said anything as it was bothering me but I was worried about retaliation and stigma of reporting around the office. I told them this, I don’t think they cared.

I requested an informal approach / said I didn’t want anything to happen to his job, just accountability. Not even a full read of why I was reporting.

I feel terrible and like I was better off not reporting.

Edit: Left out our ages, I’m a late 20s F he’s a mid 20s male.

I recently joined what is objectively a great company—one that I worked really hard to get into. But I am struggling to adjust in a way that feels extreme and honestly scary.

I wake up with intense dread almost every day. My heart sinks at the thought of opening my laptop, my chest feels heavy, and I sometimes start crying before work has even begun. I cry almost every day now. Even on WFH days, just knowing I have to log in makes me anxious.

The workplace itself is stressful and can be toxic in some ways. Other people feel the pressure too, but they seem able to cope and continue functioning. I feel completely consumed by it.

This isn't my first job. My previous job wasn't toxic—it had stressful and bad days, but I could manage and recover. This feels completely different.

I also moved far away for this job and don't have much of a support system here yet. I find myself constantly waiting for my parents to visit or for the next time I can go back home.

I'm already in therapy and seeking other support, but I feel like this job is sucking the life and zest out of me. The strange part is that once I actually start working, I can sometimes enjoy the work. It's the anticipation, emails, expectations, and constant pressure that seem unbearable.

I've decided I probably cannot continue. I was nervous about how a roughly six-month stint would look on my resume, but I don't have financial responsibilities that would trap me here, and I have enough family support to go back home if needed. At this point, staying feels like it's taking away too much from me.

But what is actually happening? Is this burnout? Anxiety? Have I become conditioned to fear work itself? And the question that scares me most: are all workplaces eventually like this, or is this particular situation just not sustainable for me?

Has anyone experienced something similar—where you feel intense dread and physical anxiety before anything at work has even happened?

TL;DR: I moved to Bangalore for a great job I worked hard to get, but within a few months I've developed extreme dread around work—I cry almost every day, feel anxious and physically unwell before even opening my laptop, and feel like the job is sucking the life out of me. I'm already in therapy, but I'm considering quitting despite worrying about how a six-month stint will look on my resume. Is this extreme burnout/anxiety, or do all jobs eventually feel this unbearable?

I’m sharing this reflection because I think it may resonate with some of the comments I’ve been reading here. If nothing else, those of you who are struggling with your careers right now are not alone. Some of us have been carrying this around for a while.

I’ve been thinking about why I’ve been so unhappy about my career lately, and I think I finally have a word for what is missing.

Compounding.

I’ve been in professional life for about 25 years. I never expected some perfect upward trajectory, and I certainly didn’t think anything was guaranteed. But I did expect the years to add up to something.

I expected experience to compound.

I started in accounting. I worked for one of the largest public accounting firms in New Jersey, with a good reputation and a large client base. It was the sort of place where people didn’t get laid off.

Then 2008 happened.

The auto industry collapsed, dealerships closed, and our firm had a huge automobile-dealership practice. Suddenly people were being laid off. It seemed like practically everyone under 30 was gone, including me.

And then something happened that I never forgot. I approached people I knew—including clients I had actually worked with—and some treated the layoff itself as evidence that I must have done something wrong.

“Good accountants don’t get laid off from that firm.”

I had followed the respectable path and discovered that not only could the path disappear, but people could blame you for being standing on it when it did.

What saved me was that I knew how to write code.

That became a second career.

And I don’t mean that I simply became a programmer. Over the years I learned software, systems, infrastructure, cloud, networking, security and architecture. I became deeply involved in what eventually got called DevSecOps.

DevSecOps had its moment as an industry fad, but the underlying work never stopped mattering. Software still has to be built, secured and deployed. Infrastructure has to work. Identity has to work. Networks have to work. Kubernetes has to work. Certificates have to work. Build and deployment systems have to work. And somebody has to understand how all those things interact when they inevitably don’t work.

I became very good at that.

But here’s the part I’ve been struggling to articulate: after 25 years, I expected being very good at something difficult to change my relationship with work.

I expected some compounding.

I expected that eventually I wouldn’t have to prove myself from scratch every time I walked into another organization. I expected my judgment to carry more weight. I expected more autonomy. I expected to be able to choose problems worth solving rather than constantly auditioning for the privilege of solving somebody else’s problems.

And yes, I expected some respect.

Not deference. Not a corner office. Not people telling me how brilliant I am.

Just the ordinary professional respect that I thought came from spending decades learning a field and becoming genuinely good at it.

Instead, my career has repeatedly reset.

Layoff. Acquisition. Reorganization. New client. New management. New technology. New hiring fashion. New set of people who have no idea what I’ve done before and aren’t particularly interested in finding out.

Start again.

Prove it again.

And now we have AI.

Once again I’m being told, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that the sensible response is to reinvent myself.

Learn everything about AI. Learn the models. Learn agents. Learn the frameworks. Build things on my own time. Establish expertise before anyone will pay me for that expertise. Predict which technologies will matter five years from now.

Become the AI God.

And I don’t want to do it.

I’m perfectly willing to learn AI where it helps me solve real problems. That’s what I’ve done with technology my entire career.

What I’m no longer willing to do is assume all the risk of another professional reinvention in the hope that maybe, this time, the investment will compound.

That’s the part I’m unhappy about.

I thought that by this point in my life I would have accumulated some professional capital. I thought 25 years of experience would give me more freedom, more credibility and more control over what I did next.

Instead, I often feel as though I’m standing at the beginning of another career transition being told to start running.

And right now, I don’t know how to solve that.

But perhaps recognizing the actual problem is useful.

I don’t need to become the AI God. I don’t need another frantic reinvention. And I don’t need to pretend that I’m excited about starting over.

What I need is a way for what I’ve already learned and already done to matter in whatever comes next.

I don’t know what that looks like yet.

But that’s a much more hopeful question to me than asking what I need to become next in order to remain employable.

I hope i'm posting in the right sub.

I work a job in construction, so the way my day to day operation works is different. For starters, the jobsite varies almost daily, so my boss texts us employees the morning of to tell us where we ought to go. This has been the established pattern since the day I started (I am now 3 months in).

So now to the weird bit. Lately I haven't been getting the texts, and when I have​ (repeatedly) called and texted my boss, he tells me no work today, and that he plans on calling me about it. Spoiler, he hasn't called back. Its been about a week now, and I haven't been paid since the app (with built in tracker) that we use to clock in requires us to be in established work zones to successfully clock in. I've read that this may qualify as "constructive dismissal", but I've also read that those cases are very hard to win, and very stressful to endure. What are my options here?

Edit 2: this isn't a thesis on how we most bestest ever fix the world, this is me saying I think it's unacceptable to expect people to work such a huge amount

Edit 1: it seems like people read the first sentence and then go 'oh my god you want to work no hours and be poor? What an idiot', I'm saying I want time to be a person instead of a robot for a company who hates me

I preach a 4 day work week, 4-5 hours of work a day with a break

And I believe that stuff because I think work should be a job, a thing you do during a part of the day to contribute and get your contribution points (money) and not a thing you do all day every day to a point it basically becomes your life

Nothing even comes close to competing with work, time dedication wise, nothing in my life and I'd bet your lives comes close to feeling like a thing that starts on Monday and ends on Friday

And when I try to convey that to people sometimes they act weird like how can I even comprehend having significant time to live my life when I could be at work doing work

I got lucky and I have my dream job and I really like it, that doesn't mean I have lots of time to work on my own projects, I'm too busy spending lots of time working on other people's projects

What is the problem with wanting to work an amount that lets me have plentiful time to live my life. I've only got like 40 or 50 years left, 20 or 30 good ones at that, why is it unreasonable to want the amount of money I get currently or maybe even more because shits expensive and time to live those 20-30 good years the way I want?

Long edit 3: I like my job, I have a very good job, I got lucky enough to get exactly the job I've always wanted, what I'd also like is to have time outside of work, plenty of time, to do whatever I want, instead of just a few burnt out hours before bed and a couple days on the weekend, I think everyone should be able to have that too, I think it should be completely normal to have plenty of time to do whatever you want with instead of dedicating most of your good hours to a never ending workload

Long edit 4: It seems some people think living life is scrolling TikTok, not sure what kind of sad life some people are living but for me it's working on my tech hobbies. For example I recently installed solar on a camper van, it took me about 3 months to figure out because I had nearly no time outside of work to figure it out all

Long edit 5: 'where does the money come from?' #notathesis but off the top of my head, middle managers and CEOs make so much insane amounts of money you couldn't even fathom it, and they do nothing. Give people time to be people outside of work and stop paying useless people to be useless instead pay people the money they deserve for sacrificing their limited time alive

Long edit 6: still not a thesis but important, I realized people don't know this, most jobs don't need to be done for 40 hours a week, I don't want to go from 50k 40hpw to 100k 20hpw, I want to go from 50k 40hpw to 50k 20hpw, the poor corporate company I work for won't suddenly have to double all wages and hire twice the people, they'll hire a few extra people for vital jobs and everyone moves to 20 hours

Long edit 7: The 40 out of 165 hours thing is dumb, you don't have 165 good energetic hours to do stuff outside of the 40 you spend at work, in reality you spend most of the good energetic hours at work every day, go home, if you're not tired yet then well done that's great for you, my job is extremely draining so I'm usually not very energetic, then you do chores and go to bed, you really only have 14 good energetic free hours on the weekend during the day when you can go and do whatever you want. When I say you spend your life at work I mean your good, healthy, energetic, waking hours, and if you disagree I'd love to know which employer is hiring people specifically during hours were they're allowed to be tired and not really feeling like doing anything (night shift doesn't count, you're expected to make your good, healthy, energetic waking hours available at night instead of during the day)

Less relevant and some final thoughts edit 8: Some people make it seem really important that I know how ultra lazy and poor I must be for daring to want more time to myself, just so you all know I am pretty well off not poor but sometimes paycheck to paycheck, I still have enough money for stuff, I have time for projects and seeing friends, I just think it's crazy to spend most of my good healthy waking hours at a job and I think it's even crazier to defend it

By making this post I wanted to know why it's bad to want more free time for myself because my co-workers have never given me a single good reason, so far I've found out it's bad because I'm unmotivated, lazy, have poor time management, spend too long playing video games and because I must be a child - these are not reasons why wanting more time to myself is bad these are poor observations people who have been manipulated by corporations make when they read anything insinuating anything under a 40 hour work week, like it's impossible and completely unreasonable. The only good answers I've gotten is the obvious one, it's bad for shareholders and goes against the corporate slop brainwashing. Otherwise it's people agreeing with me

Edit 9: ridandelous posted probably the best comment on the thread, basically mentioning how much of a positive impact people having free time makes on communities, her specific example is being able to have a friend babysit their child instead of putting them in a daycare. It's such a great example of free time being a positive thing, having enough free time that you have a community full of bored people would be amazing for society

I work in a factory, night shift. During the fall production slows and they cut this shift.

Some people get transferred to different shifts others get the bucket.

I’m 7 months new, I have one of the more technical positions on the line but I’ve taken 3 weeks off (doc recommendation) due to an ear infection.

Idk if I’ll be transferred or laid off, my company is allowed to give 1 week notice before doing so.

Given my situation, do you believe I’ll be kept or not.

Those who work longs hours mostly sitting at a desk, have you felt like long sedentary lifestyle affects your libido and how you think?

Since I’m in IT even when I’m traveling I need to sit somewhere and work on a laptop and I feel like it’s affecting me both physically and mentally. How was your libido and overall mood before and after long desk job and sedentary lifestyle.

Im welder. I work 40h a week so not too much but god damn this work place made me suicidal after a month of working there. I was going in the bathroom of the job to find way to die. Now it's getting better (not suicidal) but I still wish to get injured at work to have a few days off. I like my job ( welding) but I hate the workplace.

God forbid I was observing how the boss was doing stuff I didn't know how to do instead of "anticipating what to do". God forbid I take 3 second more to do stuff my way ( same results and we were not in a rush) womp womp I cut the plank before making the holes in it.

And it's not like my coworkers are toxic or stuff like this. They are chill asf.

I just needed to vent a bit

A regular Sunday already has a weird countdown feeling. With a long weekend, Monday can get swallowed by the idea of Tuesday, and the contrast between being off and going back seems sharper. What actually helps you use the last day as a day off instead of mentally clocking in early? I’m especially curious whether a small plan for Tuesday helps, or just keeps work in your head.

Theres a coworker who keeps acting like my supervisor telling me what to do and is always rude to me. She singles me out trying to micromanage me and gets mad at me for no reason like when she sees me not working because im not supposed to because ive either clocked out or its not time to clock in yet. Im the only one she does this to. What can i say to advocate for myself the next time she harasses me? I always emotionally shut down and feel bad for something i didnt even do wrong when a stranger gets mad at me

just got the email about their new pricing structure and my jaw dropped. we're paying almost 40% more for the same seats starting next billing cycle. i get inflation and all that but this is getting out of hand.

we're a 12 person sdr team doing mostly outbound to tech companies. need good mobile numbers since email reply rates are trash right now. been testing a few apollo.io alternatives this week - prospeo's mobile data has been solid so far, way better connect rates than what we were getting. also looked at seamless.ai but honestly the reviews scared me off. zoominfo is probably out of our budget which is annoying because my manager keeps asking about it lol.

the lead enrichment on prospeo looks promising too but haven't had time to really dig in yet.

anyone else making moves? what's better than apollo for your team right now? we need to decide by the end of the month before the price hike hits.

What is your average commuting time? Mine is 45 minutes most days from Kentish Town to Streatham. I am getting tired of it and wondering what others find acceptable.

I feel like this is probably the classic supply worker conundrum. Woke up at 6:30, got ready and waited for the call, it’s got to 3pm now and no communication.

pretty frustrating when my consultant has been communicating with me non-stop for the last 2 weeks stating he is going to be needing me Monday-Friday for the first month of school, yet Monday comes and there’s no work for me...

Is it typically this slow at the start of the year? not understanding why he was so adamant on me getting work Monday - Friday the whole first month.

what do I do?

Can she fire me for this? I’m told it is a health hazard because she can’t tell if I’m sick on top of having allergies. I do take medication for it but I still have symptoms. When she told me to go home and that she doesn’t want everyone getting sick, I asked if I could get a doctors note. She just told me again to leave and said I am making everyone uncomfortable.

I have a bad cough and congestion. Without the meds my eyes and throat swell dangerously, so the meds are helping.

I’m a field technician with minimal interaction with my colleagues, I’m in the office for an hour per day and I’m the field alone the rest of the day.

Is this a normal first-job experience, or am I being unreasonable for feeling frustrated?

I recently got my first ever job and at first it seemed really great. It's remote and part-time, which I was really excited about because I don't have much work experience yet. But honestly, I'm starting to feel like I'm being taken advantage of and I want to know if I'm actually being unreasonable.

The pay was originally only $7/hour. I told them I couldn't realistically pay any bills making $7/hour, and after that they increased it to $12/hour. So already, the pay is pretty low considering the amount of work I'm being given.

I try really hard to do everything correctly, but it feels like they constantly find tiny things to criticize and then tell me I'm doing a bad job. The biggest problem is that a lot of the expectations aren't communicated to me beforehand.

There have been multiple times where I'll work on something for hours, only to be told afterward that I wasn't supposed to do it that way or that there was some time limit/rule that I was never told about.

For example, I worked about 3 hours on EACH logo I made for them. I actually tried to be nice about it and only put down 2 hours for each logo instead of the full 3. They then got upset and told me they would only pay me for 1 hour per logo because that's apparently how long the logos were supposed to take.

The problem is that nobody told me beforehand that I only had 1 hour per logo. If I had known that, I obviously would have worked within that limit. Instead, I spent hours working on something and only found out afterward that most of that time wouldn't be paid.

They've also cut down the amount of time I'm allowed to put toward other tasks and will only pay me for 1 hour per task, even if the task actually takes longer.

Another thing that's been really frustrating is communication. A lot of our work communication is supposed to happen through email, but apparently emails aren't consistently reaching people. I had previously been wondering why some of my questions were being ignored, only to find out that my boss and another person I work with weren't even receiving many of my emails. We originally used WhatsApp, but I was told that work communication needed to stay on email, so I'm now stuck trying to communicate through a system that apparently isn't reliably working.

My responsibilities also haven't always been very clear. I've been expected to do things like graphic design, surveys, short-form videos, weekly reminders, and help coordinate a high school initiative, but I feel like I'm still figuring out what exactly they're expecting from me as I go.

And the biggest issue right now: I still haven't received my first paycheck. I've been working there since the beginning of August and it's now September.

I know I'm new to having a job, so I'm wondering if I'm just being overly sensitive or if this is actually an unreasonable way for an employer to treat a new employee.

Am I valid for being frustrated by this, or is this just what having a first job is like?

About a week ago I started studying again part time/remotely in addition to my fulltime job. I only have a high school diploma and I do intend to still get a degree.

I've been avoiding telling my boss about it. Kinda because I don't really know how to, but also because studying is typically seen as a bad thing when you're already working a "real" job, because you might leave soon and/or won't be as committed anymore.

It is true I'm casually looking at other jobs, but they don't need to know that. But I don't feel like I'm suddenly getting worse at this job because of that. Anyway, in relation to looking at other jobs, I've been thinking about for example putting it on my LinkedIn. But my boss can and almost 100% certainly will see that. So then how's that conversation go from there?

If it matters for context, it's a BSc in business, fully remote so you learn in your own time using the textbooks/digital tools. I've been at this corporate customer service job for ~8 months, just got my contract renewed until March. Since I only have a high school diploma it's really hard to get a non-physical job, and I can't really do physical labor due to chronic pain, so I really can't risk this job or risk not getting the contract extended. But also it would be a relief to not actively have to keep this a secret.

I graduated with Computer Science degree and worked mainly in IT support for almost 4 years . Then I thought I’d want to pivot into functional role. Fortunately I got the chance to do that in my current company which in one of the consulting firm. The first leg was fine. I did mostly on clean up risk management until the project closed. And then I accidentally agreed to do a commercial pmo which the role handled financial of the project, which I have 0 knowledge in financial. The hiring person who took me in was so nice. She made sure that I honed the easy task , basically people in and out of the project. But over the time I realised I didn’t like doing what I’m currently doing and I’m certain that I want to come back doing technical work. Situations getting harder and I had planned an exit even without another job lined up.

And then something happened which the only team member and also the team lead suddenly passed away. The person that I had depended on. I was shocked and still can’t accept that she’s gone. It felt like a big betrayal for me and I am scared for all of her tasks transferred to me, because I don’t know how to do them. Mind you that I was just only 4 months into the project. So not much knowledge transferred since beginning.

I’m so afraid to open up to people about my situation because I knew they’d think this is like a chance for promotion but I just want to move out from the company. I want a restart. Not resume what’s left. Promotion is a hard thing if you’ve worked with the company ( hint: purple) unless you have a good rapport with your direct manager (but not necessarily working in the same team/project).

The job market sucks but I can’t pretend that I’m okay with this. Please tell me if it’s going to be alright if I resigned without a backup job. I have savings for few months tho I knew job hunting is stressful itself

Hi there,

I am wondering how everyone is getting by with the recent changes to technology. I am trying to figure out what career might be sustainable in light of how bad tech has gotten.

I am routinely spending more than an hour a day now fighting to just be able to perform the same tasks I could perform in 5 minutes 2 years ago.

I just got off the line with Zoom support trying to figure out why Zoom had stopped providing transcripts of my meetings, which are a deliverable I need to do my job.

Earlier this week there were multiple tasks I was unable to complete because of multiple layers of multi-factor authentication that simply were not working.

My colleagues in other industries are reporting the same thing.

A graphic design colleague is so alarmed by how much more difficult to navigate and less functional Canva has become over the last few months that he is looking for an alternative.

A colleague who works in social media now needs to have three separate apps to be able to create TikTok ads, and has to be excruciatingly careful with how they manually arrange the settings each time because otherwise the settings will default to targeting options that don't produce results.

How are you folks hanging in there with the onward march of tech getting worse and worse every week?

My job is admittedly unusually tech heavy and has historically relied on me understanding how to use half a dozen different software suites, and that simply no longer feels possible. I don't know what to do.