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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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?

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.

six weeks ago i was convinced i had cold email figured out. spoiler: i absolutely did not.

i dropped out of college last year, found Alex Berman's youtube channel, binged like 40 videos in a week, and decided outbound was my thing. started freelancing for a couple small b2b companies doing their cold email. by month 3 i was pulling in around $4k/mo and feeling like hot stuff. by month 5 i was at $8k. and thats when i decided to get "smart" about it and everything fell apart for about three weeks.

the first thing that broke was personalization. i watched this video about using AI to generate custom first lines for every prospect and i thought ok this is obviously the move. so i set up this whole flow where id scrape leads from LinkedIn, run them through Prospeo for email enrichment, verify with NeverBounce, and then before loading into Instantly id run every single contact through this AI first line generator (was using a combo of Clay and ChatGPT). the first lines referenced their company news, recent posts, job changes, whatever it could find.

sounds great right? my reply rate dropped from 3.8% to like 1.9%. nearly cut in half.

i spent a week trying to figure out what happened. changed subject lines. tweaked the offer. messed with send times. nothing. then one of my clients forwarded me a reply someone sent back and it said "this is clearly automated, the fake personalization is worse than no personalization." and that hit me pretty hard because... they were right. the AI first lines were technically accurate but they read like a robot pretending to be interested. stuff like "saw that [company] just expanded into the northeast market, congrats on the growth!" nobody talks like that in a cold email. or at least nobody who actually read about the expansion and cared.

so i ripped all the AI first lines out. went back to a simple template with one personalized variable (just their industry or role) and the reply rate bounced back to 4.1% within two weeks. actually higher than before. less effort, better results. i felt pretty dumb about all the time i spent building that workflow.

the bigger problem though was what this whole detour did to my sending infrastructure. while i was debugging the personalization thing i got impatient and started sending higher volume to test faster. pushed from 35 emails per inbox per day up to about 55-60. across 6 inboxes thats a lot of extra volume and i didnt even think about it because i was focused on the copy.

my bounce rate crept up to around 4.7% during this stretch too because i was rushing list building and skipping the verification step half the time. within 10 days two of my google workspace inboxes got flagged and one got straight up suspended. thats $6/mo per inbox which whatever, but the warmup time to replace them is what killed me. had to spin up new ones through Puzzle Inbox and do 14+ days of warmup through Instantly before i could use them. during that time i was running campaigns for 3 clients on 4 inboxes instead of 6 and the reduced volume meant i was behind on lead targets for almost a month.

one client noticed and wasnt happy about it. didnt lose them but it was close.

what actually fixed things was boring. i went back to basics. 30-35 sends per inbox per day max. every list gets verified through NeverBounce before it touches a sending tool. simple templates with one variable. no AI first lines. and honestly the biggest thing i changed was just slowing down. i was so excited about optimizing that i optimized myself into a hole.

im not saying AI personalization cant work for anyone. maybe at higher volume or with better prompts or different verticals it makes sense. but for me, selling marketing services to local businesses with 10-50 employees, the prospects saw right through it. a short honest email that gets to the point in 3 sentences outperformed the "personalized" version every single time.

im still only 6 months into this so take everything with a massive grain of salt. theres probably stuff im missing that someone with more experience would catch. but i figured the failure part was worth sharing because all the youtube content makes it sound like more AI = better results and for me that was the opposite of true.

anyway yeah. back to 4% reply rates and trying hard not to break anything else for a while

I’m mostly writing this to get my thoughts out somewhere, but I’d genuinely appreciate advice from anyone who has been through something similar.

I’m really worried about my department at the moment. I’ve worked under my manager for about two years, and today was the first time I’ve ever seen her completely break down and cry while talking to me. She seems incredibly stressed and worn down, and it honestly made me realise how much pressure she must be carrying.

We work in a mental health-related field, so the work itself can already be emotionally demanding. On top of that, we’ve had a lot of staff turnover. Some people have come into the role with very little experience and understandably expected to be trained on the job, but the reality is that everyone is also under pressure to meet KPIs, so there often isn’t enough time or capacity to provide the level of training and support new staff actually need.

There has also been a lot of workplace drama over the past year. One former colleague in particular was meant to be in a senior role and help build and support the team, but things ended very badly and a lot of bridges were burned (he got fired for trying to force a client to sign a contract with a different company which is against our workplace contract). Since leaving, they’ve also said a lot of things and made a lot of claims that I know aren’t true, and I think it has left my manager in a position where she genuinely doesn’t know what to believe or who she can trust anymore.

That part probably upsets me the most because I’ve deliberately stayed out of all of the workplace drama. I’ve never wanted to be involved in sides, gossip or politics. I just want to do my job well, support the team and be someone my manager knows she can rely on. I want her to know that she can trust me, but I also understand why that might be difficult when someone she trusted before has created so much confusion and mistrust.

I like my job, I like my department, and I actually like the organisation I work for. I want to stay. I also want to step up and help where I realistically can.
At the same time, I’m conscious that I’m only one person and I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking I can somehow fix an entire department. I think I’m just feeling sad watching something I care about struggle, and it feels like there’s no hope to move forward.

What scares me most is that if my manager eventually decides she has had enough and leaves, I genuinely don’t know what would happen to the department. Part of me worries it could close down altogether.

It feels like we’re at a point where the old team dynamics are basically gone and we’re almost starting again from scratch. Maybe that could eventually be a good thing, but right now it just feels uncertain.

For anyone who has been through a workplace with high turnover, broken trust, burnout and a lot of interpersonal drama:

- did things eventually settle down?

- What actually helped your team rebuild?
and if you were someone who wanted to stay and help without getting sucked into the drama or taking on responsibilities that weren’t yours, how did you approach it?

I think I’m mostly looking for some perspective, advice, or maybe just reassurance that workplaces can come back from periods like this.

I (19F) got a job at a convince store that also works as my small community's grocery store a few weeks ago, its been super stressful and we are extremely low on people at multiple locations. (Im scheduled to work the next 7 days one of them I didn't know about until two days prior and I have to drive 25+ miles to get to it and its non optional)

But yesterday has me truly dreading to go to work tomorrow. I was scheduled to work a 7 hour day with the assistant manager and the cook and for seven hours that was it, all of my breaks got interrupted multiple times, I was extremely stressed because multiple card readers went down at once and no amount of customer service can stop a customer that just had to have one more minor inconvenience from snapping at you.

During one of my interrupted breaks I had to sneeze, I unfortunately have ovarian cyst and possible endometriosis (working on getting diagnosed they dont like to diagnos people under 30) if you have ovarian cysts you KNOW that feeling when one gets aggravated enough to try and paralyze you in place. I could barely get up from our small break chair and had to limp to the customers. I let my assistant manager know i was in a lot of pain and why. I felt like I was going to pass out from the pain multiple times.

I had to work another 3+ hours because we had no people who could cover me. I then had to actively those hours serving customers barely able to bend or stand, sitting is against corporate policy so I just had to tough it out while the cook tried to mansplan to me about how I should just try a herbal route to cure my ovarian cysts and suspected endo. The only reason I didn't go to the ER directly after work is because I knew I was going to have to be there for 8+ hours and cant call out from labor day because its an instant "your fired" if I call out from a holiday.

Im stressed and this place is working hard to send me into an early grave.

Hi everyone,

I am in an interesting situation when it comes to having downtime at work. I work in a school in a position that has me "floating" for a total of 7 hours a week to keep an eye on classes and be ready to be on call in case I need to be called into a classroom to help a student with emotional/behavioral difficulties.

During these floating periods which are around 1.5 hours a day I feel myself losing my mind because how many times can you really walk down the same 4 hallways. The other thing is that I am not permitted to take a seat and work on my laptop unless it is with a group of students while I am supervising. So I end up having anywhere from 30 min to 3 hours a day where I am wandering around the school with nothing to do. It makes me feel really tired and maxed out on feeling really burnt out from the day.

Does anyone have any tips on things to do during this "downtime"? Any advice would be super appreciated!

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?

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.

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?

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.

Looking for some advice on how to navigate a sudden boundary shift with leadership.

I work in a non-sales support role. In-person client meetings are strictly for sales or account management. We recently lost our AM, and while I've been helping cover internal operational tasks for the account, field meetings are completely outside my scope.

I’m uncomfortable taking this on with zero prep, and I definitely don't want to set a precedent where my support role absorbs field sales duties.

How do I professionally push back on an executive outside my chain of command here?