Tough Day at Work…

Speaking as a manager myself, if this guy is a twat and your senior management are also twats

...think about moving to...

I've been putting off posting in here for a while, conceivably it could also go in the mental health thread, but it's definitely work related. Things have been pretty shit at work for a while:

- Last year our growing, happy team was unceremoniously slashed in half, with half being shunted off to another part of the company against their will. On a human level this was shit (although the alternative was probably redundancy), most of them were junior and I was their line-manager, so had to deal with them being incredibly upset. That's another story, but they were dumped into a very bad situation. It was sad and draining, and still is. Those left in the original team felt bereft and aggrieved.
- Then our team lead left, siting stress and burnout caused by the rug being pulled from under her. That left a massive hole which is yet to be officially filled, obviously I'm largely picking up the slack, but nominally someone from outside the team is 'overseeing us'.
- This new overlord knows nothing about us or our situation and offers no positive support. Instead he basically derides us for not being profitable.
- We were always split between internal development projects that improved efficiency etc and external fee earning projects we piggybacked onto. But now we are not allowed to work on anything except fee earning work, which doesn't exist, so most of us are not actually doing very much. Ironically we worked largely in automation which freed us up to do more dev work, but now we have nothing to do!
- Company have decided to cancel the visa sponsorship of one of our grads, with zero consultation. They haven't even formally let her know, but she heard on the grapevine, I didn't even know. She is distraught.
- Company 'by mistake' promoted 2 people in the team but gave them no extra money and then 3 weeks later tried to go back on the promotion, they are distraught.

I could honestly go on, this has all happened in the space of less than 12 months, and up to that point we were extremely happy and growing team with a clear vision. Now, we're decimated and depressed!

Personally I have to bear the brunt of most of this, every day is fight after fight and bullshit, and as a result I think I'm experiencing burn-out: I have zero motivation, tasks are taking me forever, I don't want to speak to anyone, and I'm basically depressed, it is literally impossible for me to mask my contempt at this point and it's heart-breaking.

I have a meeting with the new guy about why our utilisation has tanked, and I'm honestly feeling like I'll crack and murder him.

I know, I should leave. And I do look constantly. I find CV writing, applications incredibly hard, largely because I've become so insecure over my skills, which I think is classic imposter syndrome. On the other hand I've been here a while and quite fancy the redundancy pay!

Sorry for the wall of text, needed to vent.

This.

And sign me up for the burnout bollocks too. It's a very real thing and causes massive problems long term.

Seems to be happening everywhere at the moment. Very much feels like a wind of change to loads of places of work post covid.

A lot of this comes down to justifying the extortionate amount of rent that is being paid to lease massive, empty buildings that have years to run the lease.

Ah yes the old "if I can't have it neither can you mentality". Childish cunts.

If I have to go in 3 days it’ll be Monday, Wednesday and Friday. No one is in two of those days and it cuts 15 minutes off my drive each way (time I would otherwise be working for free for them).

I went to the office for the first time in a couple of months today. Sat in my booth and did my work all day and didn't really talk to anyone.

Until the drinking party in the evening, which was good fun and I actually talked with people.

Moral of the story: If you want people to come in to the office, provide free beer and snacks.

Are you speaking in English or Japanese?

I'm sure the day will eventually come where we have to go into the office more often but it is still very much personal choice. I last went into Leeds in November and I think it was June before that.

I try to avoid it as much as possible because I utterly despise sitting in a load of traffic for an hour (or 2) for the privilege of sitting in an office where people 'network' aka chat shit. I've only been in about 5 times since I started there and I hardly do anything on those days.

Reviewing stuff at the moment. Yesterday spent 45 minutes trying to work out the general location of some 19th century boundary from a ye olde timey written description. Turned over the page and there was a map.

I need a holiday.

Pray for user Lizard.