this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Prologue: Long time Reddit subscriber, this Lemmy thing seems neat. I will probably ditch Reddit completely. Hi everyone!

tldr; joined new team two performance review cycles ago. Reorg before I joined, now have inexperienced manager who is different than hiring manager. Things went downhill after a while, probably due to personal issues, now my job is at risk. Another reorg with new manager happening soon, trying to save myself from layoff until then and trying to save my rep. Wondering how to do this best.

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[–] valence_engineer@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I agree overall but it also depends. In this economic climate with layoffs common backstabbing is not the worst short term strategy. OP would essentially be using their accumulated political capitol to make it more likely that their manager gets the ax versus them.

The skip is most likely doing a calculation of how much OP is worth versus how much the Manager is worth to the organization. Showing too much respect means the calculation is less likely to go in OP's favor since even OP seems to see Manager in a mostly positive light.

[–] fololzl@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm having the conversation soon, my skip level is not a beat around the bush kind of person but also has a "no assholes in the team" policy. Whatever that statement is worth, I'll make sure to be respectful of my manager before approaching the rest of the conversation. I'll share an update as soon as there are new developments.

[–] valence_engineer@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Got it. I would say respect is good but don't come off as too un-emotional since that might signal this isn't important for you. Showing you're upset at the situation is not a bad thing as long as you keep it in check and don't go off on a 10+ minute rant. A seasoned manager is used to people offloading emotionally on them so they won't take it personally (but they're also human so too much will stress them which you want to avoid). Some managers even go to the point of classifying the different kinds/phases of emotional offloading: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-the-disaster/

[–] fololzl@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

This is an amazing resource! I've read quite a bit through it now and bookmarked it. Very insightful.

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