So I work for one of the tech giants. I've been at the company for nearly a decade, and have held 5 different roles.

In early 2025, I received an offer to join a new team in what was a really big step up for me at the time. However, the day I joined the team, in typical tech fashion there was this massive re-org. The manager and director who hired me were both let go.

So essentially I had just moved to NYC and had no idea what the job or team was going to look like anymore. I said, let's give it a week or two, meet the new manager, and go from there.

Didn't happen.

So there I was. Making ~275k a year, on a team, with zero responsibility or management direction. Doing nothing.

And I don't mean "oh it was like sending a couple emails here and there, taking a BS meeting, and calling it a day." I mean, literally, doing nothing.

I was binge watching YouTube and Netflix at the office in one of the cafes. I was new to NYC so id just go try a new famous spot for lunch a couple times a week. I walked every inch of Manhattan over the course of those ~2 years.

I was completely unassigned. This may sound like it was a dream scenario lol, but it was genuinely a nightmare. I had uprooted my family's life from the west coast to move to Nyc for this massive promotion, and instead I did absolutely nothing.

And it's not like I didn't try. I spent months trying to ask for more work, more exposure to the business. However the new manager that was hired was genuinely the dumbest person id ever met in tech. This person was making over $500k / year and I truly look at both my company and the tech world differently because of her.

So after a while of truly trying to have work to do, I gave up. I started just staying home most days. My wife would go to work and id go to the gym in my apartment, make a big breakfast, drink coffee and sit on my balcony overlooking the city, and just laugh at the absolute absurdity of the corporate tech world.

Last week, after 6 months of interviewing, I finally landed a role (same company) that actually was a big step up for me. I'm only 1.5 weeks into it and I'm already feeling the effects of doing no work for ~2 years. I feel completely behind, and so rusty. It's a good thing though and I'm extremely grateful to have finally made it out to the other side to a role and job I'm very proud of.

But wow. Now that I can look back on things objectively, what an absolutely hilarious ride. The tech world is so weird and awesome but mostly weird. I'm not sure there're many places where a random person can just slip through the cracks like that making the kind of money we do. And looking back on it, I was by a wide margin, making the least amount of money on the team I was assigned to, which makes me think they just felt bad for me and didn't wanna let me go? Idk. But it's over thankfully 😅

Do I feel bad? Admittedly I did for a while. I felt like I was a useless expense, especially after years of being so used to bringing in a lot of revenue as a good salesman. But after a while I just got angry. And then after the anger faded I decided to use this extremely unique scenario to my advantage and just try and enjoy it. Spent a ton of time with my wife on days she didn't work, tried every restaurant I could across NYC, and got a mental break. And now I'm excited to be back :)

AMA!

EDIT:: Wow, there's a ton of supportive comments in here of folks sharing their similar experiences and I have to say it makes me feel a lot better about my situation. Thanks for sharing y'all 🙏🏼

I work at adobe and been here for sometime. Pre Covid and till 2024 end, we were doing fine. Several employee benefits, random large events every month, more mental health holidays. It’s almost become 180 deg.
Cutting down on resources cuz they think AI is going to fix everything is backlashing hard. Engineering is spending more time proof reading AI and having to code properly from scratch.
They had to cut back on Claude and ChatGPT licenses and look for a cheaper LLM. Promotions have been limited too.
Work stress so bad that everyday the priorities change for business.
They’re going all in trying to release as many products.
Atleast 3 developers I know quit in the last 2 months for better opportunities.
I’ve very little hopes for this org to recover.

Context: An issue came up where customers weren't getting financial information needed. I provided a solution that would fix 80% of the problem while we figure out the rest. After that I kept getting emails about the 20% asking for updates, it even got escalated to someone in a Chief role therefore If it is this urgent and important I provided a solution where the party asking for updates would have to do some work and they declined that fix because it would take 4 hours.

So these people rather keep waiting for days and sending useless emails asking for updates than roll your sleeves and get to work?

This is so true😭🫩

Has anyone else noticed how differently management styles are viewed depending on gender?

I’m in a team lead/management role, and I recently had to pull someone up on a missed deadline and set some clear boundaries around project delivery. I wasn't rude—just direct, factual, and clear about expectations.

Afterward, a senior colleague pulled me aside to suggest I should "soften my delivery" so I don't come off as harsh or difficult.

Meanwhile, male managers in our department deliver the exact same (or much tougher) feedback, and they’re praised for being "decisive," "strong leaders," and "results-driven."

It feels like if a woman isn't constantly wrapping direct instructions in three layers of apology and smiles, she's automatically seen as "having an attitude."

For women in leadership here: How do you hold people accountable and give tough feedback without letting people police your tone? Would love to hear how others handle this.

i joined the corporate world almost a year ago and have been around non stop drama.

i work in IT and i received a request from a manager to give access to 2 of her employees to something. our protocol is to always call and confirm access with those users unless directed else-wise.

so i called and confirmed access and apparently the employees did not know they were supposed to have access.

the manager blew up spamming me through email and call saying i made a huge mistake i needed to somehow delete the emails from their computer etc just a big mess.

i obviously apologized and explain in the future to always specify if something is confidential and she just got rude and angry.

since then iv always said good morning/hi/hello when around her in the office and she always scoffs at me or turns her head and never says it back. i realized i should stop because maybe i was making her uncomfortable and she never reciprocated.

i got reported today for not saying good morning to her. she told my team i need to be trained on social etiquette.

mind you this is a 50 year old woman. i am 23 and this is my first “real” job

its that time of the year again..

I'm pretty new to consulting so I'm curious to hear what advice you can give to a newbie. I've heard all the horror stories of climbing the corporate ladder so I'd appreciate any advice you have, work advice, life advice, literally anything :)

I've been seeing descriptions like "no hand holding" "ship fast" in JD and Linkedin posts of hiring managers a few times.

Overall, from your experience, do you think that's a good thing or the opposite? In what settings would it be the better case?

I am a mid-level marketing specialist (4 years in a specific marketing field) and relocated to a different city where the culture was a bit different. And I encountered the expectation from senior managers on "independence", "self-driven initiatives" and "ownership", they don't expect me to raise questions if there's ambiguity. I can do my job but I just feel a lack of communications and support from that requirement. But I do have concerns on scope creeps and do feel the irony of the term "ownership" as the organizational reality makes the room where you can influence the results limited.

Have you encountered anything similar to this? Do you prefer more structured coaching or more ownership? What do you think of the "no hand holding" type of corporate culture? I know it depends a lot on the team and even the same setting can feel totally different for different people, but I would like to hear your experiences and perspectives.

In my last role and current one I’ve noticed my bosses scheduling meetings for 25 minutes or 55 minutes. They say they like to have a buffer between calls but 100% of the time the meetings go for a full 30 minutes or 1 hour. If meetings consistently go over the buffer time why not just schedule them for a full 30 minutes or 1 hour? I just don’t get it.

It sounds great to have an insurance benefit to replace 60% of your corporate salary if you ever can’t work due to disability. What they don’t tell you is that the insurance company will say you are not disabled, and then you have 0% of your corporate salary. What is the point?

Normal people: 😴💤

Me, trying to sleep:

• Did I reply to that email?
• Did they reply to my email?
• Did we get the final approval or was that just a “looks good”?
• Did I send that deck or just think about sending it?
• Wait, did I forget to follow up with someone?
• WHAT IF THEY REPLIED AND I DIDN’T SEE IT? 😭

And it's 3 AM and I'm mentally drafting tomorrow's follow up email.

Having 17 tabs open in my brain and none of them are responding.

I manage a team and we meet in the mornings to get a daily brief as well as just shoot the shit... This meeting in general has been great for morale because it's fun .

I(M-40s) have two men and two women on my team.... The two guys are really big into the cruise life and are often talking about their next Cruise.... However recently R rated topics such as wife swapping on these cruises etc. have come up in these meetings...

And maybe I'm projecting but I felt like one of the women was visibly uncomfortable listening to this so I took the guys aside and told them to drop that BS during the meetings....

But I've often questioned whether I'm being too prude or a "pick me" by doing so....

Especially because I'm not American (although I have lived and worked in America for over 20 years), I am not sure where the boundaries are, but I feel like in a professional setting any R-rated topics should be avoided.

This is too true😭😭

I don't really need advice on this I'm just calmly venting.

I work for a global organization where my coworker and I are the only ones in our roles (two of us) for the entire world.

Because we are such a small "team" I personally am very cognizant of being respectful and sharing my calendar and planned PTO days with them. This allows the mental time to prepare for knowing they will be alone for coverage and also, allows workload balancing time to communicate.

The issue is they do not EVER do the same for me. My coworker will ping me on our chat app for example on a Wednesday or Thursday and go "oh, I don't know if I remembered to tell you or not, but I'm off ____"

This time was no different. Last week I got a chat pop up on a Thursday saying "FYI, I'm taking this Friday and Monday off and also the following Friday and Monday".

I am 100% all for the notion that PTO means Prepare the Others, but I have been dealing with this coworker doing this for over a decade and finding out with one days notice that your only backup will be out for a week or two of "FYId PTO" is very annoying when our workload is higher which it is at this time.

I also understand that this falls on our boss for approving it like he does without question.

This week my coworker was griping that they were "running out of time to get things done" after they had FYId me about their long vacation weekends, and normally I would extend an offer to take some of their tasks, but this time I absolutely did not. It is not my problem that you decided to take two vacations back to back and now can't keep up with your workload. I also find it grating on the nerves that they would even complain to me about this, seeing as they never communicate well and this is 💯 on them to plan around their workload. These PTO trips they are going on aren't some family emergency, its for leisure and they have the option to cancel their days off if they "can't keep up".

This person also tends to book long weekends around company holidays where they book BOTH the front and back of the weekend too (adding days before or after) and takes BOTH sides of the holiday weekend so there is not a possibility of me being able to use any time since they've already asked for it. I find this extremely rude behavior as when I take a PTO day for added time to a longer holiday weekend, I leave one end of that weekend open for them to also share extra time as a courtesy so we both get some time off.

This same coworker tends to "oops, I forgot to use all my PTO" at year end (our company requires us to exhaust all hours bwefore end of yr), and will also FYI me in December around holidays that "FYI, Im taking two weeks for year end because its my PTO and I dont want to lose it", which 100% is manipulative behavior to get the busiest time of year off for vacation and our manager has started to see this pattern and clamp down on them to remind them to use their PTO before year end and there are only two of us.

To add the final layer of annoyance to this, which is also typical behavior, this person will ping myself and my boss the day before their PTO begins EVERY TIME and say "couldn't sleep, logged on early, will be logging out at Lunch", and our boss just rolls with it. And of course this happened this morning at 3am, my coworker did exactly that. They've only worked three days this week because they had a long 4 day weekend last week and now heading into ANOTHER 4 day vacation again that I'm covering for. We got the FYI that they are leaving at Noon. Oh yay. 🙄

Nothing anyone can do about it, just whining and letting it go.

I just find this type of behavior rude and not how a team of two should be operating.

I know it sounds stupid but I get really anxious about applying for other jobs. For a bit over a year my career has gone down bad, I went from Lead to end up working as an executive assistant and get less than 20% of what I was making (rent wads due, I was desperate so I took the job). In this past year I've applied to so many places and rarely any of them replied to me.

I feel like a total failure and at my current role I got promoted but this is not somewhere I can continue growing financially. The culture sucks and I literally have nightmares with my boss every Sunday.

I don't really know how to break free from this mental barrier. I want to work in a niche industry but I'm so scared of reaching out to people working there and them checking my linkedin to see I'm not even working in my field and the past roles I've had are not long enough. They'd think I'm not as good or a high risk candidate.

I really just want an opportunity to prove myself and show what I'm truly capable of. I have been building my personal brand as well but my current boss follows me and I feel watched 24/7. They sometimes leave a like on my posts and I wish I could block them but that'd be too obvious.

Have you ever felt this block? I have the skills but I feel like my resume is so weak in comparison to the beasts in my working field that are also looking for a job.

This So true🫪

Because of the state of the economy, this administration, and in general, the fact that I am Hispanic, but also white I get tripped up on these choices in the job application because I feel like I am being discriminated against if I do volunteer to say yes, but then I’m also confused because some applications cover two races are more and say not Hispanic or Latino so I end up thinking I need to put Hispanic or Latino, even though I am white. Does anybody have this confusion or fear that because you volunteered to put your ethnicity even if you have two?

I’ve started to put I don’t prefer to say just because I think I get a better chance at interviewing.

I can’t see yet that it’s worked, but I have finally gotten human beings responding.

For context I’m going on 2 years with only a handful of interviews after 150+ apps and those were only because I worked with recruiters.

I run marketing for a company that sells software and services to medical practices rather than providing direct patient care, and virtually all the healthcare seo content I find is written for the practice end of the market, patient-facing practices trying to attract individual patients through local search.Our seo problem is completely different, we're doing B2B marketing to practice owners, office managers, and clinical staff, our search intent is entirely different from patient search intent, our decision cycles are longer, our comparison shopping involves white papers and demo requests rather than appointment bookings, and our geographic targeting isn't local, it's national or vertical-specific.The technical seo principles are the same but the content strategy, keyword targeting, and conversion optimization are closer to general B2B seo than to healthcare patient-facing seo, which means I've gotten more useful information from general B2B marketing resources than from healthcare-specific ones.The one area where healthcare industry knowledge genuinely helps is content credibility, writing about practice management topics with real clinical workflow understanding is what separates content that resonates with office managers from generic b2b content that sounds like it was written by someone who has never been inside a medical office.Anyone else marketing to healthcare practices rather than patients finding the same gap in available resources, or have you found sources that actually address this B2B angle on healthcare marketing specifically?

I reported a colleague’s rude behaviour to my manager, who was supportive and told me I didn’t need his permission to send routine work emails.

The email he had an issue with was professional, but I accidentally left two client recipients copied. My colleague had previously mentioned removing the external recipients, and the issue had been discussed. The email contained no confidential information.

When my manager asked who was copied, I said it was only internal. I later realised the two client recipients were still copied.

Should I proactively clarify this with my manager, or leave it unless it comes up? I’m worried she’ll speak to my colleague about his behaviour and he’ll mention the email.

Am I overthinking this, or should I correct the record?