Can’t do it anymore… corporate burnout from RTO and working with idiots /u/NewYorkABC CSCQ protests reddit

Questions upfront:

• How did you handle corporate burnout when starting a new job?
• If you left, what was the last straw and what did you end up doing?
• Have you left a job after only 3 months?

I’ve been working for 20 years and in corporate tech for 15 of those years. I don’t know how people do this for 40+ years because I’m reaching the end here. Last year, I was at a huge company that had town halls joking about how they’re the next Titanic. It was way worse – financials were always terrible, the products did not work, there were several mass layoffs, no one in leadership could communicate their vision, and employees were always on edge.

In October, I left and while I don’t regret leaving, I still feel residual burnout from these prior places. The new company is much better overall and smaller, so a lot less bureaucracy and more stability. They actively try to improve the customer and employee experience. They will actually take surveys and make actionable roadmaps. In 3 months, I’ve seen some great changes. The people are young and smart, except for my team, and they always want to help. Benefits are also top notch and mostly free.

That’s where the good ends. My team is not like the rest of the company. While my stakeholders are great, dealing with my team is like babysitting 10 overgrown toddlers. My manager doesn’t know what he wants and has no vision either, but will whine if you can’t figure it out or read his mind. The guy makes $1 million and can’t articulate what he wants or make a decision to save his life. I find myself siding with stakeholders most of the time. I’ve had great managers before and maybe they just set the bar too high.

My peers don’t talk to each other, like they had a big fight before I joined and they avoid me as well, and my junior team members need nonstop handholding. Half of the team can barely speak English, forget about writing emails. Just today, a BA stood at my desk asking me a list of 100 questions and asking me to help her write an email until I strongly suggested she ask all these to her manager instead. While I am a manager, I did not hire the junior folks so they will constantly ask me for help when their managers, my peers, are often nowhere to be found.

I am so tired and burnt out from the nonsense already. To top it off, my manager thinks he’s Jamie Dimon and decided we all need to return to the office 5x per week with “limited flexibility” for 3-4x. The rest of the company is remote-friendly and doing 2x in office tops. Meanwhile, half the employees are international. Now, I have to get up 2 hours earlier to get to the cubicle farm office, only to join 10 Zoom calls in a less comfortable setting with worse hardware, then spend another hour commuting home. When I’m not on a call, I get sucked into some vapid chitchat or some social event. All the junior folks bring me their problems and dramas with each other. Literally today, one had a problem with another because she took his regular hoteling desk. I’ve started hiding in the conference rooms to avoid my team and the loud floor. The office is simply not a productive place and it especially sucks that my team can’t come together.

By the time I get home, I am so physically, mentally, and socially tired from fake smiling that I can’t bring myself to do anything else and barely have the energy to talk to my partner. I’m definitely depressed M-F, but mostly fine on weekends.

Things I’ve tried:

1. Being specific with my manager and having him agree to my weekly tasks. Despite this, he still gets upset the following week because I “forget” to do something that wasn’t on the list but that he thought he told me (he never does).
2. Taking days off but since I’m new, I don’t have that many days. I also got very sick right after New Year’s and ate up a few sick days for the year.
3. Looking into an internal transfer. I’ve hinted at that with my HR contact but there is just very little movement internally because it’s a small company. The teams I would want to join are also international, and I would not be able to move due to family reasons.
4. Making plans after work to have something to look forward to, but I’ve found myself not excited to go and cancelling a few times on friends already. I don’t want to be that person.
5. Interviewing! The market still isn’t great and it took me a year to find this role.

Questions upfront:

• How did you handle corporate burnout when starting a new job?
• If you left, what was the last straw and what did you end up doing?
• Have you left a job after only 3 months?

I’ve been working for 20 years and in corporate tech for 15 of those years. I don’t know how people do this for 40+ years because I’m reaching the end here. Last year, I was at a huge company that had town halls joking about how they’re the next Titanic. It was way worse – financials were always terrible, the products did not work, there were several mass layoffs, no one in leadership could communicate their vision, and employees were always on edge.

In October, I left and while I don’t regret leaving, I still feel residual burnout from these prior places. The new company is much better overall and smaller, so a lot less bureaucracy and more stability. They actively try to improve the customer and employee experience. They will actually take surveys and make actionable roadmaps. In 3 months, I’ve seen some great changes. The people are young and smart, except for my team, and they always want to help. Benefits are also top notch and mostly free.

That’s where the good ends. My team is not like the rest of the company. While my stakeholders are great, dealing with my team is like babysitting 10 overgrown toddlers. My manager doesn’t know what he wants and has no vision either, but will whine if you can’t figure it out or read his mind. The guy makes $1 million and can’t articulate what he wants or make a decision to save his life. I find myself siding with stakeholders most of the time. I’ve had great managers before and maybe they just set the bar too high.

My peers don’t talk to each other, like they had a big fight before I joined and they avoid me as well, and my junior team members need nonstop handholding. Half of the team can barely speak English, forget about writing emails. Just today, a BA stood at my desk asking me a list of 100 questions and asking me to help her write an email until I strongly suggested she ask all these to her manager instead. While I am a manager, I did not hire the junior folks so they will constantly ask me for help when their managers, my peers, are often nowhere to be found.

I am so tired and burnt out from the nonsense already. To top it off, my manager thinks he’s Jamie Dimon and decided we all need to return to the office 5x per week with “limited flexibility” for 3-4x. The rest of the company is remote-friendly and doing 2x in office tops. Meanwhile, half the employees are international. Now, I have to get up 2 hours earlier to get to the cubicle farm office, only to join 10 Zoom calls in a less comfortable setting with worse hardware, then spend another hour commuting home. When I’m not on a call, I get sucked into some vapid chitchat or some social event. All the junior folks bring me their problems and dramas with each other. Literally today, one had a problem with another because she took his regular hoteling desk. I’ve started hiding in the conference rooms to avoid my team and the loud floor. The office is simply not a productive place and it especially sucks that my team can’t come together.

By the time I get home, I am so physically, mentally, and socially tired from fake smiling that I can’t bring myself to do anything else and barely have the energy to talk to my partner. I’m definitely depressed M-F, but mostly fine on weekends.

Things I’ve tried:

1. Being specific with my manager and having him agree to my weekly tasks. Despite this, he still gets upset the following week because I “forget” to do something that wasn’t on the list but that he thought he told me (he never does).
2. Taking days off but since I’m new, I don’t have that many days. I also got very sick right after New Year’s and ate up a few sick days for the year.
3. Looking into an internal transfer. I’ve hinted at that with my HR contact but there is just very little movement internally because it’s a small company. The teams I would want to join are also international, and I would not be able to move due to family reasons.
4. Making plans after work to have something to look forward to, but I’ve found myself not excited to go and cancelling a few times on friends already. I don’t want to be that person.
5. Interviewing! The market still isn’t great and it took me a year to find this role.