Joined a month ago and was wondering if it's normal to have monthly 1 to 1s with the skip manager whose not even located in the US, he is in a different country. The thought of that just made me feel kind of questionable and worried due to me being on h1b, but at least my direct manager is in the same office as me. I'm not sure if that matters. Previously I came from a really toxic-heavy-bullshit-office-politics-place, so I at times have some trauma when someone wants to have a 1 to 1 with me. And my skip keeps saying "since you just joined you need to give fresh new ideas", blah blah, it was kind of demanding and honestly made me feel like i was performing poorly when i didnt even get all access yet. I was like dude, i just joined a month ago. And my manager sometimes avoid me, but she's darn busy at times so wasn't able to make as much progress as I would love to have. I could also see her picking on my teammates to be in certain meetings and sometimes don't allow them to be in meetings at all. Like she will only be in those meetings and not even tell us whats going on, as in she keeps everything to herself. So there's no sense of direction in our team and we're often lost and because of that alot of time is wasted in sprint meetings. The one thing I also did not understand was, that she made someone a team lead who recently joined internally 2 weeks ago and I don't think he's fit to be one; he is too arrogant and he doesn't even know what he's talking about, he acts like he knows it when he's giving false info; i dont really like him tbh (strong office politics going on). I feel like team is in chaos and my manager doesnt feel like a manager, she is like a competitor. On another note, onboarding was a pain, due to a lot of red tapes and no effing guidance at all. Is it better to leave or stay? If you read it this far, thanks for hearing my vents and rants 😊🙏 TC 238k
80% of what you said sounds normal to me. I think you need to grow up seriously.
What location and YOE are you?
Tldr leave
Sorry to hear your experience is not going well. It is very true that many people leave bad managers and not companies. I have worked at large mature enterprise companies to start ups and from my experience, there seem to be more bad managers than good ones out there. As someone who is in a leadership position, skip level 1:1s is something I perform on a normal basis. It ensures the manager I have in place is managing their team appropriately and if something is not working, it allows me to provide proper coaching and mentoring from the feedback. The one thing I can recommend is ensure your feedback is constructive and not made to sound like you are whining or complaining.
I didn’t read everything, I skipped to the bottom to see TC
Since this is your first month take sometime to understand dynamics of team. If you feel like you are not in a growing place, take a call on that. New team can be exhausting in the first place.
Leave immediately. Abnormal manager
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It's normal to have 1 to 1
It's a skip 121 - that's your manager's manager. Feels too overbearing to me ( I tend to do them quarterly). Could be reasons for that though - your manager may be struggling, so her manager may feel she needs an ear closer to the ground to understand what's going on. However the way you're talking about it feels like it's too micromanagery... I would honestly use it as an opportunity - tell your skip manager that you are not getting what you need from your manager - don't blame her, but spell it out re how the skip could help your manager, in order to help you. It's your Skip's responsibility to ensure the team is protected and has what it needs for success, so they have some work to do here by the sounds of it.
Exactly, it seems too micromanaging! HR insisted 121s with skip should be quarterly. And he isn't even in the US, so I just hated that, wish he was also in the US. As a matter of fact our skip's manager is in the same office as us, so he takes care of us more. I wouldn't mind having 121s with my skip's manager since he is here on-site and knows what's going on.