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Haha so true
Additional Posts in #OverheardAtWork
“i just fell asleep in the elevator”
“Chatroulette, but for apartment peepholes."
“I get such a rush when I’m eating a taco."
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I’d think One of two things:
1. they are intimidated by me
2. They want to receive some of the credit for the work I’m doing so they look good infront of seniors or stakeholders
1 is a problem, 2 is easily fixed by stroking their ego and saying the right things infront of the right people.
This seems like such a negative way to come at it. Either they are jealous or want to take credit? Damn
I’m so flabbergasted by the responses here. Depends on the tone, but for me, my first thought is “relief”. I’ve been a high performer the last year and a half but been battling burnout for the last few months and if my manager asked me to take it easy I’d be feeling grateful—like they cared about my mental well-being over my productivity.
Even if your manager doesn't recognise the right thing to do, know that burn out is bad for everyone but especially you, and avoiding that should be your number one priority. No matter how you do it, take a step back and look after yourself, or you might find in a month / year you don't know how to deal with it anymore. If you do find yourself in that position (or anyone else), DM me.
Depends.. if my manager was telling me to work a 40-hour work week and take vacation… it would feel like my manager was caring about work/life balance.
Depends on how it was phrased. Definitely had this conversation before of "it's Friday, beautiful and sunny... take the afternoon off"
Have a skip level with his or her boss; because they won’t be there much longer
You need an amazing understanding of your own status within the org, your boss's relationship with their higher up, and the culture of the org for this kind of thing to feel absolutely sure.
I would also categorize this as a last resort where you're at the point of quitting.
When my former boss tried this, it backfired spectacularly. He was new, but well known as a fast moving hotshot in the org, but a bit of a bull in a China shop. He was butting heads with his VP boss, and had convinced himself of his own star status and of the VPs mediocrity. He met with the COO, not to complain, but to bounce an idea off him, that would just so happen to get himself re-orged.
The COO saw right through it and gave the VP a heads up. Politically, the VP probably couldn't fire the guy, so he froze him out of everything and promoted me as his new go-to. After a year, my boss was miserable enough that he left.
I’d weigh where it was coming from and why it was said. That could be the sign of a really toxic environment, but it also might be that the company cannot support your growth or output.
Seems you would want to leave for all the above no?
I would point out that this is usually something unconventional to say. Would they be willing to explain how reducing performance will benifit myself, the team and the company?
The overwork could also come at the cost of their personal health. Even if they're voluntarily opting-into overwork, the manager might notice signs that the employee's health or morale are at risk, both of which can be destructive in the long run.
Suspicious. Is he/she worried you’re making him/her look bad?
Odds are you're outperforming your peers from a KPI standpoint and because his leadership can see that they'll expect him to get everyone to where you are. If he's a chill boss maybe see if you can do peer to peer coaching to help your peers level up. If the workplace is more toxic consider a skip level.
You seem super driven, I wish I had that same mentality and approach to my work.
Did you ask for a reason?
I mean it could also be coming from a place of mental health concern. If you’re surpassing your benchmarks, awesome, but if your going to burnout in a few months, not exactly ideal. Long game would be lower your productivity to preserve your capacity and maintain a consistent output on par with trajectories. Would really need more context, but everyone is doom and gloom here and that may not be the case.
With the company I’m at we’ve hired on new designers and I know one of the designers was told to slow down their performance- it’s not a bad thing it’s just that we have a bit of light workflow right now and so we have extra time to be able to really hone out the designs and iterate! And that person was making little mistakes often that wouldn’t happen if they were taking their time more.
(But I guess it depends on the position)
I think it would depend on the context; it’s not always negative. I had a boss communicate this to me once in a situation where they were trying to be kind, and say they supported me setting better boundaries for work-life balance. We also discussed rescoping some of the workflow to other team members since the hours that I was working indicated to them that there was a workload imbalance across team members.
Maybe you are burning yourself out and not recognizing it.
Are you sure it’s not about pace vs. performance? Context is needed here to understand the broader convo around slowing down. What do YOU think it means? A few thoughts from me: it’s not a race and your boss thinks you are rushing unnecessarily (leading to mistakes or undermining the quality of your output). your boss thinks your work would benefit from hitting pause at the start to think things through more thoroughly before starting a task. your boss thinks check ins at key points along the way would be beneficial bc you’re working in a silo with no team input and delivering an end product that doesn’t hit the mark exactly - but could easily have been recalibrated with a couple check ins along the way.
Depends what you're working on. What new or young folks sometimes overestimate is how fast or far an org can implement change, especially a legacy org.
They cook up lots of ideas and plans, or they jump ahead on a project timeline without realizing other parts of the org need to catch up and 'buy in.'
They miscalculate that they'll get kudos for moving fast, but vets understand that presenting work to leadership that's too far along backfires. Leadership and other orgs are resistant because they feel they weren't consulted.
Alternately, sometimes the direction of the org is shifting, which will affect what you're working on. Jumping ahead will only result in re-work. As a vet once told me: 'sometimes it's faster to wait.'
1. Slow down my performance
2. Fill out my resume
3. Find another job.
I think we need more context, when I got told this it was the hallway to underlying problems in the company organization and culture: I later found out that I was underpaid and male peers were getting preferential treatment (all the while everyone was giving me perfect feedback including that I should ‘slow down’). But it’s possible, like others pointed out, that maybe they are actually concerned about excessively long hours or something of the sort.
take a holiday
Sh*t my pants and happy cry simultaneously because I haven’t felt adequate since I started lol
But honestly, wonder who it is I’m making look bad🤣
When this happened to me, they said my work would be better quality, so when I started taking 10 minute breaks after each task without changing quality of work, they were pleased and claimed thr "improvement" was due to slowing down, when in fact is was all their biases