I’d really appreciate some objective advice because I feel upset, confused and am questioning my sanity.
I’ve been working in a senior role at a growing company for several years. I pretty much built the department from scratch and as it was a scaling startup, I’ve worked extremely long hours to get it to where it is.
A few weeks ago, my boss hired in someone new in a parallel role that's equally senior but unrelated to my department. Let's call her Susan. Susan happens to be the bosses closest friend.
Susan immediately swept in and started acting like she ran the place. She was described by colleagues as "intimidating" and "patronising" and upset a couple of other senior staff by overstepping her role.
Then she began involving herself in my area. This started initially by her correcting my work without being asked or invited and where it had nothing to do with her. I set a boundary, politely, and she apologised but then continued to escalate this type of behavior.
Suggesting changes, directing junior members of my team, organising meetings around work I’m responsible for, and generally behaving as though they were the boss of my department rather than me. It was so pronounced that it started to cause disruption and junior staff asked why she was involved.
I raised concerns about this and was told it would be addressed as the boss said he agreed it was not acceptable. He reiterated I was the boss of my department and said he'd ensure I didn't have to work directly with her.
To my shock, shortly after the boss created a "leadership team" which includes Susan in which ONLY my departments work is discussed. As in, they use this group to challenge my work, but not hers or anyone else's.
From there she began challenging everything I do, down to minute execution turning almost every decision into a debate.
For example saying I should do something differently and when I disagreed saying "chatGPT agrees with my view" and the boss did nothing and even actively encouraged her.
So I started getting angry.
I again raised the issue a few days ago but got no reply.
It was clear to me at this point that the boss sees Susan as his best friend and wanted her to have involvement across every department, and that id either have to accept being constantly undermined or leave.
A few days later my junior colleague messaged me to ask me to give him access to some systems for our new team member. I asked "what team member?"
Astoundingly it turned out that Susan and my boss had hired someone for MY team (one of this Susans contacts) without even discussing it with me, and agreed this new hire would take over a very key part of my own role and I only found out because that team member came to me, confused and uncomfortable.
When I challenged it, I was told:
that area wasn’t really my responsibility (it is, and always has been), that nothing had been done in that space (which isn’t accurate), that it was just an “oversight” and a myriad of other excuses.
In the same discussion, my role was minimised in front of others, and it was implied I don’t really run my own function and that me reacting was due to me being "competitive" and "making it about ego".
I remained calm but resigned on the spot, but the conversation was so gaslighty with both of them claiming I had no reason to react and I wanted a sanity check as they made me feel nuts.
Before working in this job for the last few years I worked for myself so I've not got much of a grip on if this is normal work behaviour or not?
For clarity, my department has been the strongest performing in the company, Susan has absolutely no experience and I cannot find a legitimate business reason for any of this.
I'm really devasted to lose the job I love :(