Not allowed to talk to other staff

[LowLevelGrumpMostly]

We had a restructuring which has combined two teams plus a few randoms under a newly hired VP. I’m the only one in the UK but the rest of my old team do hybrid. The new VP is in a different time zone to everyone and weekly meetings are at 3am so I can’t attend. I haven’t been introduced to some of the people who’ve joined the team and when I asked to be was told no, new manager wants all interactions to go via them.

I’ve also been told I shouldn’t call my team mates and all interactions must be in writing with new boss cc:d or included on team threads. I’m probably the most experienced and knowledgeable in the team so was relied on a lot by other colleagues and new boss seems very out of their depth. It’s getting kind of lonely.

I’m well paid and negotiated a very tight contract, part time, school friendly hours, no travel, very defined role. New boss really doesn’t like my lack of availability in their time zone and keeps trying to palm off parts of their role they don’t seem to fancy or aren’t experienced with. I don’t have the time to take on additional work beyond my core as the job share I worked with left shortly before the restructure. I earn £65k for 3 days and would struggle to negotiate such a good contract in current climate and part time is rare in my sector. The new boss is highly critical and negative towards me but I’m very lonely. A few team mates have reached out via out of company channels saying they aren’t happy, experiencing similar, are too scared to talk to me as told not too.

So do I wait it out and hope execs twig, jump ship, talk to HR (none UK more discipline than wellness vibe). Having worked remotely I don’t have connections other than old team and worked via my previous wonderful boss who retired.

I overlap with everyone in the team including new boss, unfortunately she’s 12 hours difference to majority of team so 3-4am is their 9am/pm overlap

It’s horrible isn’t it especially if you don’t feel there is anyone to see what’s going on.

I think the isolation is deliberate but not personal and strategy is to do it to everyone and divide and conquer.

Think their micro management style is their natural comfort zone. Tells people to do things they can’t do and then says want you to lead. Often things you’d expect were their job and someone in their role should be doing. Disorganised, usually we followed an Amazon meeting style with documents and written agendas and group input. All verbal, nothing written down, follow up agreed forgotten.

No advice but you sound lovely & if I crossed paths with you whilst out dogwalking, I would be very happy to chat. 😁

I do suffer with rejection sensitivity, so your uneasiness is totally understandable to me as I've very sensitive to politics.

I like my work politics situation to be understandable, this sort of micromanagement to be very difficult.

It is very controlling of the manager. Actually, reminds me of my family politics, it's divide & rule.

In work situations I think sometimes when you’re given a totally stupid instruction forgetting it is the best way forward.

How would she react if every time she forwarded you an email you replied direct to the colleague with her ccd in? And when you needed to ask a colleague something you did it but ccd her in?

Realistically she can either accept it. Or she can challenge you every time for responding to the thing which you are being asked which looks batshit crazy.

Id also cc her into every single email you send.

I’m resisting the urge to be highly passive aggressive…. So far! I’ve been told off for cc:ing and including other people saying best we discuss just us. She’s being slightly creepy implying I could do really well if take on stuff behind the scenes without anyone knowing so when she reveals everyone will be startled by my brilliance 🙈

I’m a total introvert but one who likes people so this job was perfect before the changes. I am so invested in my local dog walker dynamics and the sad thing is I doubt they’d notice if I disappeared 🙃 to be fair I’m pretty invisible at home this job meant zero drama, dinner is there, no complex childcare, no kids stressed about bills being paid, lots of rural pseudo taxi services provided 🙄 in return something I found rewarding and enjoyable. Putting up with shit to feed your kids is one thing, to do it to pander to their brand preferences is slightly different. And it’s made me question if me working to make life comfortable has been a good thing.

This sounds so much worse than my first world issue, are you looking elsewhere? Not liking or respecting my boss is horrible but at least I know others aren’t keen.

I would start looking for another job, that works for you.
But another suggestion in the interim is to ask one of the senior execs to mentor you. Obviously you need to be careful but you could focus on ambitions to further your career within the bounds of your work-life balance, and over time I'm sure you'd be able to drop the odd nugget of how the current set up isn't working for you.
Plus you'd have someone to communicate with occasionally at least!

And as per previous posters see if you can give yourself a corporate contribution to improve team cohesion, and put forward various initiatives you find recommended (eg coffee connect seems to be all the rage in my world).

yes it does … I now literally can go sun-fri without a contact out side other than someone who depresses, belittles and annoys me.

Not properly yet, it has it’s good points, convenient, good pay for my area and the workload is much less than it used to be so I was thinking I’d make the most of that until things picked up or I got made redundant but I think it’s making me so miserable I will have to start looking in the new year.

Can't sleep at the moment so mindlessly scrolling....found this thread and had to chime in. OP you sound lovely, and worth so much more than you are getting (in a non financial capacity). I know you think you have a good deal salary wise and you might not get the same elsewhere but just think - you might get something better. Money is great but this kind of working environment can chip away at your wellbeing which is priceless.

Get your CV and LinkedIn profile updated and start looking. You got headhunted before, it could happen again. The work landscape is so different now than it was 5 years ago - part time or hybrid much more common.

Good luck - hope it all works out for you!

Hi there, am in a very similar situation except that I’m on the £120k so haven’t got time to do a long post!

my old teammates reckon that if I keep my head down and don’t complain I’m untouchable. But that’s so lonely! We were part of something special and now that has been destroyed. Last night I finished work late and reflected that I’m just doing it for money when I used to do it for love.

Can this be your stance, the mental health issues.

Being cut off from your team, this could contribute to depression and impact on productivity and could lead to people going off sick?

Aka she plans to take all the credit for your work, I’m afraid.

As I had a long drive today, I had time to ponder if the boss is either a psychopath or it's a Peter Principle promotion. Both common apparently in the corporate world.

If it's the latter, you stand a chance of her imploding, the former is a more durable problem.

I would look for a new job but also find out who was so keen on you that they made so many attempts to headhunt you. They would be appalled their good work was in danger?

I’m trying to decide this too and am veering towards I suspect might be both!

I'm going to go against the grain of 'that's good money and working hours, you need to accept it'. DH is on a similar salary, also part time to fit round other commitments. When a previous job went tits up, he walked. He has since been headhunted (repeatedly). Given you're happy working remotely, the world is your oyster - I suggest you get looking at alternatives; you're more employable than you may think, and it sounds as though you could take a slight pay cut if you had to. Good luck!

Agree with cookies, £65K is a good salary for 3 days a week but doesn't mean you have to be unhappy. I earn a tiny bit less than that for 3 days and have a nice team and boss! And no 3am meetings :)

No amount of money is worth damaging your mental health.

One of the very interesting results of having had a lot of jobs is that you can see patterns, sometimes it is me, sometimes it's definitely the boss or environment are bad and sometimes it's just a bad combo of otherwise good people.

It is effectively bullying, so some of the advice for bullying at work might work. Which, iirr, one thing is to seek allies...

Also sounds like you're at a point you need to address wider issues too.

Ok - weird update. Searching for some old work in OneDrive I saw an interestingly titled Excel. She has a junior staff member who hasn’t been here very long doing an audit of all the project I work on and what associated documents there are.

If she wanted to know she could go to the official project and doc management system (pretty sure junior guy hasn’t got access). He’s got it total wrong. She’s never asked for this info. He seems to be doing this type of audit on everyone else more senior in the team too.

They are not very good with O365 or Project Management/ Salesforce like systems but she has uber overlord access and could pull this info up.

No team meeting recordings for last two weeks despite agreement to supply, says cancelled as people prefer one on one mentoring. Cancelled my one on one as she’s far too busy with “high priority projects”.

Not sure what to make of it all. Thoughts?

I'm really sorry but I think they are planning to get rid of people and you are on the hit list. If you want to keep your job prepare your own list and have a '1-1' over email with it attached as a 'gosh, I've achieved so much and you can see it from this document that is readily available on the server '. If not, get job hunting and you maybe able to get some redundancy on the way out.

Yep, i think I would be preparing some Plan B & Cs.

There might be all sorts going on.

It's not good living in uncertainty.

I would explore redundancy and be very actively looking for a new job. If you are good then it should certainly be possible to negotiate similar terms in a new role. We have several people working the same hours and on similar or better salaries where I work.

I'm not to sure what is going on but there is definitely some variety of Plotting and Scheming from your new boss. Who sounds utterly shit at management btw.

You need to protect yourself which internally means keeping records of everything to CYA and externally looking for something else.

I think the idea of finding out who was behind headhunting you and trying to speak to them is a good call too.