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The original was posted on /r/antiwork by /u/cannabiscobalt on 2024-06-17 03:52:06+00:00.

I work at a small company (60 ish people) and I’m on a team of project managers with one boss overseeing us. Usually we have a second boss who is a “senior project manager” but that role is a revolving door so my boss a senior director takes over the SPM job when it’s empty. Eventually she gets fed up of doing the work (as she is busy with her actual job) and they hire a new SPM.

They announced this time they’d be opening up the role to all PMs (there are 5 of us and only one PM team in the entire company) I have 3 years of experience at this job and everyone else has less than 2. I also have the most amount of projects at any given time and I’m often given the more challenging projects as I can do them efficiently saving hours often. Despite this I didn’t want to assume I would get the role due to seniority so I prepared for the internal interview and came up with several ideas of what I would do in the role (they asked for this).

Well I didn’t get the job, they tell me casually after chatting about my recent holiday I took and then mention they hired two SPM’s due to increased interest?? I asked why and what I can improve on and they said you are not consistent across each project and we need perfection for this role. They said the SPM cannot mess up and needs to be perfect and I’m not perfect (exact wording). I’m upset but hold it in until after the call is over. Contemplating life cause this company is so small there’s nowhere else to progress upwards.

Next day one of the PM’s quits so we have two SPM’s and two PM’s (me and one girl who is newer to the job). They announce the SPMs formally and mention they’ll be taking on the hard projects but having a lower volume of projects. At this time I find out from my PM coworker that she’s super busy and has 7 projects. We are friends so I’m not trying to downplay her stress but it made me evaluate and damn I have 14 active projects and we are supposed to have 6 at any given time (indicating both me and other PM are overworked)

Friday, a new rush project comes up and my boss wants me to take it so for the first time ever I say no to the project because Im super busy with 14 projects and this rush one would be the same week that 4 other projects are fielding. I also had to take on projects from the PM who left increasing my workload further. My boss messages us all begging someone to take the rush challenging project and the seniors are gasp silent. Eventually she messages all my projects to rearrange other timelines so I’ll have some time to squeeze this project in and it lands in my lap. I’m rushing to set up the project meanwhile one of the new seniors is in my teams DM’s asking me q’s about a challenge she has on a project. A q that she would have known if she had more experience. But I thought the seniors were the perfect know it all’s??

Then the company has the gall to ask me to leverage a family connection to help out with a project challenge because it would make the clients happy🙃 obviously I decline.

My mom pointed out that they constantly give me projects that have challenges before it even starts so how could one have a perfect project or consistency across all if they’re all uniquely flawed before it even gets into my hands?

I have the strong desire to quit and leave them high and dry during a busy time so they have to reallocate my 14 projects across one newer PM and 2 SPMs but I need to continue making money. I’m applying elsewhere but for the first time ever I hate my job and the people I work with including the SPMs (it’s not their fault they were better and got picked but I don’t have a desire to be friendly anymore as a result of my bosses handling of the situation) I have one friend outside of work (the newer PM) from this company and she was so shocked when I told her all this stuff that went down.

This company is so stupid they say things like “when everyone else zigs we zag” “everyone else is hiring so we stopped” “everyone else is leaning into AI so we stopped” and then they wonder why the company is constantly not doing well??? Maybe these successful companies know what they’re doing and we could emulate some of their behaviors.

Anyways writing this Sunday night as I finished updating my resume and LinkedIn. Here’s to another busy week of hating my job :(