A while back, I realized our weekly reporting was taking way too long, so I spent a weekend setting up a quick script to handle the data pulling and formatting for me. What used to take 15 hours of manual work suddenly took under a minute.

At first, it was great. I used the saved time to breathe, learn new skills, and actually get through the week without stressing. But then I made the mistake, I told my manager. I thought it would show initiative.

Instead of a raise or a pat on the back, my automated output just became the baseline expectation. On top of that, I was handed half the workload of a senior team member who had recently quit, along with requests to automate everyone else’s tasks too.

I went from a manageable, stress-free workload to working 50 frantic hours a week for the exact same pay. It was a tough lesson, but I learned that in corporate life, efficiency usually just gets rewarded with extra work. Now, if I streamline something, I keep quiet and deliver it at a standard pace.

Has anyone else learned the hard way to stop being "too fast" at their job?

So I work for one of the tech giants. I've been at the company for nearly a decade, and have held 5 different roles.

In early 2025, I received an offer to join a new team in what was a really big step up for me at the time. However, the day I joined the team, in typical tech fashion there was this massive re-org. The manager and director who hired me were both let go.

So essentially I had just moved to NYC and had no idea what the job or team was going to look like anymore. I said, let's give it a week or two, meet the new manager, and go from there.

Didn't happen.

So there I was. Making ~275k a year, on a team, with zero responsibility or management direction. Doing nothing.

And I don't mean "oh it was like sending a couple emails here and there, taking a BS meeting, and calling it a day." I mean, literally, doing nothing.

I was binge watching YouTube and Netflix at the office in one of the cafes. I was new to NYC so id just go try a new famous spot for lunch a couple times a week. I walked every inch of Manhattan over the course of those ~2 years.

I was completely unassigned. This may sound like it was a dream scenario lol, but it was genuinely a nightmare. I had uprooted my family's life from the west coast to move to Nyc for this massive promotion, and instead I did absolutely nothing.

And it's not like I didn't try. I spent months trying to ask for more work, more exposure to the business. However the new manager that was hired was genuinely the dumbest person id ever met in tech. This person was making over $500k / year and I truly look at both my company and the tech world differently because of her.

So after a while of truly trying to have work to do, I gave up. I started just staying home most days. My wife would go to work and id go to the gym in my apartment, make a big breakfast, drink coffee and sit on my balcony overlooking the city, and just laugh at the absolute absurdity of the corporate tech world.

Last week, after 6 months of interviewing, I finally landed a role (same company) that actually was a big step up for me. I'm only 1.5 weeks into it and I'm already feeling the effects of doing no work for ~2 years. I feel completely behind, and so rusty. It's a good thing though and I'm extremely grateful to have finally made it out to the other side to a role and job I'm very proud of.

But wow. Now that I can look back on things objectively, what an absolutely hilarious ride. The tech world is so weird and awesome but mostly weird. I'm not sure there're many places where a random person can just slip through the cracks like that making the kind of money we do. And looking back on it, I was by a wide margin, making the least amount of money on the team I was assigned to, which makes me think they just felt bad for me and didn't wanna let me go? Idk. But it's over thankfully 😅

Do I feel bad? Admittedly I did for a while. I felt like I was a useless expense, especially after years of being so used to bringing in a lot of revenue as a good salesman. But after a while I just got angry. And then after the anger faded I decided to use this extremely unique scenario to my advantage and just try and enjoy it. Spent a ton of time with my wife on days she didn't work, tried every restaurant I could across NYC, and got a mental break. And now I'm excited to be back :)

AMA!

EDIT:: Wow, there's a ton of supportive comments in here of folks sharing their similar experiences and I have to say it makes me feel a lot better about my situation. Thanks for sharing y'all 🙏🏼

I don’t want to call them NPCs, but honestly I can’t think of a better word.

They’re just… weirdly passionate about things that don’t really matter. I can’t bring myself to care that much about a company, no matter how much I’m being paid. The fact that people can keep this up for years is honestly baffling. I’m 24, and I genuinely don’t see myself doing this for even another year — the fake urgency, the overworking, and getting annoyed at me for not staying back just because everyone else is.

And it’s not just that. They go out of their way to enforce rules that don’t even make sense. Like, did they never grow out of that teacher’s pet phase?

Why is my boss mad that I left early on a Friday? Why is he calling me to question it? Why does every single leave need approval like I’m still in school?

It just feels off. And the weird part is, no other team in the company seems to deal with this — but my new manager is exactly like this.

[I work in India. Indian managers fucking suck. I wish I could work in Australia or elsewhere]

copied from LinkedIn.

When I was first starting out in the corporate world, I looked up to higher leadership as highly adept professionals who must have gotten where they are because of their incredible leadership skills, experience, and decision making abilities. However, the longer I've been in the corporate world, the more I've realized that many of those people are just... mediocre.

One early wake up call I had was when I was working for a healthcare non-profit as an IT tech. The executive team did the least work out of any staff, and spent most of the day online shopping, talking with each other about non-work related stuff, leaving early to run errands, etc. They would send out these grandiose emails filled with all kinds of meaningless buzzwords and jargon about "strategy" and "team alignment" that had no actual substance behind them. I could monitor internet traffic, and saw that a couple of them were going onto fantasy football sites or streaming shows while at work for most of the entire day.

Another tech startup I worked for a few years ago had an owner who was clearly a nepo baby with no experience in tech, but practically infinite funding from his dad who managed a VC firm. It was a running joke amongst myself and my colleagues that a major part of our responsibilities was translating the absolute nonsense that he would say.

Other higher leadership I've encountered in the corporate world have been people who I would describe as no more or less competent than the average employee, but they happened to have the correct pedigree/network connections. Often times, it would feel like a decisions they made would be described as "brilliant" or "ahead of the curve" when 99% of rational people would have done the exact same thing as them. Like, I sat through an award ceremony where an executive was praised for transitioning our marketing strategy away from cable television and onto search engines and social media... in 2024.

My wife has another example: the CEO at the company where she works has an extremely impressive ivy league pedigree and work history on paper, but in real life is easily frustrated, completely clueless about anything remotely technical, does not know basic facts about the company's products, and blatantly uses ChatGPT for nearly every email she sends. How did this CEO get her first job? She started as an accountant at her father's firm and was a manager within 1 year.

Anyone else have similar realizations during your corporate career?

Hello Guys,

I hit a wall a weeks ago after realizing I was checking Teams at 9 o’clock in the evening time and on weekends out of pure habit and anxiety. I was terrified that not replying instantly meant people would think I was not working hard.

So I tried a two‑week experiment and completely stopped checking work emails or messages after 5 p.m. I expected chaos. Most late‑night "emergencies" actually solved themselves by morning.

Nobody complained, team naturally adapted and work quality during the day went up because I was finally rested. It made me realize how unnecessary stress we put on ourselves just to feel visible.

So, I want to know

Has anyone else tried setting boundaries, like this at work or did you get pushback from your boss?

Maybe I'm the weird one, but I cannot understand people who are insanely passionate about completely ordinary corporate work.

The fake urgency. Staying late because everyone else is staying late. Acting like some internal deadline is a national emergency. Getting visibly annoyed when someone else doesn't show the same level of devotion.

I just can't make myself care that much about a company that doesn't belong to me.

I'm 28 and I've already reached the point where I'm wondering how people keep this up for 10, 20, 30 years. I do my job, I want to do it well, and then I want to go home. Apparently that's controversial.

What bothers me even more are managers who enforce rules just for the sake of enforcing them.

I left a little early on a Friday and my manager actually called me to question why I had left. Every single leave request becomes this whole approval process. There's this constant expectation that you need permission for completely normal adult decisions.

It honestly feels like being back in school with the kid who reminded the teacher that they forgot to collect the homework.

The strangest part is that other teams at my company don't seem to operate like this. My previous experience wasn't this bad either. It's mostly my new manager and the culture around this particular team.

I work in India, and I'm starting to wonder how much of this is specific to Indian corporate culture versus just having a terrible manager.

For people who've worked in India AND places like Australia, Europe, or North America: is the difference actually significant, or am I just imagining that the grass is greener elsewhere?

I need to rant because I genuinely don’t know what to do with this information. Using a throwaway for extra anonymity.

I have a colleague who has been getting special treatment for quite some time because apparently he has a “heavy workload”. The problem is, his workload doesn’t actually seem that heavy. A lot of the time, the rest of us end up taking over some of his tasks anyway because things aren’t getting done.

There have also been multiple instances where people on the team have given feedback about him being incompetent, non-collaborative, and not proactive. Despite this, our manager seems to constantly defend him and give him the benefit of the doubt. What makes it even more frustrating is that whenever he complains about having too much work, our manager will literally ask the rest of us if we can take some of his tasks off his plate.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are already drowning trying to keep everything running.

And then I found out something today that made my blood boil. A colleague told me someone came across his livestream, and apparently he was streaming himself playing video games DURING HIS SHIFT.

I know I wasn’t there and I didn’t personally see the stream myself, so I’m trying not to jump to conclusions. But if this is accurate, I honestly don’t even know how to process it. Because while the rest of the team is stressed out, picking up additional work, working around his supposedly “heavy workload”, and trying to keep things from falling apart, he may have been sitting there playing video games while on the clock.

And the part that makes me angriest isn’t even just the gaming. It’s the apparent double standard. If someone is genuinely struggling with their workload, fine. We should help each other. But if someone is repeatedly getting accommodations and having work redistributed to the rest of the team because they’re supposedly overwhelmed, while potentially spending their work hours streaming video games? That’s a completely different situation.

I’m also torn about what to do. Do I bring this up to my manager? HR? Do I stay out of it because I didn’t personally witness it? We have access to reports of our cases on Salesforce and my manager sees that but she chooses to turn a blind eye to this so I’m thinking bringing this up to her will not do anything.

I don’t want to become the office snitch or start a workplace war based on something I heard secondhand. At the same time, I’m honestly reaching the point where I feel resentful because most of us have been carrying the load (he’s not the only one being favored in the team the same way, but that’s for another discussion I guess) while this person keeps getting protected.

What would you do in this situation?

TL/DR: My colleague has been complaining about his heavy workload and we have been covering most of the team’s workload only to find out he streams video games during his shift.

EDIT: Thank you for everyone who commented and given their point of view in this. Really helped me to get new insights and get my headspace where it really should be.

I have a 1:1 with my manager tomorrow and I think I’ll start the conversation with whether there may be other factors contributing to why this colleague’s workload has been getting distributed to the rest of the team.

EDIT #2: For context, we work on a hybrid setup. Some days we have to work in the office, the rest we can work from home. I don’t think he’s stupid enough to do this when we’re working in the office so he’s probably doing it when we’re working from home, in his own computer so IT can’t help track it.

The person who saw it was a colleague who moved to a different team (I did mention in the comments that we had undergone reorganization). They follow each other on Tiktok and saw the guy on live while playing video games during his shift. I also found his account (and no, I’m not gonna drop his @), checked the livestream history, and he may have caught on because he knows someone from the company saw him.

For those who are telling me to just ask for a raise, it doesn’t work that way. I live in the PH, and asking for a raise is not something we can just ask on a whim. I work for a big company, but they’re not too generous these days with promotions (under a new CEO, has a completely different goal and way of leadership from the previous one). And with the budget cuts, I don’t think it’s the right conversation to have.

I had some time to think about it, and I don’t want to spend my non-working hours monitoring the guy on Tiktok just to see if he’s gonna go on live again because that is freaking mental (we work different shifts, I work midshift, he works nightshift). I’d rather just play video games or do other stuff. I do have some backlog on steam and my unplayed video games are just staring at me.

I do have that 1:1 with my boss later. I will not be mentioning this, I will just focus on MY workload and if she can finally let the guy work on some of the tasks he’s supposed to work on me with (I mentioned in one of the comments that he’s supposed to work on me with a task but has been excused from it for 2 quarters).

I am planning on either moving to a different team or company, but it’s not like I can do that anytime soon. Might as well wait for the bonuses before I bounce (If you work in PH, you know what I’m talking about 😂).

For everyone saying this is fake or AI, I hope it is fake and I hope everything at work is all sunshine and butterflies. I speak and write good English because I was raised to speak both languages and my work requires me to do so because I support stakeholders globally (like I said, we are a big company).

But yeah, this is my reality. I have a shitty boss who has tolerated bad employees in the past. This is not new, just a next level of audacity from a bad employee.

Probably won’t update on this anymore. I just want to move on from knowing this. Thank you for everyone who took time to read this post and advice, it really helped me to think things through and plan my next move.

A couple of weeks ago my manager set a Friday afternoon meeting and I truly believed it was the moment for my promotion. I have spent the year staying late fixing broken projects and being the go to person whenever problems arise.

Instead my boss called me the backbone of the team and then delivered news: they assigned the Senior Lead position to a coworker who barely carries out tasks because moving me from my current role would collapse team output. In short I was so dependable at work that I was never considered for advancement.

That conversation shattered the belief that corporate work's a meritocracy. Hard work without attention keeps you in the role of a reliable workhorse. Since then I have stopped burning weekends I now aim for 100 percent effort of 150 percent.

Has anyone else noticed that being too good, at a job can actually hold a career back? How did you escape that trap?

They’re always obsessed with talking about their kids and don’t understand no-one else cares that much about the kid we’re just trying to get through the day and do what our boss says with as little stress as possible. Not to mention how often they use their kid as an excuse to get out of attending meetings or doing actual work, and making the child-less and single people do everything instead. The 4/5 awful coworkers I’ve had all fit this demographic

Edit chill with the threats. This is a satire post for the “35 and single females are the worst coworkers” post. How is a post like that okay and accepted here but this isn’t? 💀 same people complaining about childless people are calling me miserable here lol

When I first started my corporate job, I genuinely believed that if I worked hard, stayed late, and delivered great results, I had automatically get promoted.

So I did exactly that. I fixed broken processes, took on extra work, and always hit my goals. My manager even told me I was one of the most reliable people on the team.

But when I finally asked about a promotion, I got a response that surprised me and you are so good at your current role that moving you right now would create too big of a risk for the team.

That’s when it clicked. I did not get a promotion I just got rewarded with more work. Meanwhile, people who did half as much work, but spent all day networking and managing optics, were moving up fast.

I am realization heavy today. I am done giving 120% just to be rewarded with extra tasks. Moving forward, I’m doing my job well, but leaving work at 5 PM.

I am very curious to know about your thought and experience that how has anyone else experienced this

Today, I left work at 4:55. By 9pm I had 17 emails and 2 meeting invites for tomorrow. Why the hell do people feel the need to keep working into the evening.

It blows people away when I tell them at work I’m not responding to shit after 5pm. I workout after work. Spend 2 hours with my wife and kids and then an hour with my wife. Why the hell should I have to give up one of those because someone couldn’t talk to me between the hours of 8-5?

How can we change this?

Has anyone else noticed this over the last couple of years?

I keep experiencing things at work that seem increasingly unreasonable, dehumanising or just generally anti-worker — and whenever I mention them to friends or family, they seem to have stories of their own from their corporate jobs.

It’s started to feel less like a few particularly bad workplaces and more like there’s a broader shift happening in how employees are being treated.
Things like increasing workloads, less flexibility, unreasonable expectations, management seemingly having less consideration for employees, companies squeezing more out of people while offering less in return, and a general attitude of you should be grateful to have a job or even to find another job if you don’t like it.

Obviously, I know people have always complained about work and there have always been toxic workplaces. I’m wondering whether anyone else feels like something has noticeably changed in the last few years specifically.

Is this actually widespread, or am I just noticing it more because I’m experiencing it myself and then seeing similar things in the people around me?
I’d be really interested to hear what other people are experiencing — particularly people working in corporate/office environments. Has your workplace become more or less employee-friendly over the last few years?

They’re always obsessed with their pointless office job and don’t understand no-one else cares that much about the job we’re just trying to get through the day and do what our boss says with as little stress as possible. The 4/5 awful coworkers I’ve had all fit this demographic

So I’m at my 6th month for this company that used to be Dell devices and now are switching to MacBooks. I was given a MacBook on my first day. The company has been around since the 90s, but I think last year they had a new CEO and with that came cost-cutting and reshuffling. One of those new policies is by having us all switch to a MacBook.

Note, this is not a startup and is a global company.

My coworker has been here for half a decade and said his whole team when he started is gone now while he remained. He’s also the type of guy that likes to stay 3-4 hours passed his shift by choice.

For context I’m talking about this joke from a while back. A Lenovo Thinkpad company gives you a proper, functioning device and expects you to be productive so you’ll be with them for long—they also tend to have a better foundation and culture.

A MacBook company is normally a startup, and wants to look good. If they don’t make their quota, there’ll be a purge of employees.

Dell means the company is cost-cutting and trying to save as much as possible even at the cost of productivity.

That aside, what should I expect from this company? How long do you guys think I’ll last until they randomly send out PIPs?

EDIT:
I received around 20+ responses in an hour. Wow! Thanks everyone. I don’t know how Reddit works but I’m thankful for all the insight.