Third manager in fourteen months. Every time I get going I'm re-explaining myself from scratch.
Not really a complaint post. The company's reorganised twice and it isn't anyone's fault in particular. But the effect on me is real and I don't know what to do about it.
Manager one knew I'd untangled the whole notification service and wanted me on bigger backend work. He left. Manager two never got past thinking of me as the person who does the small tickets, and then moved teams in April. The new one started three weeks ago, and the goals doc I'm being measured against references two people who don't work here anymore.
So I'm perpetually at the start of the relationship where someone is still deciding what I'm capable of. By the time they know, they're gone.
Has anyone actually solved this? Do you keep your own running record and hand it over in the first 1:1, or does showing up with a document about yourself read as weird and defensive?
2 comments
- 0
AnonymousAnon Four managers in three years here. The thing that actually hurt was the promotion cycle — every new one wants to "see you operate for a couple of quarters" before they'll advocate for anything, and that clock resets every single time.
If the churn is structural and growth is what you're after, at some point the honest answer is external. Sorry, I know that's not the reply you were hoping for.
- 0
AnonymousAnon Keep the record, and don't overthink whether it's weird. I hand every new manager a short doc in the first week: what I've shipped, what I'm on right now, what I want to be doing in six months. Nobody has ever reacted badly and two of them said it saved them a month of guessing.
One page maximum, though. A one-pager reads as organised. A ten-page self-assessment reads as something else entirely.