[Thread] What is the best thing your manager ever told you?

hooked up with someone from my previous job, now she is my girlfriend and we are going strong 5 years.

TLDR; Did B.Tech in ECE from a tier 3 college. In college, explored different avenues and finally found deep learning and computer vision to be the most interesting. Did lots of projects, research paper etc. However, being from a tier 3 college, making a career in this domain wasn’t easy. Graduated in 2020, joined a startup as an intern with a stipend of 35k per month. 6 months later, the internship didn’t convert, although I worked really hard and my manager liked my work. Joined another startup with a salary of 6.5LPA. Although I had better offers, I decided to go with this one ad they were providing WFH (it was peak covid time). A few months into this startup, I realised the founder had no goal, no vision, was given random vague projects, founders would pick up any project that their client would somehow talk about, assign it to me without doing any market research, and few months later scratch that. I realised, there was no future here, and for no reason, one of the founder kept micromanaging me (although the colleagues and seniors were great). And by that time, I also realised I was severely underpaid, as one of my close friend, who was a year junior to me was paid higher. I decided to leave that place, during a time of mass resignations in 2022 (the founders did try to retain me, but I was adamant as I didn’t see any vision and founder was too rigid to listen to anyone). I worked there for 1.3 years, at the same salary. Later on in August 2022, I joined a series C funded startup, with a base pay of 14.5LPA, at nearly 2 YOE. While the hike was well above 120%, in some time I realised that this was the salary that they paid to IIT campus hires. Felt a little demotivated, Also, the culture here isn’t exactly good and sometimes gets quite toxic. However, I kept commited to my work, and come March 2023, I got a 10% appraisal, for which the VP personally had a conversation, I conveyed that I had higher expectations considering I joined at lower pay (1/n)

So it's that time of the year when variable payouts are being processed. Everyone’s excited, checking their bank accounts. I get the email from HR - "Your annual bonus is..." I open it It’s enough to buy me a nice lunch I go to my boss and ask him about it He says "We had a tough year, need to tighten our belts" I look at his belt - it’s designer Meanwhile, I’m tightening mine to skip meals. I said "Thanks" and left. He says "Keep up the good work" I leave the meeting room and start Googling jobs - CONFESSED NO ONE

Knew this as concept but didn't know the term. Learnt it last week on one of my posts here Have you faced this in any of your previous companies?

I work in a senior role at a small sized bootstrapped company. Due to health reasons, I have had to take multiple WFHs and Medical Leaves. In the past 3 months, these things have happened during my physical absence at the office: 1. Communicated to my team member that he is doing well and hence getting a surprise hike in compensation. I'm happy for him but I was working on his hike for the past several months and I lost the opportunity to announce it. The leadership was slacking on it for months and immediately when I took leave they announced it. 2. Full on micromanagement of my team bypassing me is now a daily affair. 3. Complementing my team for successes and blaming me for failures. I have spent well over 10y in Corporate India. Isn't all this super toxic?

I'll go first: "I want you to focus on doing good work and not on how much money you're making." Achchha aur mera rent kaun dega?

Title. Would love to know the name of the company too. Asking for a friend.

As the title says, I wanna know what's your highest percentage increase in salary in the same company. How can we increase our chances of getting a good increment? Is it just performance? Have you ever negotiated a salary increment? Would love to know!

Thought I will make this revelation. Smart Managers deliberately continue to keep ordinary people in their team and these people are given a decent hike too so that they can stay in the company until there is a layoff scenario. This generally happens with product based companies that undergo periodic layoffs regardless of economic slowdown. So if you are an ordinary employee & continue to get encouraging feedback from your manager plus a decent hike every year, beware! This might be a smart-trap laid by your manager.

18 years in the same company. Company grew, my boss became a millionaire. I was still stuck making pittance, no company shares, no stock options. It was almost like I was taken for granted. Last straw came when I was handed an envelope at the Christmas party with ten 20 dollar bills, "annual bonus". Gave my 2 week notice, the team and HR planned a farewell lunch, I didnt go. Said good bye on Teams and signed out. Today I am free. Next month, I start as a Manager in another company, already my new boss seems light years ahead of my old one. He has been communicating with me regularly, getting me acclimatized to the new company by inviting me to observe team meetings and sending me links and articles, even before my start date.