Hey everyone. I need to talk about something that’s been eating at me, and I could really use some outside perspective. I think my manager is trying to push me out of my job.
His name is Mark. We used to have a pretty good, professional relationship. But for the last three or four months, it’s like a switch flipped. It started subtly. He’d take me off projects I was leading and reassign them to others with a vague, “I just think Sarah’s skills are a better fit for this phase.” No further explanation.
Then, the micromanaging began. Every single email I draft, he wants to review before I send it. He’ll sit next to me and watch me work on a spreadsheet, questioning every formula. He’s set up weekly one-on-ones that feel more like interrogations than check-ins. He’ll grill me on the tiniest details of tasks I completed weeks ago, looking for any inconsistency, any small mistake.
And when he does find something—a typo in an internal memo, a miscalculated number that was easily fixed—he doesn’t just point it out. He CCs his own boss on the email, with a message like, “Just flagging this for awareness and to ensure we maintain our high standards.” It makes me look incompetent over things that are completely normal, everyday errors.
The worst part is the isolation. He’s pulled me off the main client team I helped build. I used to be in all the strategy meetings; now I get a summarized email after the fact. It feels deliberate, like he’s cutting me out of the information loop, making me less essential.
I’ve tried to talk to him about it. I scheduled a meeting and said, “Mark, I feel like my role has been shifting, and I want to make sure I’m meeting your expectations.” He gave me this practiced, calm smile and said, “I’m just trying to help you grow. We all have areas for improvement.” But he couldn’t give me a single concrete example of what I should be improving when I pressed him. It was all corporate buzzwords: “be more proactive,” “increase synergy,” “own your outcomes.”
I’m starting to feel like I’m going crazy. Is this all in my head? Am I just being paranoid? But my gut is screaming that this is a coordinated effort to make me so miserable, or look so bad, that I either quit or give him a solid reason to fire me.
So, I’m turning to you all. What would you do?
* Do I go to HR? But isn’t HR there to protect the company, not me? What if they just tell Mark, and it makes everything worse?
* Or do I just keep my head down, try to be perfect, and hope he gets bored or moves on?
I’m good at my job. I know I am. My reviews before this were always excellent. But now I’m second-guessing every move I make, and I’m constantly anxious. I’m losing sleep over this.
Honestly, any advice you have would be a lifesaver right now. Have any of you been through something like this? How did you handle it?
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