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Experience
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2025 Q2
Am I being micromanaged or am I overreacting to a new work environment.
63 upvotes
67 replies
Interview Experience
Spent around 2 years at my previous job as an AI engineer (had to leave because the commute was around 3 hours and I reached a point where I was just done with it) but it was working environment, smal
Full Details
Spent around 2 years at my previous job as an AI engineer (had to leave because the commute was around 3 hours and I reached a point where I was just done with it) but it was working environment, small team flexible boss we had to fill in a timesheet(for charging clients and making sure we have enough members in the department so no one is overworked). When I was interviewing at the new company I was asked what my salary range was and the boss said he can pay more than that, when he invited me to an impromptu technical interview he showed me a problem that can be done in multiple ways so when I was giving my answer he and the team lead were displeased and said they wanted me to use a different more niche method that I didn't know and said that my knowledge was behind and that for the salary he'll stick to the salary of my previous job instead of giving the higher salary we discussed. (Red flag I know but was kinda desperate). Started at the new company(on site) 2 months ago and everything has been worse. I'm in the onboarding period but I have to update a channel with the boss and the team leads every few hours what I'm doing/got done. Update the Jira ticket comments every few hours where I'm at and what I'm doing, fill in a timesheet for my 8 hour shift every minute has to be accounted for. So far I feel like this is wild but they're an agile team there's collaboration so maybe that's what it takes to work properly in a team(5-6 people).I had some trouble properly updating the channel or Jira sometimes because I sometimes felt like stopping deep work to update kinda took me out of the zone. I was also doing daily standup meetings with the team lead while doing all of that Anyways the team lead has been here for like 4 years and would assign me a Jira ticket for example which had a vague or not detailed description of what I need to do, I complete the ticket then he complains about how I did it and tells me how he wants me to do it. This was frustrating but I learned to ask a lot more questions before touching any code. I had like an issue once or twice where I forgot to link a ticket to the parent or wrote too short of description or he didn't like the way I phrased my ticket so he would asked me what my issue is and why I can't take proper steps to address his critiques (the issues where like 3 occasions and two of them where honest mistakes). I was given an additional task outside of my onboarding tasks which was kinda complex to do because he wanted done a certain way even though the way I was doing it gave literally the same results in ever way; so he started saying I was slow with my work. Fast forward 2 months into the onboarding and my boss calls me in to do a meeting with the team lead and HR where I'm basically told I'm slow and have communication problems. I made my case that I was given more tasks than the other fresh starting people the team lead retorts saying even on the same tickets I'm taking longer than my peers. This made me take a step back because that felt really off like why am I being tracked and compared to my peers and the other thing is that the two phases of the onboarding one was within the job description the other wasn't(backend focused work) so I am learning this from scratch. The boss also commented that I put In full 8 hour time block stretches on one task on the timesheet which wasn't true checked the logs and couldn't find an example. After the meeting I went to compare my ticket completion time with coworkers and noticed that some tickets I finished faster some tickets they did and whatever tickets they completed faster I was like maybe 1-2 hours behind so that just kinda made me feel bad about my work. I'm just wondering is this normal work behaviour or is this crazy I'm already looking for other jobs but this experience just made me question my competencey tbh. My previous work experience I was for the most part working alone answering to a lead so I was never in an agile environment and wondering if this is how things are or I'm at a toxic workplace? Tldr: Boss and team leads constantly asking for updates and logging every hour of my work in 4 or more ways. Having my training work time compared to my cowokers and being told I'm lagging behind. Is this a normal working environment?
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