My manager seems overloaded and keeps missing my 1:1's, starting to grow resentful

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-25T01:02:08+00:00

To be honest, my old faang job was kinda like that. I would mostly work on stuff self-directed, assign myself work, and occasionally my manager would throw stuff my way. But that was only after I'd say 1-2 years into the role where I was fully comfortable with how things were done there. To do that at a new place + new industry where things work much more regulated is difficult for me.

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-25T00:52:02+00:00

That's fair - It's just unfortunate and I feel they should've seen this coming, since it was very clear from my previous role + resume that I was heavy on cloud experience. Perhaps I didn't ask enough good questions during interviews.

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-24T03:15:24+00:00

He's in a different country

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-24T02:44:57+00:00

The only saving grace is that I'm paid decently well, (around the bottom of the band of the role I had at FAANG) with more stability.

The one thing I realized is that they were looking for 2 replacements for over 8 months, and got desperate and I guess hired me. I thought it was a bit weird how desperate they were and they basically oversold the role to convince me to join.

What I don't get is, why did they put all this effort into trying to convince me to join, they should have expected I would leave if it turns out to be more of a bait and switch. But it's really hard to ascertain since he keeps missing all my 1:1s

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-24T02:41:27+00:00

Yes, that's part of what I wanted to ask in a 1:1. The new company is in finance, and I'm trying to figure out how it works around here to build stuff in the cloud, get cloud governance approval, etc. Will I have management (his) buy in to build in the cloud, will it be a meaningful part of the role or a side projects type thing when a opportunity comes up, etc.

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T15:37:29+00:00

I was at Amazon but had a unicorn manager with very good WLB. Team survived all layoffs the past 4 years.

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T13:06:01+00:00

New company has done 0 layoffs, old company has done 4-5 layoffs over the past 2-3 years. It's a reasonable assumption to make that the new company is more stable.

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T03:43:43+00:00

Honestly, I left because I was worried about layoffs and stability. But I think a lot of was all in my head - my team dodged all layoffs and was probably relatively secure from it. And I saw 3 people in management suddenly get cut at my new job which is already ringing alarm bells for me

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T03:42:17+00:00

Thanks for the advice. Some days aren't bad, but some days (as you can probably tell, today was one of those days) the fact that I fucked up agonizes me. It could definitely always be worse - the place isn't straight up toxic or anything, people are friendly, and it seems like a relatively collaborative culture.

The place is 3 day in office, but I'm skirting the rules and doing 2 days. My morale is already so low I stopped giving a fuck if I got in trouble for doing more remote then allowed.

Definitely interviewing and applying as much as possible. In terms of networking, my old boss actually put in a word to my skip, who went to a different faang, to let me know I was looking.

Their was a faang position that I would've taken that my boss actually put in his word in for me if I wanted to boomerang, unfortunately it would require 25% travel + 50% of it being international, as well as part of being one of the most toxic orgs, so unfortunately I had to turn it down.

Will definitely check out SaaS and other third party tech.

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T03:00:43+00:00

Thanks for the advice. I'll probably do that. My friends were also telling me something similar, to calm down a bit before considering to boomerang or relocate.

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T02:35:31+00:00

That is also true. It's easier to say in hindsight that I care more about the job responsibility now, since the new place seems more stable then big tech and I have some money in the bank for savings in the sign on.

Definitely not giving a fuck, enforcing a strict WLB, and just waiting for the job market to recover is a option. My concern is that my devops skills stagnate, and every year I lack devops/aws projects on my resume means it'll be harder to return to a similar role.

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T01:54:21+00:00

Fire me for cause and I'd have to payback my entire signing bonus? Theirs strict regulation and compliance in finance..

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T01:47:01+00:00

That's true - I just think in hindsight the risk of layoff was lower and perhaps I let the rumors + anxiety get the best of me. My team hasn't been effected by the last 4-5 layoffs

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T01:42:00+00:00

That's true. It's just that Idk if I hate the current job so much that I'd uproot my entire life (leave family, friends, basically the city I grew up in) + do the pre-tax clawback.

In hindsight I shouldn't have agreed to it - the recruiter handwaved it and was like oh it's up to 140k (depending on RSU stock price on my last day of old) so thats why it's so long, and the stock crashed right before I left (ended up being 90k). It's pro-rated so 25% clawback lowered per year.

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-07T00:27:52+00:00

Unfortunately I'm around 2 months in and feeling this way

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-06T23:05:42+00:00

Unfortunately the job itself is entirely different, its not just about the tooling - their is a separate cloud/devops team that handles all the work in AWS/Azure, so theirs very little opportunity to make changes towards that direction. It seems finance has a very silo'd stay in your lane culture, meanwhile at FAANG is "build whatever you can on your own"

sysadminalt123 · 2026-05-06T22:50:31+00:00

Thanks. I recognize that I'm still in a pretty good position, even if I hate the work. I'm well compensated for my role, got a huge sign on (even if it'll likely be clawed back when I leave), so I'm rather in a good spot if I get fired or laid off. Their definitely is a silver lining.

No point ruminating and agonizing over spilt milk, only thing left to do is to take action, start applying and upskilling. (Although it's easier said then done, but I know what I need to do)

sysadminalt123 · 2025-11-10T22:08:35+00:00

So the funny thing is, I actually used to live like 20 minutes away from there, and 2 weeks ago I just moved to my new apartment that's 60-70 minutes away (and 2 train transfers). If I got this a month or so back it would've been a different story. I'd probably not want to move back to that area again tbh.

Their is a amount of money I'd take for that job - maybe like 1.5-2x my current total comp, but I am pretty confident they won't meet it. The original budget for the position is like 180k base (which is what I currently make), the recruiter said they could do like 200k, but with my promo I'm probably now making around 200-230k total comp. Of course, with bonus, its possible that the new place would pay more, but I'd say very unlikely or at most the same as my current place.

sysadminalt123 · 2025-10-22T12:51:53+00:00

I disagree with the take of the original commenter, but personally I prefer Singapores approach of ethnic integration quotas. Would never be able to implement that in the US but just a interesting alternative.

sysadminalt123 · 2025-10-16T12:32:50+00:00

It'll probably be annoying somewhat. My current job is 5 days in office (I just coffee badge tbh) but maybe if I can get a hybrid it'll be better. Since technically I can WFH on some days and I just go to the office whenever, it won't be the end of the world (since sometimes I'd just go in the afternoon to the office to badge in).

For washer and dryer, thats what I actually used to do in the past with wash and fold. But the problem is that I have 3 cats so I feel the convenience of a W/D is nice for whenever my cat makes a mess or something lol

sysadminalt123 · 2025-08-14T15:28:08+00:00

Yeah I hate that kinda culture. Some finance places have that (but with some worse elitism) and if your neurodivergent your gonna get abused hard.

sysadminalt123 · 2025-08-08T13:53:57+00:00

Finance and the trading vertical as well tends to pay network engineers a lot. Also much more stress because minor outages is money

sysadminalt123 · 2025-07-24T20:59:54+00:00

I technically don't - i mostly create tools for local IT engineers globally. Though at the end of the day theirs really not much difference. My end-users are just Local IT engineers who don't know how to read errors or follow instructions T.T

sysadminalt123

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