I'm happy to announce I have passed my performance review.

Overall rating: "Meets Expectations". I have been meeting expectations for 3 years. I have exceeded them for 2. The difference, I've been told, is "visibility".

I have learned that visibility means talking louder in meetings, sending emails at 11pm, and saying "great shout" when my manager repeats my idea back to me.

I am a very good performer. The performance is exhausting.

Four years. My therapist says I've made "significant progress" separating self-worth from performance scores.

My manager says I'm "not quite ready" for senior level.

One of us is right.

Excited to share I was promoted to Lead UI/UX Designer.

What they left out: same salary. 40% more responsibility. I now manage two people with zero management training. One of them was passed over for my role and is not thrilled about it.

But the title looks incredible on here!

Delighted to be back from maternity leave and starting an exciting new chapter.

My old projects have been "restructured". My desk is gone. Three people have asked if I'm "sure" I want to come back full time.

Yes. I'm sure. I also need to pay rent.

I'm officially a Mooqler.

Six interview rounds. A 20-hour unpaid take-home project. A hiring freeze mid-process. Two rejections before this offer. I cried in more Ubers than I can count.

I will tell absolutely no one how much it cost me to get here.

Thrilled to announce I'm entering my 18th month of unemployment.

847 applications sent. 3 replies. 1 interview that ghosted me after the final round. I have rewritten my CV 11 times. I have been told I am "overqualified", "underqualified", and "not quite the right culture fit" — sometimes for the same role.

Thriving!

Thrilled to announce I have been laid off for the third time in 18 months.

January 2023: "organisational restructure". August 2023: "strategic realignment". Last week: "evolving business priorities".

Three companies. Three all-hands Zoom calls. Three times I was told it was "nothing personal" by someone who did not know my name.

I have started rating restructures the way people rate Ubers. This last one gets 3 stars — at least they gave me two weeks notice.

Excited to share I've completed my 4th mandatory Mental Health Day this year.

I spent it answering emails. My manager sent three of them. One was marked urgent. It was not urgent.

Looking forward to my 5th.

Thrilled to announce I've been asked to "do more with less" for the 6th consecutive year.

Less is now nothing. We are doing things with nothing. I have written a 14-slide deck explaining how we will do things with nothing. The deck required 3 rounds of revisions. It is a very good deck about nothing.

Happy to share I gave honest feedback in our anonymous employee survey.

I have since been called into three separate meetings. My manager has "some questions". HR would like to "touch base". My skip-level wants to "open a dialogue".

The survey was anonymous.

Delighted to share I have a second interview for a role that pays less than my last job, has fewer benefits, and requires "startup energy".

I've learned that startup energy means unpaid overtime, an office with a ping pong table that nobody uses, and a Slack channel called #wins where the founders post their own tweets.

I am going to the interview.

Excited to share I've been "kept on file" by 47 companies.

I am no one's file. I have never heard from any of them again. I have searched my inbox. I have checked spam. I am in 47 files and I am in none of them.

I've been at this company 6 years. A new hire doing my job starts next Monday.

His salary is 30% higher than mine. I know this because he told me at lunch on his first day. He seemed embarrassed. I told him not to be. He did nothing wrong. I have since updated my CV.

We have been introduced. He seems nice.

Pleased to announce I have perfected the art of looking busy on a call while being completely checked out.

Four years of practice. I nod at 12-second intervals. I type occasionally — it is the same sentence, deleted and retyped. I have never been caught. I am very tired.

Our CEO just announced we're "doubling down on our people-first culture".

This is two weeks after the third round of layoffs this year. The announcement was made on a Friday at 4:45pm. There was a slide with a sunrise on it. The slide said "our people are our greatest asset". 34 of our greatest assets were let go that morning.

I've been told my role is being "sunset".

Not cut. Not eliminated. Sunset. As if I'm a feature. As if I'm a legacy integration they've finally decided to deprecate. As if my seven years here are a technical debt they've chosen to write off.

I've been sunset. I'm going for a walk.

Thrilled to announce our finances are stable.

In February, our president wrote to all staff confirming there was no need for redundancies. The email had three paragraphs. It used the word "confident" twice.

By March, 52 members of staff had received at-risk notices. A 30-day statutory consultation has begun.

The email was very well written.

Excited to share I have spent seven years waiting for a promotion that was always six months away.

Four managers. Each one inherited the promise from the last. Each one said "there's a real opportunity here". None of them were lying, exactly. The opportunity was always real. It was just never mine.

My last manager called me in on a Thursday. He said the company was unable to move forward. Then he asked if I wanted to look for opportunities elsewhere.

I said I would think about it. I had already been thinking about it for two years.

Pleased to share I have had the most difficult conversation of my quarter.

She has been here seven years. I inherited her case from three managers before me. Each file had the same note: "strong candidate, timing not right."

We promoted someone else in 2021. Restructured in 2023. Froze headcount. Restructured again.

I told her we couldn't move forward. I asked if she wanted to look elsewhere. It was the most honest thing any of us had said to her in seven years.

I'm not sure that makes it better.

Thrilled to announce I have completed six rounds of interviews over two months.

I received a letter of intent. I asked for a better title and salary. I also told the headhunter: if nothing changes, I will still join. I thought being honest about what I wanted, while being clear I was committed, was the right thing to do.

The offer was withdrawn. I heard from the headhunter on a Friday. I have not heard from them since.

I have thought about what I would do differently. I am not sure I would do anything differently. I am not sure that helps.

Pleased to announce I have delivered the bad news to 6 people this quarter.

None of it was my decision. All of it was my face. I was the one in the room. I was the one who said "this was a really difficult decision". I was the one who got the silent walk back to the desk.

Leadership said I "handled it with grace". I have not slept properly in two weeks.

Excited to share I have sat in 3 meetings about headcount reduction this quarter.

And then walked back to my team and said everything is fine. And then answered Slack messages about career growth. And then written performance reviews for people whose roles may not exist in 60 days.

I am excellent at compartmentalisation. I am not sure this is a compliment.

Thrilled to announce our runway is 4 months.

I have not told anyone. I am on a podcast next week talking about our exciting growth trajectory. I have just approved new office plants. I approved them before I ran the numbers. The plants are very nice.

I started this company because I wanted to build something honest. I am unsure when that changed.

Happy to share I approved a 0% salary increase across the company this year.

I also approved a £40,000 rebrand. The new logo is very clean. I have not connected these two decisions publicly. Several people have connected them privately. I know this because someone left a printed copy of the rebrand invoice on my chair.

The new logo is still very clean.

Delighted to announce I have written "people are our greatest asset" in 14 internal documents this year.

I was also in the room for all 3 rounds of layoffs. I drafted the scripts. I reviewed the severance packages. I nodded when someone said "we're doing this with empathy".

I don't know what empathy means in that context. I wrote it anyway.

Excited to share I have streamlined our performance review process.

It now takes longer. The ratings mean less. Three people have asked me what "exceeds expectations in this context" actually means. I have a 4-page document that answers this question. Nobody has read it, including me.

The process is very streamlined.

Our employee engagement survey came back 3.2 out of 5.

We have decided to run a workshop to discuss the results. I will be facilitating the workshop. I am aware that I am part of the problem. The workshop has a slide with a sunflower on it.

I rejected a candidate today for "asking too much".

He asked for £15,000 less than my salary. I told him we would "keep looking". We have been looking for four months. We are still looking. He has probably found something better. I hope he has.

I announced mandatory return to office this Monday.

On Tuesday I flew to Lisbon for two weeks to "meet with partners". I worked from a co-working space. It had better coffee than our office. I have not mentioned this on the all-hands call.

We promoted our best performer in January. She left in July.

In her exit interview she told us exactly why. I typed it into a report. I sent the report to leadership. Nobody read it. She is now at a competitor earning 40% more. The competitor is winning.

I have given the same "high potential" speech to 6 people in 3 years.

Four of them have left. One of them is my manager now at a different company. One of them sends me LinkedIn connection requests I don't accept because I'm embarrassed. The speech was very good though.

Thrilled to share that I have written the most important email of my career.

It took four drafts. Legal reviewed it twice. Communications said it struck "the right tone". I used the word "confident" because someone told me "certain" sounded too strong.

Three weeks later, 52 people received at-risk notices. Several of them replied to my email to tell me.

I have not replied to their replies. My communications team advised against it. The tone, they said, needed to remain consistent.

Happy to share we have concluded a role restructure.

The word "sunset" came up on a Tuesday. Someone said it in passing. Nobody questioned it. It moved through three approval layers and into an official letter without anyone asking what it actually meant to the person receiving it.

She replied with one line. It was very polite. I read it four times.

I still have the draft of my reply. I have not sent it.

Pleased to announce I have completed this year's performance review cycle.

Claire's numbers were the best on the team. I submitted "Meets Expectations". The form asked me to justify it. I wrote "visibility". I have written "visibility" for three years. It is the only word that fits in the box without requiring a conversation I am not allowed to have.

She did not say anything when she saw the result. That was worse than if she had.

Excited to share that we received 847 applications for one role.

We used a tool to screen them. The tool filtered by keyword. I checked the settings once, at the beginning. I have not checked them since. Three of the 847 received replies. I don't know if they were the right three. Nobody has asked me this question. I have started asking it myself.

Happy to share that Marcus has been with us for four years.

He should have been promoted two years ago. Every calibration session, I make the case. Every calibration session, someone says "not enough cross-functional visibility". I have started writing it down before I go in. It does not help.

Last week he asked me directly. I said "not quite ready". I have said this three times. I do not know how much longer he will stay. I do not know what I will say if he leaves.

My job is to get the best possible offer. I did my job.

She asked me to negotiate a better title and salary after receiving the letter of intent. She was clear: if nothing moves, she will still join. I passed both messages on. I thought the second one would reassure them.

It didn't. They heard the first message and decided what kind of candidate she was. The second message came too late.

I made the call on a Friday afternoon. She was very calm. That was the hardest part.

Excited to announce I have completed my first hire at this company.

We withdrew the offer.

She asked for a better title and salary after the letter of intent. She also said she would join regardless. I believed her. I took it to my manager. My manager heard the first part and stopped listening.

I tried to explain. I was not convincing enough. I have thought about what I could have said differently. I don't know if it would have mattered.

She would have been good. I think we both know that.

I was unemployed for 2 years. Today I turned down a job offer.

Not because it wasn't good enough. Because I finally know what I'm worth — and it wasn't in that offer. Two years ago I would have said yes before they finished the sentence.

I don't know when the right thing comes. But I know I'm done saying yes to the wrong ones.

I was made redundant on a Tuesday. I cried for three days.

On the fourth day I left a comment on a stranger's LinkedIn post saying their work was good. They replied. We had a call. We are now working on a project together.

I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't written that comment. Probably cried a fourth day.

The most useful thing I learned in my career was not a skill.

It was knowing when to leave. I stayed two years too long at every job I've had. I am getting faster at recognising the feeling. Last month I left after six months. It was the right call.

I am learning to trust that.