Hey everyone. Im in my 20s and work as a project manager at a small company ~60 employees. My current company has fucked me over incredibly hard over the past 6 months. I have basically been the ONLY resource on every single project I manage, and the sales team forced me to speed up my original timelines that I created. That coupled with really subpar work from a few new engineers that I didn’t expect is making those deadlines impossible to reach. I’ve told my leadership team this, and they told me to “grind” to meet the deadlines or else they’ll lose important partnership relationships.
I put in my 2 weeks last week. With the holiday coming up, my last day is supposed to be Wednesday. I have set up countless meetings to transition these projects, but was told that I need to stay on them until my very last day since my last day happens to be when multiple deadlines occur. At first I stood my ground, but then they started manipulating me by telling me I’d really be screwing over the company and the team if I did so. I’m a very caring person and it’s to my detriment at this point – they know my personality, and knew that telling me this would make me take back those boundaries.
However, I’ve been working this entire weekend and this stuff is nowhere near able to be complete. I even pulled in other coworkers to help and it’s still just not doable. I told my superiors this, and was still just met with “you just need to grind, think of how you’ll feel if you don’t & the rest of the team has to work on the holiday to pick up your slack”.
I’m at my breaking point. I can’t sleep or eat or function because of the anxiety this is causing me. I rationally know that this is not my fault and I voiced my concerns every chance I got. Everyone in my life is telling me I don’t need to care anymore, I have a new job set up to start in a couple weeks and everything. But the thought of my current coworkers having to “pick up this slack” is killing me inside and causing me so much pain and anxiety.
I think enough is enough. I think I’m going to spend the rest of the night putting together clear documentation of what still needs to be done, and distributing it tomorrow. And afterwards, turning in my laptop and being done. Please give me some words of encouragement for this if you can. I’m so nervous about what my leadership team is going to do because I’m seeing them in person tomorrow.
Talk some sense into me. Thanks!!