Hi y'all!
At the beginning of 2022, I started a new job in a field I love and also landed a great salary + benefits. My boss has been very chill from the start and basically told me that he doesn't care what I do or how I organize my time as long as I meet targets. My colleagues seemed to be nice and were doing their own thing as our duties/projects don't overlap.
Now, I do my job quite well and I got many things automated so now it's not stressful at all – I love it! For the first time in my life I didn't have a micromanaging boss, a ton of useless meetings in my schedule and other frustrating corporate things. However, a month ago the management announced that they would like to expand our team and some of my colleagues thought that they might get promoted as we hire some younger people in our team to cover the assistant/coordinator roles.
Suddenly, I noticed that most of my colleagues are trying hard to 'prove themselves' to our boss and the management by coming up with new projects, setting up regular catch-up sessions, creating pointless or redundant excel files 'for the team', etc. Our group chat used to be used rarely but now it's everyone trying to show how much they're contributing every day. Mind you, our type of work doesn't require much collaboration or coordination between the teammates as we all have our individual clients and projects.
I feel like the bar has been raising, and that it will make me look bad. I don't have that much freedom to organize my own schedule anymore and I am stuck in pointless meetings much more.
what should I do? I need this job and can't quit for sure in the next few months, but I also don't want to reach the level where I absolutely hate it. I'd appreciate any advice from someone who's been in the same boat