Long and convoluted story but fuck middle management, tldr at the bottom, using a throwaway because my main has identifiable info, also I’m on mobile.
I (30M) currently work from home at a SaaS tech company on a small team that I actually really enjoyed until recently. When I started we had a team of 4, within a month one person was promoted to an analyst role and the other became our supervisor. Since then I have been the leader regarding output every week/month for 9 months now by a significant margin. 3 months ago (after 6 months doubling the output of anyone else) I asked about a promotion/raise and was told they couldn’t give me a raise but they would promote me soon if I continue doing well.
Problem is, I suddenly can’t seem to do anything right in my managers eyes. Despite continuing to outperform everyone (supervisor included) suddenly everything I’m doing is wrong, examples include:
-she reviews my work daily and publicly criticizes me for “making big mistakes”. These turn out to be things like “you weren’t wrong per-say, but I would have worded your second reply a little differently” which she tells me in private.
-“doing too much and not giving others the opportunity to learn”,
-1 week later “not doing as much as You normally do making the others to fall behind”
-not taking pto (I was told not to because we were short staffed)
-scheduling my pto (it’s selfish to schedule it all near the end of the year)
And the list goes on. I’ve been feeling frustrated and dejected until recently, my analyst friend told me that she’s been talking about me a lot. apparently she was told any promotion would be in another dept and she doesn’t think she can replace me. Since then she’s been painting me as “average but nothing special” to those above her while seemingly gaslighting me so I’ll “feel lucky to stay in my current role”/“stop me from thinking about promotions”, she’s also said she can use the criticisms to block any potential transfers.
Needless to say, I’m fucking pissed. I’ve spent 3 months trying to figure out how I’ve been failing so spectacularly and to find out it’s because she doesn’t want to lose me jus boggles my mind. Other than straight up quitting (I have a mortgage), any suggestions on how to handle this?
TL;DR: my manager has been hypercritical of my work in an attempt to “humble me” so I’ll stop asking about a promotion and to block me if I try to transfer. I’m trying to figure out how to proceed.