Managers · Primly Community

my manager is leaving and i don't know who i'm getting next, how bad can this go

mobile_mara · 4 replies

so my manager announced she's leaving in three weeks. she's been here four years, knows every project, has been a really strong advocate for me internally. great person to work for, not thrilled about this.

i've been through one manager transition before and it went fine. i've heard stories where it was catastrophic. trying to figure out how to think about this.

my concerns, in order of how much they're keeping me up at night: new manager comes in and resets everything. new manager who doesn't know me, doesn't know my track record, is evaluating me fresh while i'm mid-project and probably not at my best. new manager has different priorities. my work for the last two quarters was aligned to what my current manager valued. new person might care about completely different things. no one advocates for me in the gap. depending on how long it takes to backfill, i could be reporting to a skip-level or an interim for months. comp review cycle is in four months.

things i'm doing or thinking about doing: asking my current manager to write a short "here's what you should know about mara" doc before she leaves. she said yes. trying to get one intro conversation with whoever they name before it's official. updating my notes on every project so i can brief a new manager without relying on her to transfer knowledge.

is there anything i'm missing? and for people who've been through this: was it as disruptive as it sounded, or did it normalize faster than expected?

4 replies

careerveteran

the handoff doc from your current manager is gold. ask her to specifically mention: what you're owning right now, what you're targeting for performance, one thing you're really good at that wouldn't be obvious from the outside. a new manager reading "mara owns X and is being considered for Y" lands differently than having to establish that from scratch.

mobile_mara

asked her to include the promotion conversation context. she said she'll put it in writing. that part i was nervous to request but she didn't hesitate.

pivot_pat

on the comp cycle timing: four months is enough runway to establish yourself with a new manager if they're backfilled quickly. if you're in interim hell, flag explicitly to your skip-level that you need someone to go to bat for you in the cycle. the worst outcome is the cycle happens with no one knowing your context.

jp_newgrad

i'm newer so i don't have experience here but reading this thread because my manager mentioned possibly moving teams and it suddenly felt very real. the handoff doc idea is one i wouldn't have thought of.