Good Manager Vs. Not-So-Good Everything Else

[mister-meeble]

I'm in the middle of a similar situation as the OP. My direct manager is really good. Her approach to managing and my approach to working, vision, etc. all align almost perfectly. For us, it's all about collaboration and working to better everyone's efforts.

Unfortunately, her manager has what can best described as encouraging a "cage match" mentality. Worse, my direct colleague under the same good manager is one of those proverbial crabs in the bucket who sees another crab rising and decides to grab it and drag it down. This person also lacks some skills, has failed at multiple projects (one of which they had me pulled off of because I was "out of my depth" -- I wasn't) but is somehow able to spin his failures to look like successes and will throw anyone under the bus without hesitation. My manager's manager eats this stuff up and this guy is the Golden Child on our team.

I just got a double "needs improvement" on my 9-box for the year. This is after a promotion last year (frankly to match the work I was already doing) and a double "excellent". My manager confided that she was strategically going to put in "Satisfactory" for both in order to get me a modest merit increase but also to put me on track for another promotion (level up, basically). Her manager said to give me the dreaded double "NI" so that's what I got. She fought and fought that but ultimately had to capitulate. It wasn't a fight she was going to win.

I appreciate her candor, of course, but this had a direct financial impact on me ot the tune of no merit raise, no additional stock awards, and no individual bonus. This amounts to roughly a $40k reduction in comp this year for me from last year. The same bad manager also granted a double merit raise to my colleague (the brown noser self promoter) over the objections of my (and his) manager who wanted a double "satisfactory" for him as well.

I'm done with the whole situation and my manager is sadly burned out as well. We're both actively searching for something new and trying to cover each others' backs as best we can. We have even tried to get me moved to another division three times, and each was struck down by my manager's manager for weak reasons.

The culture went from tolerable to very toxic in less than a year due to new upper management and other factors that would be a bit too specific for me to mention here. It's sad, because I like the work, like the other folks I deal with, and was hoping to be there another 10-15 years until retirement.

So at this point, I'm actively seeking a new job and working with my manager to find a path out that is the gentlest one for me. And in the meantime, we're both acting as if there are no issues and doing our jobs, because we are professionals despite being in a toxic stew of awful and continually degrading corporate culture.