Am I being pushed out of my job?
Sudden shifts in a manager's demeanor, unexpected investigations, and new strictness over minor tasks often indicate you are being set up for termination. Employers may also engineer failure by piling on impossible workloads, leaving you struggling to tread water while they prepare a rubber-stamp evaluation to justify letting you go.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from November 2026.
- This comes up 94.8× more often in r/humanresources than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
Am I being pushed out of my job?
- 1Aggressively applying for new jobs to secure an offer before being firedDid this help you?
- 2Sending written follow-ups to investigators to create a defensive paper trailDid this help you?
- 3Giving vague answers or deflecting questions during internal auditsDid this help you?
- 4Start backing things up, making copies of key paperwork, updating your CV and looking at the market.Did this help you?
- 5Check to see what your contractual notice period is and rely on that.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I’m looking for some outside perspectives because I’m honestly pretty shaken up by what’s happened at work recently, and I’m worried I’m about to lose my job. 😭😭”source ↗
“Combined with the recent compensation discussion, the unexpected investigation, and what feels like a change in her demeanor, I’m worried that she’s preparing to terminate me and transfer my responsibilities to someone else.”source ↗
“I’ve been let go, and I’ve been lied to as well about ‘why’ when they had other hr people who weren’t. It all seemed shady.”source ↗
“Very similar experience, as soon as it started happening I aggressively started applying to new positions.”source ↗
“At the same time it also seems that admin has gotten a bit stricter with me. For example this year he wrote me up because I was sitting down and working on grading while supervising a study hall.”source ↗
“Is it possible I'm already redundant, and the Fall evaluation is just going to be the rubber stamp? What should I be doing to prepare for my upcoming evaluation or potential transition out?”source ↗
“I wouldn't mind doing curriculum development but in some ways doing it ON TOP of technically teaching full time (and 5 preps nonetheless) and having to deploy those courses while they are being run seems to add a lot of additional stress for me. I feel like I'm treading water here and I'm sure admin notices I'm struggling. Perhaps it's by design and an engineered failure; I'll never know for sure.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 3Why do I feel like a fraud studying accounting?