My manager passes all their stress down to our team
Managers who are in hot water with leadership often cope by rigidly enforcing due dates, changing directions out of nervousness, and demanding everyone work like the building is on fire. Instead of leading, they act as a funnel for upper management's stress, creating an intolerable environment of confusion where employees feel forced to extra perform just to save their boss.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from October 2026.
- This comes up 171.5× more often in r/ITManagers 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.
- 1Going on medical leave or quittingDid this help you?
- 2Leaving scathing upward feedback during an exit interviewDid this help you?
- 3Resisting upper management's expectations and continuing to shield the team anywayDid this help you?
- 4Putting on a "dog-and-pony show" during observations to protect a manager you generally like.Did this help you?
- 5Performing basic lip service to confusing policies just to maintain plausible deniability.Did this help you?
- 6Ignoring the noise from higher up and strictly setting personal boundaries.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.
“The new guy is a shit funnel. "I getting a lot of pressure from leadership so I am putting pressure on you." Direct quote. All this guy does is enforce due dates on tickets. No excuses if the due date slips- that is failing.”source ↗
“I am chronically ill and fully qualify for disability. I will be going out on disability starting today because this manager has made work intolerable.”source ↗
“I hate the push by so much of our upper management for me to act more like the latter. My job is to enforce policy, enforce deadlines, and fire the people that aren’t running like the building is on fire all day. I don’t do that and as a result I feel like I’m not seen by upper management as a “real leader”.”source ↗
“My director is a shit funnel because his manager is a shit funnel that makes my manager a shit funnel, which in turn makes me have to funnel shit downward.”source ↗
“Our P will come in during meetings and vent about how the "super" is being disrespectful towards him.”source ↗
“But it's like he is so nervous he will say to do one thing one week then come back and say we aren't doing it right. Lot's of confusion.”source ↗
“However, I just feel like a boss that's in hot water is going to feel extra nervous about everything and it's beginning to stress our dept out because I feel like we have to "extra perform" to get them out of their problem.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 11Why are managers asking IT to fix employee disciplinary problems?
- 2Why is my entire day eaten up by meetings and micromanagement?
- 6Why is my new manager micromanaging everything I do?
- 15How to deal with a manager who is confidently wrong
- 2How to manage an older employee with more experience who undermines you
- 35How to stop doing everything at once as property manager