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There’s something absolutely demoralizing about being great at your job for years and then watching a company treat you like you’ve never contributed a single thing. Promotions, bonuses, praise at company meetings, all of it suddenly worth nothing the second the org chart shifts.

One employee with a 4.5-year track record of exceeding expectations was reassigned to a completely new team after AI replaced her old process. She got virtually no training, no grace period, and a new boss who expected her to perform like a veteran from day one.

She taught herself the role, cried through a month of feeling invisible, and eventually caught up to the point where she’s now exceeding the production metric.

But even after all her hard work, the terrible performance review her boss gave her made her feel like all her hard work was for nothing.

Keep reading for the full story.

I got an abysmal mid-year review and I’m at my wits end.

I have been at this company 4.5 years. I’ve been promoted twice.

I always received the maximum quarterly bonus for production. I’ve been shouted out and praised for my contributions at the site meetings.

Usually, my year-end review meets or exceeds expectations on all goals. For mid-year, I have never got anything below “on track.”

But this year, things went over quite differently.

I just had my meeting for mid-year, and all my goals were “falling short” or just “on track.”

I was moved to a new team doing something completely different after my old process was phased out by AI.

At the end of the first quarter, I had to start from scratch and learn everything this new team does with little to no training. I had compliance experience but completely different from what they were doing.

Add migrating to a new system on top of this. The new manager expected me to hit the ground running.

Suddenly every day felt like an impossible battle she didn’t know how to face.

I cried every day for a month because I felt like I was a new hire but no attention or grace period like a new hire.

In the past month, I’ve caught up and I’m exceeding the production metric, but my manager said it took way too long for me to get up to that point so he still graded me as falling short.

This sounds really stressful.

I feel like an imposter. Like all my past achievements were a fraud.

I’m trying to argue against my manager’s grading, but he’s not budging.

I feel like it’s an attempt to get me to quit or deny me bonuses. The job market is bleak. I’m at my wit’s end.

Just about anyone would feel hopeless in this situation.

What did Reddit have to say?

This user doesn’t have anything positive to say.

Sometimes you just have to believe in yourself when no one else will.

Sometimes burning yourself out to “exceed expectations” doesn’t always pay off the way people expect.

Maybe the boss is straight up trying to sabotage her.

Crying every day for a month at a job where you used to get standing ovations at site meetings is the kind of contrast that should alarm any competent HR department.

This employee went from peak performer to survival mode not because she got worse at her job, but because her job got replaced, and nobody bothered to properly transition her into the next one.

But regardless of the hardships, she still figured it out. And what thanks did she get? None at all.

One thing’s for sure: this isn’t a performance issue, it’s a managerial one.