jellyfishbeaver

I manage a team of about a dozen who receive many emails per day. These range from alerts/notifications from internal tools, internal work chatter, meeting invites, and external requests that require some action, acknowledgement, or reply.

We moved everyone to a help desk type tool (HelpScout) which has the "assign this task to person" feature that we most wanted, but it's really made for full customer support teams so we are not the biggest fans of it.

Our org has M365 + Outlook which we were on initially, but having so many people with access to one mailbox caused lots of double replies, missed mail, and other headaches.

Any suggestions or similar experiences? I'd like to remove some of the pain out of managing our mail. We make heavy use of automated rules, filters, and workflows to file and categorize mail, but with the variety of mail we still end up spending hours a week on this issue.

Has anyone ever been promoted to an engineering manager and decided it wasn't for them? How did you broach this subject with your superior, and is there shame in doing so? I'm feeling quite alone in this and am looking for others who may have gone through the same thing.

I'm coming up to a year of being a manager, and I am strongly considering telling my manager I regret my decision to accept this position. I'm not sure how to start this conversation without sounding like I'm giving up. My manager recommended me for this position because I was one of the most senior members on our team at the time, and the team was growing too large for him to handle alone. What started as managing a few people has turned into managing a small team of junior engineers and a slew of contractors.

My days are mostly long, unhappy, and stressful. There are some weeks where I want to pull my hair out from having to deal with all the problems that get dumped into my lap. My sleep has been disrupted and my mood is not great, but I have started working with a personal trainer and running group to burn out some frustration.

Tips, stories, advice? Thank you!

I am a North American developer at a Fortune 500 company. My manager has always been over the moon about my work. Recently, the topic of a promotion came up. Hesitant, I took time to think about the offer but ultimately accepted with a minor pay bump. I talked with several good friends before accepting and they warned me that the proposed job description was very broad and there was no clear division of duties. I brushed it off and figured everything would be alright.

So, now here I am. I have all the responsibilities of my last job plus all the new responsibilities. I have no time for anything deep, I frequently ignore messages and tasks because I am just too swamped to deal with them. I am engulfed by notifications and emails every time I open my computer.

I've mentioned my unhappiness to my manager who chalked to up to a learning curve and he suggested I hang in there until we find other people to pick up the slack, which is not looking likely. I see certain tasks go undone, and nobody else picks them up. I was very proactive in my last position and did a lot of behind the scenes work to keep things running smoothly, but others have not been keen to pick up that work when asked.

Just looking for some support, things to say or bring up, similar experiences you all may have had, and how I can maneuver this.