The colleagues are kind and friendly, the pay is good, and the environment is clean and bright.

The duties and responsibilities of the position were changed and reassigned arbitrarily, which was confusing. The colleague who was assigned to take over the work was also not experienced in this role or project.

But I thought, forget it—I would still follow my manager’s instructions and hand over the work to my colleague.

As the days went by, I increasingly felt that something was wrong. According to the product schedule, the preparatory work should have been completed as soon as possible, but my manager insisted on using OGSM and fishbone diagrams for precise analysis before proceeding with the planning.

In the end, I prepared multiple OGSMs, fishbone diagrams, and proposals for my manager. During this period, my manager acknowledged that I had written the OGSM correctly and asked me to continue revising it. After I submitted the revised version, I did not expect my manager to overturn the version they had said was correct the previous day.

Moreover, when I submitted the OGSM, fishbone diagrams, and reports, my manager would not ask me to personally present or explain the content.

Almost every time, they would simply ask an assistant to relay that the entire submission was wrong. When I asked the assistant, “Did the manager specifically mention what was wrong?” the assistant could only speculate based on what they had overheard, saying that perhaps certain parts were wrong and needed improvement. After hearing this, I was usually left confused: What exactly did the manager think was wrong?

Furthermore, important planning materials need to be presented and discussed in person; you cannot understand everything simply by reading the text. You also need to understand the company’s future direction in order to develop the right strategic plans. Why would my manager not let me explain the work, and instead merely ask an assistant to pass on one sentence saying that everything submitted was wrong? It was very frustrating.

This situation happened many times. However, in my more than ten years of work experience, I had never encountered a manager like this. In meetings, I also asked for guidance about what was wrong and what needed to be improved.

The answers I received were extremely vague. In the end, my manager would repeatedly just say that it was wrong, without giving me an opportunity to explain or clarify. This left me feeling frustrated and wronged.

Although I had meetings with my manager every morning, my impression was that the manager only communicated their ideas unilaterally, along with saying that I was wrong and needed to improve.

At the time, I maintained a humble attitude and reflected on whether I might not yet understand my manager’s expectations or the company culture. I worked extremely hard every day and even tried to align myself with my manager, but despite my efforts, I genuinely did not know where the problem was. I asked, but could not get an answer.

Then, one day during the morning meeting, my manager praised me in front of everyone for excelling in a particular area and said they would assign me a new project. My existing project would be handed over to someone else. That afternoon, I seriously handed over the current project and began planning the new one and contacting the relevant people. I wanted to perform well—after all, my manager had just acknowledged my professional abilities that morning.

At 6 p.m. that evening, I was called to an interview with my manager’s assistant. I was laid off.

I did not know what I had done wrong. It was frustrating, but it was not the assistant’s fault, and getting angry at them would not help. I simply packed up my things.

I did not even need to prepare a handover checklist.

All I can say is that this company did not put me through a PIP, nor did it clearly tell me what I needed to improve. In meetings, my manager would even smile and praise me, but afterward would ask an assistant to relay that the work I submitted was wrong, without explaining the specific errors or areas for improvement.

I am not young, and I have sufficient emotional resilience. I hoped for open, two-way communication at work. After all, there are not many employees or managers in the company, so for the good of the company and its work, shouldn’t we communicate properly and work together for the benefit of the product? You make money, I make money, and everyone is happy—isn’t that better?

Even if my manager thought I was not suitable for the role, that would have been fine. They could have directly told me that I was being laid off. But where was the respect?

That morning, my manager praised my abilities and assigned me a new project, leading me to naively spend the afternoon contacting people and launching the new project, when in fact they had already decided to terminate me.

The company could simply have told me in the morning or at noon, “We’re sorry, but today is your last day,”

instead of waiting until 6 p.m. to tell me.

All I can say is, Xiantao, you hurt me deeply and showed me very little respect.

I did not know how to write an OGSM, but I studied seriously. In the end, my manager even said that I had written it well, although they later suddenly said it was not good.

My fishbone diagram was written in a completely logical way. My manager was entitled to have opinions, but instead of letting me present it, they simply said it was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I am not going to tell you, whoever is reading this, not to join this company.

But I can only say that the manager has very strong personal judgments, or perhaps is quick to label people. They do not need your explanations or a two-way discussion.

They do not need to put you through a PIP.

They will subjectively decide whether you are suitable, and they make that decision very quickly—within a month.

If you happen to be a good fit with this manager, this may be a good company, because the colleagues are genuinely quite nice, the environment is clean and bright, and the product also seems promising. If you are not a good fit, you may end up like me, naively going through all of this.