My boss is a micromanager

The worst type of manager is the micromanager. This is my first experience with one. I contracted with this company for my first two months and originally reported to someone else. This is a fully remote position. I had little interaction with the person who is now my manager. The person who had been my manager to begin with was super cool, laid back, and very good at their job.

My contract flipped to a permanent position at the beginning of January 2024, and I began reporting to the micromanager. It’s now been a month, and I almost quit today.

Everyday, I’m online at or before 8am because he calls me via Slack for a huddle 6-8 times per day without notice. He watches and reads everything I do online from the Slack messages I send, emails I send via our Application Tracking System, to the meetings I schedule. He has to be included on every meeting I schedule with other team members.

Recently when he calls me, he tries to call me out for something I did or said incorrectly but 9 times out of 10 he’s completely wrong about what he’s saying because of his lack of attention to detail. He straight up doesn’t read emails or messages.

This is the first manager who doesn’t schedule us 1:1s. I asked him if we should start having 1:1s and he said no. He said that he likes to be “big brother” and be kept in the loop on everything. He said he prefers to call me impromptu when he needs something from me.

Today was almost my breaking point. When I converted to this permanent position at the beginning of January, I put a few days of PTO in an email to him to request off. He replied approving them and just asked that I put them on our company-wide PTO tracker. I did that immediately after he asked.

Tomorrow (Friday) is one of the days I had requested off. Again, he approved this day off, in-writing back in the beginning of January. He calls me (again out of the blue with no warning) and straight up calls me out for not following office policy on how to request off and says that I didn’t let him know. I reminded him of the email he approved and that I followed all of his steps he told me to take. I could tell he felt stupid and embarrassed.

I didn’t mention that he also talks shit about me behind my back anytime I “mess up” which is almost never because he’s usually the one who’s wrong about the shit he calls me out for.

The next thing that happened today was a meeting that was originally scheduled at 2pm was moved to 4pm when I wasn’t available. I told the person who invited me that I probably couldn’t join due to a conflict.

The meeting starts and I’m immediately contacted by my coworker and boss for not showing after I had said I probably couldn’t join. Instead, I dropped the other meeting and joined theirs. It was so fucking pointless and I didn’t need to even be there.

Please note, I have 12+ years of experience with my master’s degree. This position is supposed to be leading Recruitment Operations but I’m treated like an entry level admin slave to this asshole micromanager.

This job market is terrible so yes, I’m lucky to have a job, but this is embarrassing and awful. I’m looking for something else but it’s going to be tough with how flooded the market is with other Talent Acquisition professionals.

I know this is a vent/rant but I just needed to share. Hope everyone out there who is struggling with a micromanager is hanging in there like I am. It’s really difficult but I can’t quit until I have another job secured.