I’ve just resigned from a role, I had turned down another offer for. I asked questions about management style, ways of working, tooling and the team - all were fine. I asked if anyone previously had the job, they said no it’s new. team is lovely & smart but the management team is not and it has huge impact on morale and how company functions.

i joined and quickly hear ”I’m the new ___”. there’s so many false urgencies (I need this now by tomorrow, I need this end of day on stuff that isn’t even needed for anything), rush, piled on work of 3 other jobs, must do things immediately. drop all work and do something else. 2 other people confide in me they are burnt-out. I discover I’ve been underlevelled (put in a junior role) despite years of experience, being asked to own and lead strategy, and now being micromanaged and receiving negative feedback for just basic things I am doing correctly and have been doing for the past 10 years. Ask manager for support, they do nothing - there’s situations like me finding out day before I am now doing a presentation, when I ask them to check if there’s been a miscommunication, they come back to me 8 hours later saying “it might be useful”. I have to continually push and manage my own manager, but told I need to be fast. Culture of yes men who never challenge back or protect their own teams capacities and workload. everyone gossiping and talking about other people.

I reached out to the person now who did do my job, they tell me they burnt out and left due to depression. and that the manager is completely incapable. and they were bullied.

resigned because being in a toxic situation is awful for your confidence and you need all you can get in this job market. angry I turned down another role for this.

everyone says work fast & wearing many hats - for me, this is a standard in periods of high volume (sales moments) but bullying and creating urgency for things that are not even revenue driving are completely different and quite frankly, damaging to the company’s morale and ability to perform.

Question: What can I ask in future that force the interviewers to disclose their working style? and how the company works? I want to avoid such a place in the future.