Ask HN: Boss ignoring me – what next?
Send an email asking your manager how they&#x27;re doing, what interesting things are happening, and how you can help them with what they&#x27;re doing. One short paragraph. No negative thoughts. No &quot;hurt and licking my wounds&quot; undertone. No &quot;you&#x27;ve been ignoring me&quot; or &quot;I feel excluded&quot;. Just something with the general feeling of &quot;hey, how are you holding up, hope you&#x27;re doing fine, how may I help&quot;.<p>They may have forgotten about you. They may not be checking with you because your performance ratings are high and you don&#x27;t <i>require</i> to be &quot;managed&quot; that much, and their attention is on someone who&#x27;s having trouble performing their job. Heck, they may be having trouble or going through harsh times. You don&#x27;t know.<p>I have seen this very dynamic happen when I was in contact with both the &quot;boss&quot; and the &quot;contributor&quot; who felt the &quot;boss&quot; was mad at them and shunning them and didn&#x27;t want to talk with them but I had first hand factual knowlege that none of this was true. I gave the same remark as the above. The &quot;boss&quot; was happy to receive the email, and the contributor was relieved to find out that all their thoughts were unfounded.<p>Now, I&#x27;m not telling you that your boss is not ignoring you; that is a possibility, after all. I&#x27;m telling you that there&#x27;s a high chance it&#x27;s not the case.<p>You are a seasoned contributor and it&#x27;s not lost on you that managing your manager is something you ought to do.<p>&gt;<i>My guess is that, he wants to promote his favorites and he wants me to leave on my own. How do I handle this situation?</i><p>&gt;<i>I know that the most common advice would be, speak to him. I am not considering it. Because it might turn out to be a false alarm I would be assigned a module which I am not interested in.</i><p>This is a dangerous vicious circle: assuming the manager has bad intentions, being aware of the most common advice, which is the most common for a reason, and not wanting to speak with the manager.<p>You&#x27;ll go into overdrive for nothing as the work life balance is very good, and your performance is high. You will waste this.