r/managers: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

The flairs tell you who is here: New Manager is the most used, then Not a Manager, Seasoned Manager and Aspiring to be a Manager. Terms like direct report, skip level and PIP are used without explanation, but a first-time supervisor asking a basic question gets answered. The level that matters is self-awareness. A post that shows poor judgment gets taken apart, whatever the poster's seniority.

• New managers in their first year, often promoted from within and given no training.
• Experienced managers and directors who answer from what they have seen go wrong.
• Individual contributors asking how a decision looks from the manager's side, or complaining about their boss.
• Small business owners and shift leads in retail, restaurants and trades, alongside corporate and engineering managers.
• People thinking about moving into management and unsure whether they want it.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/managers.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 100.

• Stayed up89%
• Removed by Reddit's filters1%
• Removed by moderators9%
• Deleted by the author1%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

100%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

0%

Period

October 2025 to March 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   We're all adults here.

   This is a sub for managers so the expectation is you are an adult with a professional level job. Act like it. Just because you can be anonymous on the internet doesn't mean you get to be a dick.

2. 2

   Sorry you hate your job/boss/clients

   Don't take our your frustrations at work on other users. You hate your boss, go take that up with them.

3. 3

   This is not /r/antiwork

   You clearly have a different view on what it is to be in a professional career. You may feel more at home in /r/antiwork

4. 4

   Well, that was random

   Ask yourself: does that rant really have to do with being a manager or are you derailing the conversation with a personal problem or vendetta?

5. 5

   Personal attacks on gender, race, sexuality, religion, ability/disability, or other designation

   Nope. Never. Not happening here. You can't do it in the workplace and you can't do it here.

6. 6

   Harassing others and creating chaos

   You will be permanently banned for telling someone to kill themselves. You also are not welcome here if you dox someone, threaten harm, etc.

7. 7

   Lost redditor

   We don't want your spam ads, job postings, requests for surveys, rants about things not pertaining to this sub, etc.

8. 8

   Mod discretion

   You think something is wrong but it doesn't fit in any of these rules? Report it and let us see.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/managers is a place to lay out a workplace situation and ask what to do. The typical post is a long story, around 230 words and often much more: a high performer passed over for promotion, an employee who has to be put on a formal plan, a write-up the manager disagrees with, a boss who has started micromanaging. It runs at about 31 posts a day and a typical post gets eight comments.

The replies are the point. They come from people who have been on both sides, and they do not soften much. A manager who admits promising a promotion they could not deliver is told, at length and by many people, that the employee is right to be angry. The same crowd will write out the exact words to use in a hard conversation with HR. The rules ask everyone to act like adults with professional jobs, and that is roughly the tone: direct, sometimes harsh, rarely abusive.

The fault line is whose side the room is on. The rules say plainly that this is not an anti-work subreddit, yet a good share of posters are not managers, and the single biggest post in our data, with over 8,000 points and 2,000 comments, is a story of an employee outmanoeuvring a new director. Managers who come for sympathy sometimes find the comments siding with their report.

What lands

• A story where someone handles office politics cleverly. The top post in our data is exactly that and dwarfs everything else.
• A specific dilemma with the context filled in: team size, how long you have managed, what you already tried, what HR said.
• An honest admission of your own mistakes. It still gets criticism, but it also gets real advice.
• A follow-up to an earlier post. Updates are read by people who remember the first one.
• A positive thread, such as managers sharing wins with their teams. These are rarer and welcomed.

What gets removed or ignored

• Spam ads, job postings and survey requests. These are the only kinds of post the rules name outright.
• Rants that are not about managing, and personal vendettas. The rules send anti-work venting elsewhere.
• Personal attacks on gender, race, religion and similar. The rules treat these the way a workplace would.
• Moderators removed about 9% of our sample. The titles and text of those posts were wiped, so our data does not show what they were or why they went.

The unwritten rules

• Do not post if you only want agreement. The comments will judge your part in the story first.
• Use a flair that says who you are. Not a Manager is an accepted flair, and it changes how people read the question.
• Write it yourself. Commenters check post histories and call out accounts they think are karma farming or using the room for material. Someone asking for topics for a book got a sarcastic reply about harvesting free content.
• Almost nobody links anything. About 1% of comments carry a link, so a link to a tool or a blog is conspicuous.
• Give the details people need to judge: industry, headcount, tenure, what is documented. Anonymise names, as most posters do.

Self-promotion

The rules do not have a detailed promotion policy. One rule, aimed at people who have wandered into the wrong subreddit, says the mods do not want spam ads, job postings, survey requests or off-topic rants, and another leaves the rest to moderator discretion. In practice there is almost no promotion to see. Posts are personal stories, comments are advice, and links are close to absent. A founder, coach or software vendor can take part as a manager with a view. Mentioning a product, asking for research input or dropping a link is the fastest way to get reported.

How people write here

Typical post length

230 words

Typical title length

9 words

Titles phrased as a question

38%

Typical comment length

31 words

Comments that include a link

1%

Posts that carry a flair

42%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/managers.

• manager 54 posts
• team 48 posts
• managers 23 posts
• employee 20 posts
• company 37 posts
• job 35 posts
• role 25 posts
• direct 19 posts
• direct reports 9 posts
• boss 14 posts
• leadership 14 posts
• told 22 posts
• senior 15 posts
• promoted 10 posts
• meeting 13 posts
• person 21 posts
• management 17 posts
• performance 14 posts
• reports 12 posts
• performer 6 posts
• situation 15 posts
• manager told 5 posts
• direct report 5 posts
• asked 15 posts
• gotten 11 posts
• position 12 posts
• meetings 9 posts
• team member 5 posts
• office 11 posts
• employees 9 posts
• another 20 posts
• upset 7 posts
• hired 8 posts
• director 7 posts
• report 11 posts
• department 7 posts
• manage 11 posts
• team lead 4 posts
• young 8 posts
• talk 12 posts

Recurring topics: manager, boss, employees, workplace, leadership, work, team, employee, interview, job.

Posts that did well

• A employee uno reversed a new Director by holding a meeting with HR then inviting his managers to it8.2k upvotes · 2.1k comments
• Bad employee going for job interviews242 upvotes · 184 comments · Seasoned Manager
• New management struggles35 upvotes · 20 comments
• My team has pretty much declared mutiny. What should my next step be?25 upvotes · 30 comments
• Managers talking about Employees on Train18 upvotes · 11 comments
• Skip Level 1:1 Meetings14 upvotes · 22 comments · New Manager
• Feedback: At what point is it just a matter of opinion?10 upvotes · 8 comments · Not a Manager
• New-ish worker potentially sabotaging his veteran co-workers?10 upvotes · 26 comments

Growth

1. 20121
2. 20134
3. 20146
4. 20159
5. 201619
6. 2017120
7. 2018468
8. 20191.8k
9. 20215.1k
10. 202336k
11. 2024107k
12. 2025211k
13. 2026289k

Related subreddits

• r/work
• r/antiwork
• r/HumanResourcesUK
• r/humanresources
• r/HVAC
• r/Accounting
• r/sales
• r/WorkAdvice
• r/csMajors
• r/PublicRelations

Common questions