The project that nearly broke me

A playbook to survive sabotaged work and a smeared review

I’d been staffed on a high-stakes project.

It was messy, undefined, and full of landmines.

Newly in role, it was a fresh start. The chance to prove myself.

The kind senior people call “tricky” with that half-smile that says: “good luck, kid.” It wasn’t a plug-and-play assignment. There were no clear templates, no obvious next steps. Every task demanded judgment, nuance, and time to think.

And I was thinking. Working harder than I ever had. Starting early. Finishing late. Skipping lunches. Staying back to polish deliverables just to be sure. I wanted to show them I belonged. I wanted to earn their trust.

But my manager had other plans.

Let’s call her Julia.

She was the type who didn’t just oversee. She hovered. Lurked. Lingered.

I’d barely start on one task before she’d shoot me a Slack with another. Then a meeting request. Then an edit to the first task that contradicted the second. Then a demand to drop everything and start a third task that reversed the first two.

It was chaos disguised as leadership.

She’d appear at my desk unannounced, arms crossed, sighing before I said a word. “Do you understand what I’m asking?” she’d repeat, over and over. As if confusion on my face meant incompetence, instead of hesitation at executing on something that made no sense at all.

Sometimes, it felt like she wanted me to fail.

Worse, she didn’t just micromanage… she undermined. In internal meetings, she'd subtly question my contributions. On client calls, she'd correct me mid-sentence, only to restate what I’d just said. “We’ve been trying to course-correct,” she’d say, looking straight at me as if I were the problem to be corrected.

And I took it. I swallowed it all. Because I thought if I just kept going, if I just delivered, the work would speak for itself.

It did. The project wrapped. The client was thrilled. The business won more work.

But in the end, Julia still found a way to twist the knife.

In my performance review, she painted a version of events so warped, so cold, I barely recognized the story. She blamed me for delays. For disorganization. For stress she herself had caused. There were no words of thanks. No acknowledgment. Just a final shove under the bus.

And that’s when I realized something that changed the way I would work forever.

But before I tell you what it was, I want you to feel what I felt when I walked into that room for the review. Mostly nervous yet slightly hopeful for a reprieve… and then I saw what she had written.

That moment…

That sentence…

That line…

Was the last straw.

Here’s what happened

It wasn’t a performance review. It was a quiet execution.

Buried deep in the page, between buzzwords and bullet points, was the line that stuck in my chest:

“Struggled with ambiguity, required frequent guidance, and is not yet ready for greater responsibility.”

That’s how she framed it. After all the early starts. The late nights. The mental gymnastics. After defending her incoherent direction, her erratic task-switching, her condescension in front of clients. I was the one marked not ready.

And the worst part? No one questioned it.

Because no one saw it the way I did. No one wanted to see it.

She was senior, I was not. If they questioned the hierarchy, they’d have to question their place in it too.

I walked out of that room and sat at my desk in silence for 40 minutes.

I kept replaying every interaction, every half-smirk she gave when I stumbled, every task she dumped without context, every “do you understand?” that wasn’t a question, but a dagger.

And then it hit me. The reason she did it.

Here’s why it happened

Julia didn’t fear failure. She feared being exposed.

She couldn’t afford someone else looking competent, especially not someone new. So she did what insecure people who hold power do best.

She destabilized. She confused. She discredited.

Because if I looked shaky, she looked solid.

It wasn’t personal. It was strategy. And suddenly, I saw the whole game.

Here’s what I did next

I realized I had two options:

1. Swallow it. Shrink. Keep my head down and hope the next project lead was better.

2. Act. Run a campaign to present my case. Deliberately and subtly.

So I chose the second. And what I did next flipped the entire narrative. Not just for my manager, but for how people in power saw me from that day forward.

Here’s what I did:

1. I documented everything.

Emails. Slack messages. Meeting invites. Task changes. Timeline shifts. I built an archive of every contradictory instruction, every passive-aggressive comment, every time I was “course-corrected” for doing exactly what she’d asked.

2. I reframed the story using their language.

I rewrote the project summary from my point of view, using the same corporate lingo HR loves: “navigated ambiguity,” “self-managed under shifting priorities,” “demonstrated resilience in high-pressure client settings.” It was all true. But now, it was documented.

3. I requested a skip-level conversation.

Not to complain, but to ask for guidance on how to develop faster. I showed my project summary, walked through the decisions I’d made under pressure, and asked questions about how leadership would have handled the same. That conversation changed everything. I was no longer a subordinate. I was a rising professional reflecting on tough lessons.

4. I built quiet allies.

Other team members had seen the dysfunction. I didn’t have to say much, just enough to signal that I wasn’t confused or incompetent, but stuck in a system where doing the right thing looked wrong if you weren’t protected.

5. And finally… I stayed calm.

No drama. No outbursts. Just quiet consistency. Which made her inconsistency, and her insecurity, shine brighter by contrast.

Within six months, I was promoted.

And within two years, I was managing my own team. I’ve never treated anyone the same way.

But the real win?

It wasn’t the title. It was the shift in mindset.

I stopped waiting for people in power to see my value. I showed it, proved it, and framed it so clearly that ignoring it would’ve made them look incompetent.

I turned a toxic, undermining project into a platform.

If you’re in the thick of it right now (if you’ve got your own Julia breathing down your neck) remember this:

You don’t need to outshine them.

You just need to tell a better story.

Because once you understand the game, you can stop being a pawn.

And start becoming a player.

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