When I worked with Reed Hastings at Netflix, I remember saying to him, you know, I need to have a conversation with you right now and I need you to be my boss.

You're not paying attention right now. So when you have a minute to actually talk to me about what's going on with me, let me know.

And I remember him changing his body language and looking me in the eye and go, okay, I'm here.

Welcome to How To. I'm science writer David Epstein.

Difficult managers are the worst. That's why you should all become freelance science writers. You're your own manager.

No, but really, we've gotten a lot of emails from people struggling to navigate workplace drama.

And our listener this week, she's at her wits end when it comes to her new boss.

Hi, I'm Shirley and I work at a pretty progressive software company.

Shirley's a product manager at a Silicon Valley startup. She was pretty nervous to talk with us at all.

And so we changed her name and details about her company because she was concerned that her colleagues might hear this.

I really love my job. I love the company that I work for.

However, the relationship with my manager is a little bit strained. And so we're not on the same page.

Shirley joined the startup in its very early days and she loves the culture, the unlimited vacation days,

the focus on just getting stuff done rather than traditional metrics like clocking hours in the office.

Is there like a best day that you can think of in your time in this job?

I think it was the constant understanding that if I were at a Google or a large software company,

my job function would be very, very small. Whereas I have ownership of a lot of things.

Twice gone from big companies to startups and you realize you can actually impact the direction of the organization as a single person at these smaller places.

What about what about a worst day?

Recently, I got promoted and my manager told me that I didn't actually, it wasn't warranted.

I didn't deserve it, but I was this manager that one we've been talking about.

Yes, so that was probably the worst day, which should be a day of celebration for most people.

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