My manager found out I'd been job hunting for six months. Here's what happened next.

I want to preface this by saying: I was not being careful enough. Looking back, the mistakes seem obvious. But when you're in it — when you're desperate to leave a job that's making you miserable — your judgment gets foggy.

I had been applying for six months. Not aggressively, just sending out a CV every week or two, going to the occasional interview on my lunch break. I thought I was being discreet. I was not.

How it came out

My LinkedIn profile was set to "Open to Work" — visible to everyone, not just recruiters. I know. I know. I had done it in a moment of frustration and forgotten to restrict it. One of the companies I applied to had a commercial relationship with my employer. Someone talked. These things happen more than people realize in smaller industries.

My manager called me in on a Thursday afternoon. She closed the door, which she never does. She said, "I've heard something and I'd rather you just tell me directly than have me hear it from somewhere else."

I sat there for what felt like a full minute. Then I told her the truth.

What I expected vs what happened

I expected to be let go on the spot, or at minimum to spend the remaining weeks in a cold, professional freeze until I found something else. I had practiced the walk of shame to my desk in my head three times on the way to her office.

What actually happened was a two hour conversation about what wasn't working. She told me things I hadn't known — that she'd been trying to get me a raise for eight months and kept being blocked. That she'd noticed I seemed disengaged and had been trying to figure out how to raise it. That she wasn't angry, she was relieved I hadn't just disappeared one day.

I didn't stay at that job. I found something else two months later and left on good terms. But I think about that conversation a lot.

What I learned

Managers are usually not the enemy. The system, the budget, the company's priorities — those are often the actual obstacle. I'd spent six months quietly resenting someone who had been quietly going to bat for me.

I also learned that honesty, even uncomfortable honesty, is almost always better than the story you construct in your head about how things will go. My imagined version of that meeting was a disaster. The real one changed my view of what a working relationship could be.

Still set your LinkedIn to private though. Seriously.