- Office politics are back—and they’re nastier than ever. It’s not just commutes and watercooler chats that have made a comeback thanks to RTO mandates. Backdoor tactics and quiet takedowns are also experiencing a revival. While Gen Z and millennials are most guilty of sabotaging their colleagues’ careers to get ahead, even bosses are at it.
Safe behind screens and Slack threads, we forgot what the office was really like. Now, thanks to return-to-office mandates, many workers are being reacquainted with a less nostalgic part of office life: backstabbing.
Turns out, increased face time has come with a side of finger-pointing, credit-stealing, and calculated sabotage.
New research from Resume Now finds 61% of employees have been thrown under the bus at work, with nearly a third saying they see it happen weekly.
As for who’s doing the dirty work? While no generation is blameless, Gen Z and millennials are twice as likely to be perceived as the ones pulling these moves, compared to boomers and Gen X.
Most of the 1,000-plus American workers surveyed said their peers are to blame for sabotaging their success.
But even those put in charge of helping their young hires thrive are guilty of playing dirty to stay ahead. One in four workers say their manager has set them up to fail.
It’s no wonder, then, that the youngest generation of workers is taking note, seeing this as the playbook for success in the corporate world. The survey reveals that career ambitions and self-preservation are the primary drivers behind this toxic behavior. A staggering 40% surveyed admitted they’ve sabotaged a colleague to get ahead.
Watch out for these toxic tactics
Whether they’re coming from your boss or your coworker, the most prevalent workplace sabotage tactics highlighted by the report currently are:
- Blaming others for one’s own mistakes
- Sharing negative information with leadership about a coworker
- Withholding critical information that could help a colleague succeed
- Deliberately setting up a person to fail
“Rather than focusing on generational differences, employees should prioritize fostering a culture of accountability and support. Open discussions about workplace expectations, values, professional ethics, and conflict resolution can help reduce these toxic dynamics.
“Blame culture isn’t just an occasional workplace annoyance,” the report warns. “It can damage professional relationships, lower morale, and create a toxic environment where employees feel they must watch their backs instead of working together.”
The report’s author, career coach Keith Spencer, says employees should document their contributions and be transparent with their wider team about what they’re doing at work, to avoid getting stung.
RTO has turned sour; now conflict resolution is a top skill to have
Bad behavior isn’t just back—it’s thriving.
Just last month, a separate study revealed that “workplace incivility” has surged 21.5%, draining companies of $2.1 billion every single day in lost productivity.
During the first quarter of 2025 alone, American workplaces saw over 208 million instances of office hostility daily, including shaming, micromanaging, and gaslighting—and the researchers pointed directly to return-to-office mandates as the fuel for this toxic fire.
As workers are pushed back into physical spaces together, they’re simply being “exposed to more in-person interactions that will bring more encounters with and opportunities to act uncivil than virtual settings often offer,” Derrick Scheetz, a researcher at the Society for Human Resource Management, said in the report.
It’s gotten so bad that conflict resolution is the hottest skill to have right now, according to LinkedIn.
“Office politics can be unavoidable, but employees can navigate them effectively by building positive relationships with colleagues and supervisors and building strong conflict-resolution skills to address problems directly rather than letting them escalate,” Resume Now’s report echoes.
Sabotaging probably won’t actually help Gen Z climb the ladder
The top reasons workers and managers alike are turning to dirty tactics are to get ahead, protect their reputation, and curry favor with senior leaders.
But sabotaging the competition isn’t actually the shortcut to success that people think it is.
As Pano Christou, CEO of Pret A Manger, previously warned, backstabbing and office politics rarely pay off in the long run. Christou, who started his career flipping burgers at McDonald’s for $3 an hour, said that by focusing on being the best—without “shortcutting” his peers or “stabbing them in the back”—the promotions swiftly followed.
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“I won’t stitch people up on my way up the ladder. And I think that has, over time, really reaped rewards,” he told Fortune. Having been promoted into positions where he was often managing people far more experienced and older than himself, it meant they “celebrated” his success—rather than feeling robbed and getting their own back.
Likewise, Kurt Geiger’s CEO went from cleaning toilets to running the Steve Madden–owned multimillion-dollar accessories brand by befriending his bosses—and making them look good.
“You don’t want to be there chipping away at your boss negatively,” Neil Clifford told Fortune. “You want them to be fabulous—you want them to love you and want to help you.
“I didn’t want to get them fired. I want them to get promoted,” he adds. “I’d rather step into their shoes than push them over the cliff.”
To that end, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy believes that being someone others want to support is a major career accelerator.
“I think people would be surprised how infrequently people have great attitudes,” he said. “I think it makes a big difference.
“You pick up advocates and mentors much more quickly,” he added. “People want those people to succeed—and it’s very controllable.”
