Bdtyktl

Context: Until a few years ago, I worked for A. A worked and still works for B. I was then moved directly under B for some technical reason (product ownership), but that reason has gone long since. I was informed of the change of reporting line back then, but I had no say in it.

Since I have been reporting to B, B gained a couple more reports, all of them team leads. I am only an individual contributor.

Problem: While I passed my yearly reviews by B (and also previously A) with flying colours, B doesn't seem to recognise or even respect me as a report. A few things that support this:

• B leaves to go on holiday, business trip etc. without telling my directly. I usually hear it indirectly from A, but even then only vaguely. I never get to see the full picture (return date etc.).


• B pulls one-on-one handovers and updates with all his other reports, but not with me. I attribute this to the fact that I am an individual contributor only while B's other reports are team leads. However, B is also doing one-on-one updates with C, who is a report of A and also a team lead. This leads me to think that my contributions are completely unimportant to B, and don't warrant the current reporting lines. My updates to B go in the form of a weekly report to an email distributor of A's reports where B is CCed on, but I have to push them. There is no interest by B to pull them.


• Team emails are sent to all of B's reports except to me. This leads to the not-so-nice scenario that I'm not aware of what is happening in the organisation, since A also doesn't include me in his updates to his team.


• Project work and performance: The contributions I make only A benefits from them, since they are for the projects that A lead. B doesn't care about these projects at all, they are not his responsibility. On the other hand, because A thinks I'm reporting to B, A doesn't need to look after my project work. As a consequence, my performance reviews, while all above the average, are full of generalities and platitudes, because neither A nor B actually know (read: care about) what I'm working on, although I keep them updated constantly.

The current reporting lines don't make sense to me at all. Would it be fair to ask B to simply let C and I switch places in the reporting lines? And if so, how would I go about it?