OliverJDragon
Structural
- Mar 29, 2010
- 41
When last we met, Dear Reader, I'd accepted a new job involving a significant relocation to West Bumblemuck, not my favorite place. This was a job I was recruited to, and their big sell was OMGWTFBBQ PART OF OUR EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT TEAM!!!!!111!1!eleventy!! The kind of thing I'd be professionally foolish to turn down, etc.
The relocation is in progress (I have arrived; most of my worldly possessions are in transit). I start tomorrow.
And it appears that they have introduced another level of management above me. In one way, this doesn't matter because my job responsibilities remain the same, the same people report to me, etc. But it certainly weakens the OMG EXEC bit that they used to talk me into coming to West Bumblemuck. There's a difference between being *on* the exec team and reporting to one of them.
Would this have made a difference in whether I took the job? I don't know. Probably not. I did want out of my old job pretty badly and I didn't have any other offers right at that time.
Then there's the way they handled notifying me of this change--or, rather, didn't. I visited the company twice--once for an interview, and once for them to talk me into coming to West Bumblemuck over my reservations. During those visits, they mentioned that they were hiring someone for that new position, but never mentioned that I would be reporting to that position. Sometime after that last visit (and after I'd accepted the job), my main liaison to the company (who is NOT in my line of command; he's the guy I'll be replacing) mentioned just as an aside that they hired the new person and that eventually most of us would be reporting to him. This is the same guy who, when I asked earlier about the new position because whoever it was would be someone I'd need to work with closely, told me not to worry about it because that function had nothing to do with mine. So not only was this notification rather casual and asidey, it came from a non-official channel and contradicted earlier information. A far cry from someone in my line of command (who in this case would have to the be CEO) making a point of calling me and saying, "Look, Ollie, I know we told you ZYX but we've decided to make a change in our management structure like so."
The other bit of "notification" I've had is being CCed recently on a company-wide memo announcing the new guy, stating that he would start out being responsible for functions X1, X2, and Y. Y is, as far as I know, what I was hired to be in charge of (as reflected in my job title).
So...
(1) Is it unreasonable of me to think I should have been officially notified by someone in my chain of command that I will be reporting to a different boss and will be one level down in the hierarchy from what I'd been told at the time I accepted the job?
(1A) If the answer to (1) is no, is it a pretty safe assumption that there is nothing to be gained by expressing some disappointment in the nature of the communication?
(2) Is it unreasonable for me to see this as a bait-and-switch?
If the answer to (1) and (2) is yes, and this is perfectly normal and proper corporate behaviour, then I will simmer down.
Otherwise, I have to wonder--if something as fundamental as my very relationship with the company is something they didn't think they needed to tell me, what else are they not going to tell me? What else am I not going to know about until after it hits me? What else will I not be given a chance to prepare for? It seems to me that as of now I cannot trust "my team", cannot trust what I see and hear around me, but must always be on my guard against what lurks beneath, what someone has decided I don't need to know...YET. Not the sort of working relationship I signed up for.
An added complication--the way the new guy's responsibilities are defined, if you take out my part of it, what's left is a function that, according to one of my company's certifications, my function cannot report to. The certification states that Y cannot report to X. New Guy's position is an upgrade of a previous position, explicitly identified as X, that my predecessor did *not* report to. However, they could argue that since New Guy is higher up, he's not really X, he's exec-level, beyond that function, and I can report to him. As far as I am concerned, that might be the case once they add other responsibilities to his job, but as of right now, his responsibilities center around X and I can't; it's too close to the old position that I couldn't have reported to. This interpretation of the certification requirements is clear to me, and I'd like to think that my interpretation is pretty authoritative since I happen to be one of the people who write that certification, but if my management (whoever the hell they are) choose to disagree with my interpretation, I don't see that there's much I can do about it. It's not a real safety concern that I would need to whistle-blow about; it's just something that I feel is in violation of their contracts, that I would know is wrong, and that I wouldn't have tolerated when I was on the customer side of things if I knew about such a situation.
Sigh. A disappointing start.
OJD
The relocation is in progress (I have arrived; most of my worldly possessions are in transit). I start tomorrow.
And it appears that they have introduced another level of management above me. In one way, this doesn't matter because my job responsibilities remain the same, the same people report to me, etc. But it certainly weakens the OMG EXEC bit that they used to talk me into coming to West Bumblemuck. There's a difference between being *on* the exec team and reporting to one of them.
Would this have made a difference in whether I took the job? I don't know. Probably not. I did want out of my old job pretty badly and I didn't have any other offers right at that time.
Then there's the way they handled notifying me of this change--or, rather, didn't. I visited the company twice--once for an interview, and once for them to talk me into coming to West Bumblemuck over my reservations. During those visits, they mentioned that they were hiring someone for that new position, but never mentioned that I would be reporting to that position. Sometime after that last visit (and after I'd accepted the job), my main liaison to the company (who is NOT in my line of command; he's the guy I'll be replacing) mentioned just as an aside that they hired the new person and that eventually most of us would be reporting to him. This is the same guy who, when I asked earlier about the new position because whoever it was would be someone I'd need to work with closely, told me not to worry about it because that function had nothing to do with mine. So not only was this notification rather casual and asidey, it came from a non-official channel and contradicted earlier information. A far cry from someone in my line of command (who in this case would have to the be CEO) making a point of calling me and saying, "Look, Ollie, I know we told you ZYX but we've decided to make a change in our management structure like so."
The other bit of "notification" I've had is being CCed recently on a company-wide memo announcing the new guy, stating that he would start out being responsible for functions X1, X2, and Y. Y is, as far as I know, what I was hired to be in charge of (as reflected in my job title).
So...
(1) Is it unreasonable of me to think I should have been officially notified by someone in my chain of command that I will be reporting to a different boss and will be one level down in the hierarchy from what I'd been told at the time I accepted the job?
(1A) If the answer to (1) is no, is it a pretty safe assumption that there is nothing to be gained by expressing some disappointment in the nature of the communication?
(2) Is it unreasonable for me to see this as a bait-and-switch?
If the answer to (1) and (2) is yes, and this is perfectly normal and proper corporate behaviour, then I will simmer down.
Otherwise, I have to wonder--if something as fundamental as my very relationship with the company is something they didn't think they needed to tell me, what else are they not going to tell me? What else am I not going to know about until after it hits me? What else will I not be given a chance to prepare for? It seems to me that as of now I cannot trust "my team", cannot trust what I see and hear around me, but must always be on my guard against what lurks beneath, what someone has decided I don't need to know...YET. Not the sort of working relationship I signed up for.
An added complication--the way the new guy's responsibilities are defined, if you take out my part of it, what's left is a function that, according to one of my company's certifications, my function cannot report to. The certification states that Y cannot report to X. New Guy's position is an upgrade of a previous position, explicitly identified as X, that my predecessor did *not* report to. However, they could argue that since New Guy is higher up, he's not really X, he's exec-level, beyond that function, and I can report to him. As far as I am concerned, that might be the case once they add other responsibilities to his job, but as of right now, his responsibilities center around X and I can't; it's too close to the old position that I couldn't have reported to. This interpretation of the certification requirements is clear to me, and I'd like to think that my interpretation is pretty authoritative since I happen to be one of the people who write that certification, but if my management (whoever the hell they are) choose to disagree with my interpretation, I don't see that there's much I can do about it. It's not a real safety concern that I would need to whistle-blow about; it's just something that I feel is in violation of their contracts, that I would know is wrong, and that I wouldn't have tolerated when I was on the customer side of things if I knew about such a situation.
Sigh. A disappointing start.
OJD
