OliverJDragon
Structural
I know what you will say in the end, so I guess I'm just writing to congeal my own thoughts.
For those who have not made a point of memorizing my saga, it goes something like this:
1. Sick of old job. Look for new job.
2. Entertain various possibilities. One floats to the top.
3. Before I even started, there was a reorganization that had sort of a demoting effect on me. The reorg itself was a good idea; how it was handled was not.
4. The expectation for my role changed. Not in a direction I disagree with, but not in a direction I like.
So, it turns out #3 was indeed a symptom of deeper dysfunction. So was #4, for that matter.
One of the other possibilities I was entertaining in #2, I could see similar dysfunction from the outside. When I went with my current company, I thought to myself, "At least I wouldn't have to deal with that weirdness." WRONG.
Just like that other company, and other companies in my industry, the company's going through a miserable transition from a small business to a corporate model. The people at the very top, who have ruled the roost for years through emotion and micromanagement and sabotage, are being dragged through this kicking and screaming by the Distant Corporate Overlords. Of course, they never kick and scream in public. In public they pay lip service to all the right stuff, and then they turn around and act otherwise.
Some of the crap I just watch from the sidelines, like how they try to undermine my boss (the one who was inserted between me and the CEO in #3 above). Some of the crap affects me, like how the CEO still stoops to micromanagement, assigning my predecessor (who is still hanging around and who shares all the worst traits of the Old Guard) to do parts of my job without informing me.
There are signs of progress. My boss is a sign of progress. A couple of new department heads are signs of progress. And there are enough of us in the New Guard committed to change that I think it will happen--eventually. Whether I last that long is another question.
But then there are problems that are related to and yet separate from the overall issue of bad behavior from above.
One is me and my job function. I described some of this in an earlier post (maybe toward the end of "Honeymoon is over"). In a move toward the New Way, they went looking for a systems expert rather than a subject matter expert. Then they found out I was on the market, and they hired me because of my subject matter expertise. Stupid me, I thought they hired me because they wanted what I had to offer, and they'd changed their minds about the systems aspect. And maybe they did, and maybe their minds would have stayed changed, except along came my boss expecting the New Way, and I wasn't vetted for the ability to do that, and all my fantastic subject matter expertise that I've spent a third of my life building is no more than a parlor trick.
And this has led to a bad relationship between me and my boss. I don't automatically fall into the patterns he expects, which irritates him, and he's always having to coach me to do things, which irritates him, and because I see why he wants what he wants out of me, I haven't stood up to him and said screw you, I'm not going to do that, I'm going to do this other thing I was originally hired for. What's the point? It's not what he wants and I see the business sense in what he wants.
But just sucking it up and taking it has made me weak in his eyes. So now I'm kind of a target. He comes at me in meetings with a tone and manner that he does not use with others who might also be underperforming. He comes at me for problems in my area of responsibility (across multiple facilities) while not addressing any of those complaints to the people in charge of those facilities, who are really the ones with the power to make things happen. He has said, in private, that I have indirect authority over those facility managers, but has done nothing in public to reinforce my authority, and in general treats me like someone who does not have and does not deserve authority, until it's time to berate me for failing to assert that authority and achieve something. And because he's made up his mind, he chooses to filter various things he hears to fit a pattern unfavorable to me. I've done enough back-checking to see where he has spun something neutral into something negative.
And then just as I decide it's hopeless and I need to go somewhere else before they fire me, he goes through a phase of being rational and respectful and something positive happens like one of the new directors tells me that I was on the list of people he was told to build a relationship with (as opposed the people he was told not to bother with).
I've thought about talking this over with the boss, but I never know whether I'll get Jeckyll or Hyde, and if it's Hyde, there's no point and very likely some risk. I actually had an appointment to talk to him about this, and then things came up, etc., etc. He knew that I was dissatisfied about something, but that's as far as it got.
So I may or may not survive the boss. I'm expected to get things moving at the speed of policy, but since the policies need to come from the facility managers and my authority over them has not been reinforced or even stated, my speed is instead that of a persuasion campaign. And there are other things I need that are buried within the fortresses of even more dysfunctional departments, but I'm responsible for those as well. So if he wanted to claim that I'm failing to deliver, he could make a case for it. From one week to the next, I can't tell where I stand. Sometimes he acknowledges that I inherited an insane situation, and sometimes it's just about what I have failed to achieve, no excuses.
I'm sure he's getting the same treatment from higher levels, but that's no excuse.
I started looking for a new job a couple months ago when my relationship with my boss was at an all-time low and I was starting to have trouble with depression. But then things got better, and I got better.
But now the micromanagement and sabotage from the Old Guard are back. I'm not the only target, but I'm one of them, and with a completely supportive immediate supervisor I'm sure I could survive it, but with my boss iffy already, I don't know that I can. So this weekend was another weekend of updating the resume and cruising the jobs websites.
Here's what's keeping me here:
1. I hate looking for jobs. And I hate major life change.
2. I believe that at some point all this will pass and the place will not suck. (Will I ever grow to like my revised job duties? I don't know. But maybe I can get secure enough to make some different arrangement where I get to concentrate on what I do well and they hire someone else to do what I'm not very good at.)
#2 justifies #1.
3. The rest of my industry is probably just as screwy. My best prospect outside of this company is another company (one of those I looked at last year) that I know for a fact is at least as screwy in many of the same ways. And yet I like my industry. I like the product. I don't want to walk away from it.
4. Jobs for exactly what I do are hard to come by. I dug myself a very cozy niche in my previous job, and there aren't lots and lots of positions in this category. I could branch out, but it's hard to compete with people already working in whatever new branch that would be. What this means is it is all up to personal networking; I would never survive a keyword search of a resume submitted online.
4a. I was secure enough in my old job that I could search for a new job almost openly, spreading the word, handing out "civilian" business cards, etc. With this job, it has to be very, very confidential. This really limits the speed and effectiveness of my networking.
4b. Because I'm busier and also less secure, the networking opportunities aren't as plentiful. The more insecure I get, the less secure I am about gallivanting off to a conference or other meeting where I can talk to people privately face-to-face.
For years I've thought about going back to grad school. It would certainly be a convenient way to turn tail and run. But the timing is exactly wrong--I'd be looking at September 2012, and that is a LONG way off. I don't know that the program I want does mid-year admissions, and if they do, they surely don't hand out funding midyear. All that gets allocated very early on.
So...I am sorely tempted to try to wait it out. The Distant Corporate Overlords won't tolerate the worst of the current dysfunction indefinitely. The question is whether I can survive till then.
If I want to be serious about looking for another position, the only way to do it effectively (rather than waiting months to see people at meetings) is to "steal" an hour a day (out of an 11-hour day) to spend on the phone with people from my past life, seeing what else might be out there. But I really hate that. What do I do, mutter in my office? Skulk in my car?
This sucks.
I know, I know, at least I have a job.
OJD
For those who have not made a point of memorizing my saga, it goes something like this:
1. Sick of old job. Look for new job.
2. Entertain various possibilities. One floats to the top.
3. Before I even started, there was a reorganization that had sort of a demoting effect on me. The reorg itself was a good idea; how it was handled was not.
4. The expectation for my role changed. Not in a direction I disagree with, but not in a direction I like.
So, it turns out #3 was indeed a symptom of deeper dysfunction. So was #4, for that matter.
One of the other possibilities I was entertaining in #2, I could see similar dysfunction from the outside. When I went with my current company, I thought to myself, "At least I wouldn't have to deal with that weirdness." WRONG.
Just like that other company, and other companies in my industry, the company's going through a miserable transition from a small business to a corporate model. The people at the very top, who have ruled the roost for years through emotion and micromanagement and sabotage, are being dragged through this kicking and screaming by the Distant Corporate Overlords. Of course, they never kick and scream in public. In public they pay lip service to all the right stuff, and then they turn around and act otherwise.
Some of the crap I just watch from the sidelines, like how they try to undermine my boss (the one who was inserted between me and the CEO in #3 above). Some of the crap affects me, like how the CEO still stoops to micromanagement, assigning my predecessor (who is still hanging around and who shares all the worst traits of the Old Guard) to do parts of my job without informing me.
There are signs of progress. My boss is a sign of progress. A couple of new department heads are signs of progress. And there are enough of us in the New Guard committed to change that I think it will happen--eventually. Whether I last that long is another question.
But then there are problems that are related to and yet separate from the overall issue of bad behavior from above.
One is me and my job function. I described some of this in an earlier post (maybe toward the end of "Honeymoon is over"). In a move toward the New Way, they went looking for a systems expert rather than a subject matter expert. Then they found out I was on the market, and they hired me because of my subject matter expertise. Stupid me, I thought they hired me because they wanted what I had to offer, and they'd changed their minds about the systems aspect. And maybe they did, and maybe their minds would have stayed changed, except along came my boss expecting the New Way, and I wasn't vetted for the ability to do that, and all my fantastic subject matter expertise that I've spent a third of my life building is no more than a parlor trick.
And this has led to a bad relationship between me and my boss. I don't automatically fall into the patterns he expects, which irritates him, and he's always having to coach me to do things, which irritates him, and because I see why he wants what he wants out of me, I haven't stood up to him and said screw you, I'm not going to do that, I'm going to do this other thing I was originally hired for. What's the point? It's not what he wants and I see the business sense in what he wants.
But just sucking it up and taking it has made me weak in his eyes. So now I'm kind of a target. He comes at me in meetings with a tone and manner that he does not use with others who might also be underperforming. He comes at me for problems in my area of responsibility (across multiple facilities) while not addressing any of those complaints to the people in charge of those facilities, who are really the ones with the power to make things happen. He has said, in private, that I have indirect authority over those facility managers, but has done nothing in public to reinforce my authority, and in general treats me like someone who does not have and does not deserve authority, until it's time to berate me for failing to assert that authority and achieve something. And because he's made up his mind, he chooses to filter various things he hears to fit a pattern unfavorable to me. I've done enough back-checking to see where he has spun something neutral into something negative.
And then just as I decide it's hopeless and I need to go somewhere else before they fire me, he goes through a phase of being rational and respectful and something positive happens like one of the new directors tells me that I was on the list of people he was told to build a relationship with (as opposed the people he was told not to bother with).
I've thought about talking this over with the boss, but I never know whether I'll get Jeckyll or Hyde, and if it's Hyde, there's no point and very likely some risk. I actually had an appointment to talk to him about this, and then things came up, etc., etc. He knew that I was dissatisfied about something, but that's as far as it got.
So I may or may not survive the boss. I'm expected to get things moving at the speed of policy, but since the policies need to come from the facility managers and my authority over them has not been reinforced or even stated, my speed is instead that of a persuasion campaign. And there are other things I need that are buried within the fortresses of even more dysfunctional departments, but I'm responsible for those as well. So if he wanted to claim that I'm failing to deliver, he could make a case for it. From one week to the next, I can't tell where I stand. Sometimes he acknowledges that I inherited an insane situation, and sometimes it's just about what I have failed to achieve, no excuses.
I'm sure he's getting the same treatment from higher levels, but that's no excuse.
I started looking for a new job a couple months ago when my relationship with my boss was at an all-time low and I was starting to have trouble with depression. But then things got better, and I got better.
But now the micromanagement and sabotage from the Old Guard are back. I'm not the only target, but I'm one of them, and with a completely supportive immediate supervisor I'm sure I could survive it, but with my boss iffy already, I don't know that I can. So this weekend was another weekend of updating the resume and cruising the jobs websites.
Here's what's keeping me here:
1. I hate looking for jobs. And I hate major life change.
2. I believe that at some point all this will pass and the place will not suck. (Will I ever grow to like my revised job duties? I don't know. But maybe I can get secure enough to make some different arrangement where I get to concentrate on what I do well and they hire someone else to do what I'm not very good at.)
#2 justifies #1.
3. The rest of my industry is probably just as screwy. My best prospect outside of this company is another company (one of those I looked at last year) that I know for a fact is at least as screwy in many of the same ways. And yet I like my industry. I like the product. I don't want to walk away from it.
4. Jobs for exactly what I do are hard to come by. I dug myself a very cozy niche in my previous job, and there aren't lots and lots of positions in this category. I could branch out, but it's hard to compete with people already working in whatever new branch that would be. What this means is it is all up to personal networking; I would never survive a keyword search of a resume submitted online.
4a. I was secure enough in my old job that I could search for a new job almost openly, spreading the word, handing out "civilian" business cards, etc. With this job, it has to be very, very confidential. This really limits the speed and effectiveness of my networking.
4b. Because I'm busier and also less secure, the networking opportunities aren't as plentiful. The more insecure I get, the less secure I am about gallivanting off to a conference or other meeting where I can talk to people privately face-to-face.
For years I've thought about going back to grad school. It would certainly be a convenient way to turn tail and run. But the timing is exactly wrong--I'd be looking at September 2012, and that is a LONG way off. I don't know that the program I want does mid-year admissions, and if they do, they surely don't hand out funding midyear. All that gets allocated very early on.
So...I am sorely tempted to try to wait it out. The Distant Corporate Overlords won't tolerate the worst of the current dysfunction indefinitely. The question is whether I can survive till then.
If I want to be serious about looking for another position, the only way to do it effectively (rather than waiting months to see people at meetings) is to "steal" an hour a day (out of an 11-hour day) to spend on the phone with people from my past life, seeing what else might be out there. But I really hate that. What do I do, mutter in my office? Skulk in my car?
This sucks.
I know, I know, at least I have a job.
OJD
the first part):