Jesus.
Ok, great. You got that off your chest. Do you feel better about it? Because you have to know that you will never ever get this from your former employer. It’s just not going to happen. So you can pretend they told you this straight out, that you got your closure, and move on.
That being said, here’s a couple miscellaneous comments:
[ul]
[li]This type of dynamic where key employees have political untouchables happens less at very large organizations. It sounds like you were at a small company. Based on what appears to be your level in the company, you would experience much less of this political stuff at a larger company. Large companies have their own issues, but it sounds like you’d be more comfortable in a bigger bureaucracy.[/li]
[li]About technical skills - Outside of certain specific projects/industries, operations and end users should drive projects. The attitude that ‘I as the technical expert know how things should be done, and if they’d only listen to me!’ is obvious and terrible. As a technical person, no matter how good you are you are limited by your ability to exert influence. People have to want to listen to what you do, what you have to say. If people don’t want to do this, it makes no difference how good your work product is.[/li]
[li]In all my experience, unless a project’s end users are technical/IT people, projects driven by the technical people rather than the users will fail. [/li]
[li]Not all managers are good managers. You need to figure out how to succeed and accomplish what you want with a bad one. Either that or cut your losses and find better people/companies to work for.[/li][/ul]
Workplace romance is cause for discharge due to the disruption. To see it played off as a RIF is not uncommon.
Also, the manager is there to drive the employees to produce for the company, not protect employees.
Thanks everyone for what was mostly really good and insightful feedback. I do appreciate a lot of the advice given. Some of it hit the mark pretty well despite not knowing the specifics of my situation.
You make a good point here. This was a company that went from like 10 people, to about 100 people in a 2yr span. I would still call that fairly small.
I get what you’re saying, but I came up through the ranks. I started at the bottom in shipping, moved to data analysis and input, then was given the task to put this all together in an ITIL package. I was given this project as a subject matter expert… and still I got limited respect from the people whose roles I had performed in the past. If I can’t persuade people, I honestly don’t know who can.
I conducted multiple interviews with the end users, constantly getting their feedback. They liked to nitpick about things out of my control (or out of scope) and cling to their current process, despite my arguments for overall improvement. Some were supportive, others would take their reservations to the manager, who had an even worse technical background, and really didn’t like the fact that I spent so much time with her staff. She saw me as a nuisance. Really she should have been taking me to task, asking me questions and directing me in my development (even at her non-technical level) and let me translate it into my work, but she was new and didn’t know her department as well as I did. She had a hard time with email FFS. After failed meeting attempts, I stopped looking for her feedback. She was a mess.
Upon reflection, my boss wasn’t a bad manager in the traditional sense. He really just didn’t want to manage me, because the work I was doing, even in the best case scenario would pretty much throw all of our current processes into upheaval. What he should have done is recognized this, and helped get my project the appropriate internal resources to get things moving. Instead, he hedged and hedged even while I pushed and pushed. That’s what I mean when I said he needs to grow a pair. The money is spent, let’s get this thing going already. I can only do so much on my own. Why give me this massive project, spend all this money and leave me with no resources?
I actually know exactly the type you are referring to… There were two people in particular (both women) who were insufferable in exactly the way you describe. I can’t even add to what you said, you nailed it.
If you are saying that the average manager who doesn’t give feedback until he absolutely has to at the end of the year - and often not even then - is passive, I agree. If you are saying that continuous feedback is passive, I disagree. My best managers, and I’ve had some good ones, did that, and I did it as a manager. And people in our department usually wanted to move into my group.
I can see some problems right here. If this big project was just you, it probably wasn’t a really big project. Perhaps you’ve never heard of the concept of managing your manager. It is a good one. If he never gave you his expectations, it is your job to ask for them, or, better, tell him what you want them to be and get his agreement. Unless your boss is an expert in your area, don’t expect him to drive it. Or even oversee it. If you know the expectations, and the deliverables, and if you can deliver them on your own, you’ll win. If you deliver what no one wants you won’t.
I don’t understand your political will comment. Did you have the budget? I could see being underfunded as the result of a lack of will and support. But that is about it. If you have to sell it, you have to sell it. That’s just as important as doing it some times.
Maybe you can explain this more. Did you not have the budget? Did you not have the authority. I turned down a job once where they wanted me to get people aligned to a technology without giving me any authority. Screw that.
Now I understand everything. Sorry, rookie mistake - and I don’t care how long you’ve worked. Look at it from their perspective. They are using processes which more or less work. You are coming in and telling them you are going to change it all, and I don’t care that you are an expert in it. Apparently without high level managers who were willing to say use your stuff or else.
You were doomed. And that is even if you implemented it perfectly.
Did you ever stop asking and start selling? Or did you implement, which is a hell of a lot more fun.
BTW, now I’m sure your boss was telling the truth. And even if he was about to give you the feedback you asked for (which is unlikely as the girlfriend who just dumped you doing so) it wouldn’t have been useful, because if he knew what you should be doing he should have told you at the time.
I spent a lot of years selling projects internally. My budget depended on it. It took me a while, but I finally figured out how to do it.
I’m a horrible person because even though I can see how this became annoying, I LOL’d at it…twice. Then I told a co-worker. And we both meowed.
Just wait till Dan in accounting growls and starts chasing you two around the office.
Which would only improve my social life…
I had an employee eight years ago who wanted to report a violation of the dress code. Turns out I was the violator. I explained that I was the owner of the business, a sole proprietorship, and I could pretty much do as I pleased. She said that was wrong. So we changed the rule, in writing, To read “everyone except kayaker”. She still was upset.
She continued to report any tiny infraction of the rules, gradually making it clear she had some sort of problem. But, she did her job so it was just kind of ignored.
About a month later she came to me to complain that nobody liked her. Nobody invited her out after work or to parties on the weekends. I asked if people interacted with her at work so that things got done and she said yes, her complaint involved stuff apart from work. That’s where I lost it. I told her this wasn’t kindergarten and I wasn’t her social worker.
After that day she never returned. She never called, never picked up her paycheck. When W-2s were sent out, hers came back “no forwarding address”.
ETA: at least she never meowed.
See, I wish a statement like this was available to me, but I feel like it would get me in trouble.
Someone in my group complained to HR because our boss apparently didn’t make her feel important enough or something. So now every morning, my boss has to put aside 30 minutes of her day just to talk one-on-one with her. I have no idea what they could possibly be talking about because it’s not as if that employee’s output merits that much discussion. This is truly all done in the name of making this employee feel special.
There’s another employee that whines about never having the opportunity to do the type of work she really likes to do, but when given the opportunity, she whines about not having enough time to do it (even though there is enough time…she just is slow and easily overwhelmed or crap like that) and expects others to bend over backwards to accommodate her. Our boss–because her spine is made out of wet pasta–indulges this behavior even though it makes everyone’s job harder.
Okay, I’ve vented a bit. Trying to hold on to sanity here…
Nah, we all need to do it sometimes.
I had one coworker that was forever complaining about how swamped he was with work. He was the only person that knew one particular subsystem of our product, so he got all the tickets related to that. One day, he complained enough that our team lead decided we needed more than one person to know the subsystem and I was assigned to be the backup. She gave me one ticket he had estimated at 2 weeks to start with and said “if it takes longer, don’t worry, I know you’re learning” (she was a good boss).
So, naturally I looked for the documentation on our internal site. It wasn’t there. Asked coworker where it was. Said he had the only (electronic) copy. Asked for a copy. He mentioned there was too much to send by email. Asked him to put it on a shared drive. He uploaded one document. That document noted it needed two other documents to make sense. Bugged him about the two other documents. Only got one. Bugged him again. Got the final document. Uploaded everything to our internal documentation site. He asked why I did that. (Of course, so others could look at it). Asked for help understanding part of the documentation. Delay. Delay. Delay. Mention delay to team lead. Finally got explanation.
The two week project took me 3 days to get the documentation for, and 30 minutes to complete. 30 minutes, for a two week estimate. I took another 30 minutes to test six ways to Sunday. It worked. Told team lead I needed more work. She asked “what about the two week ticket”. Told her I finished it in an hour. She asked to look at it. Spend 30 minutes confirming it indeed worked as planned. She gave me another ticket and said she wanted an update. Took me an hour this time. That was was also estimated at two weeks by my coworker. Team lead mentioned this to our manager, and he asked IT to pull coworker’s internet logs.
Turned out he had been surfing ebay and news sites from his home country 90% of the day. Since he was the only one that knew his subsystem, he could pad his estimates by 10000% and get away with it. Until he padded too much and someone else got assigned to learn his subsystem.
He was the first one canned at the next layoff.
This sort of reminds me of my last job. Basically it creates a sort of “Kobayashi Maru” no win scenario. The project manager is on the hook for when it fails or has to resort to methods and tactics that are “unpalatable” to make it succeed and he gets terminated anyway. For the company I worked at, it wasn’t so much that they didn’t want to do them. The structure of the company was such that sales, delivery (project management) and resourcing (the technical people who do the actual work) were all completely separate departments. So all the sales guys care about is closing the deal and tossing some bullshit SOW over the fence for the PM to deal with. The resourcing practices just care about keeping their people 100% billable, which means there is zero flexibility for staffing projects. So ultimately the PM is on the hook for trying to deliver a project on time and on budget that has often has an unsigned contract, a badly defined scope, unrealistic deadlines (often due before the start date of the project and no one updated the SOW), no resources to work on it and those resources who are assigned can be taken away at a moments notice.
So when after being the #2 guy on our largest client account for several years, it was no surprise to me when I was fired when the following events converged:
a) Our big account dwindled down to nothing (something I saw coming for months).
b) My manager, with whom I had an excellent working relationship with, quit.
c) The sales exec for our largest client was fired for punching the CEO in the balls (true story).
d) Our company totally fucked up the largest project we ever attempted (which directly led to a, b and c)
e) Our president announced that last year had been a “mixed year”.
Is it fair? No. But there’s a reason our company has a 2/5 rating with a 15% CEO approval rating on Glassdoor (adjusted for obvious fake reviews to boost ratings).
And that’s one thing to look for in your next job. If you can’t find people on LinkedIn who’ve been at the company longer than 2 years or it has a shitty (below 3) Glassdoor rating, maybe pass on it (or take the job if you need money, but keep looking). Because fair or not, if you work for a company of dipshits, you will eventually be placed in an unwinnable situation where you’ll have to piss off someone. And regardless of who you piss off, that will ultimately be used against you.
Oh, amatuer hour - try it with $200Million. I left when I saw what was happening.
I hate this in interviews. It all boils down to someone with no experience in my field (math education or special education in urban districts) thinking my pedagogy won’t work because “Ten years ago when I was a history teacher in a rural district…”