I wasn’t sure if I should bump the original thread from a bit over a year ago or start a new one…so I started a new one.
Almost two years into my job, it objectively seems like it’s going well. And yet for some reason, my job still makes me feel ill at ease. So I suppose this is me trying to figure out why I feel that way.
I’ve been pretty busy since joining the company, which is good. The only time I wasn’t busy was a 4 month stretch where senior leadership intentionally had me wait “on the bench” (unbilled and without a client) so I could start on a specific project with a new client that I helped sell and have since expanded AND received credit for (both informally and formally).
I have a good relationship with pretty much everyone I work with (clients, jr folks, senior folks).
I’m getting an “exceeds expectations” performance review.
And best of all, I have pretty much complete autonomy in running my team remotely.
My manager is already in discussions with me regarding a promotion. Maybe not this year (which is fine as a promotion also comes with at least 3x the sales responsibility.
So on paper everything seems good. And yet I still feel ill at ease and I’m not sure why.
That was my first thought. “Too good to be true,” maybe?
IMHO there is no real “job security” with an employer any more. The shit can hit the fan with no warning-- for you, your boss, your boss’s boss, the company, the industry, the country (cf. COVID).
Theory #1:
Is there any chance the company you work for is a scam, a la Enron? Or has a corrupt core or corrupt senior leadership in some other way?
My theory / wild guess / crazy-assed proposition is that your unease might be from a half-conscious concern that you’re a semi-witting pawn in a game that you personally are winning now, but that may turn to shit at any moment due to forces you can neither control nor even see coming?
Assuming I’m right here, whether that concern is well-founded or illusionary doesn’t alter its reality to you / your psyche. Though if this is the source of your unease, you need to find out whether the concern is well-founded so you can quit before the shit hits the fan. Or in the alternative that the concern is not well-founded so you can pry the now-identified mistake out of your mind. Either way, figuring this out is the important next step.
Completely unrelated theory #2:
We’ve heard a number of tales of challenges between you and Mrs. Smith37. Plus the responsibility of the kids. And the damnable in-laws. Are you perhaps transferring some stress about those things into an unease about the job? E.g. are you thinking
What if the job leads me into a “Mrs. or the job. Pick 1.” dilemma? How would I choose?
Even contemplating the possibility of that problem coming up would be stressful / unease-producing. I can imagine another half-dozen variations on this theme and you certainly can too.
Completely unrelated theory #3:
I spent 8 years as a successful USAF officer in a relatively high prestige role given my modest rank amongst the officers.
Every time I drove to work in the morning I had a feeling of dread as I approached the base entrance & guardhouse. It was totally amorphous; there was nothing I dreaded about work except entering the base. I’d pull up, the guard would see my car’s officer access sticker & salute, I’d salute them back and drive in. But the feeling of relief on the other side of the barrier was palpable.
This was long before the upgraded security that followed 9/11 & Bush’s GWOT. It was hardly me worrying that bad guys were outside the wire and once inside I’d be safe. Nor was I worried I’d be shot by “friendly fire” (no such thing) in a case of mistaken identity. Passing through the gate was something everybody did coming to work, and scores of spouses did every day too without a worry. Except for me. Something was dreadful about that process.
I never quite figured out where this came from. I never had a bad interaction with any guard at any base on any day. But it bugged me until the day I left USAF. I’ve not had any similar sensation with any subsequent job regardless of how large or small the company or how negligible or great the facility security.
As applied to you, has your subconscious picked some aspect of your work, more or less at random, to worry about that’s equally as pointless as my quasi-sorta-phobia about driving through the big gateway?
Let me see if I can address some of the theories before I add my own:
Well…no more than any other management consulting firm I suppose. But no, nothing like that from what I can tell.
I see myself as more of a “knight” or a “bishop”.
There’s no “proposition” about it. I’m in corporate management. There is without a doubt games being played above my pay grade. We don’t produce anything. It’s basically all “games”. I play them too.
I suppose there is always that concern. That decisions are being made in rooms I’m not sitting it, just as I make decisions about other people who aren’t in the room. It’s just my rooms are smaller.
Maybe that’s part of it as well. Like maybe the leadership I work with aren’t big players in the larger game and that could ultimately fuck me.
But none of that is specific to this company IMO. And at this time I don’t have anything specific to go on that justifies any action on my part.
That theory crossed my mind as well. Am I projecting stress from other parts of my life onto my cushy high paying job where I seem to have free reign to do as I please?
My particular situation is I get to work remotely, I set everyone’s hours, I don’t have to hire an expensive nanny to watch my kids or pick them up from school. My wife has to go into the office a few days a week so it would be hard for both of us to do that. Which is great!
But last year I came very close to getting stuck on a big client, having to go to their office every day, being one of many Directors on the project, possibly reporting up to some 35 year old dipshit. That would have sucked.
As for picking family vs job it’s a no brainer. I’ve never stayed at a company more than 4 years and I’ve been at this one 2 already. But admittedly, the idea of looking for another job is a bit stressful for reasons I’ll get into later.
Possible. Like negative experiences from other companies triggering a reaction for unrelated reasons.
Like the other day I met up with one of the partners in the firm for coffee. He’s basically my bosses’ boss and comes to town about once a month so we just thought it would be good to connect. But for some reason in the back of my mind I had this slight feeling of dread like he was going to fire me or bitch about my performance or something negative. There was no reason for that.
I suppose I trust them about as much as any other management consultant.
To be honest, most of them don’t impress me.
It may also be a hesitate getting too attached to many of them as we seem to have high turnover. Every year they keep making the same joke about how 30% of the faces at the company events are new.
I’m also older too. I just turned 50. I feel I mesh well my peer group in my circle, but I’m not part of the gaggle of 20-something consultants going to the happy hours to “connect with leadership”. As one as my colleagues pointed out “I feel like I’m here for them to connect with me”.
Now we are getting somewhere. I mean I understand the professional services business model. What I haven’t figured out is how WE sell work. At my level and above, I am responsible for selling or managing $million and it goes up with each level. There are a number of big accounts where it’s just basically a partner owns the relationship and just continues to staff people on a variety of projects. It’s really more IT outsourcing if we are being honest. But someone like me, they might stick on one of these big accounts and after a few years they can get promoted, simply by virtue of how the partners decide to apportion credit.
So basically, you have a lot of people farming existing big accounts, getting big promotions (sometimes even to partner). But then if that account disappears suddenly (like some of our clients which you may have seen in the news lately) I don’t know if a lot of those people can go out and generate the revenue to replace it. I’ve seen that happen before.
I wouldn’t mind doing more sales than “delivery”. I’m just trying to work out how that’s actually done. It just sort of seems like “go figure it out” or “go call up your contacts on LinkedIn”.
Ideally, we can grow my current client 5x-10x over the next couple of years. Mind you I’m not doing this by myself. I also have a good relationship with my previous client which could bump up my numbers when or if they land another big project.
I guess what gives me pause is that this all seems very tenuous and not scalable. Getting a company to spend some money on a one time project they really need is one thing. Getting them to do 5x that every year is another matter.
Statistically speaking, probably not.
I have a strategic mind so I could go on forever boring people about the various political nuances of my company. But I guess it really all comes down to this:
Once you strip away all the bullshit and inflated corporate-speak and other window dressing, what I am actually “doing” at my job is managing an IT project. That’s it. And I can basically do that anywhere, although I can’t say I much want to.
So so really the question is what do I actually want to be doing and is there a path to doing it in my current company? Right now I think I just don’t see it.
Is it possible that you’re uneasy about the overall type of work that you’re doing – that you think you might be doing something that, no matter how well it’s done, shouldn’t be done?