Work move - Surprise! You're on a new team, with a new title, and a boss you've never met

I gave my six month’s notice almost exactly three years ago. The easing out would have been one of the most enjoyable times of my life if it wasn’t for Covid hitting. My emails were pretty harsh to those that deserved it, much to the amusement of many of my co-workers including my direct management.

That’s an interesting take. And at times, I’ve pondered what it would be like to say/do what I wanted. But they’ve beaten me down enough that I just don’t care enough, and am confident that ANYTHING I do would simply vanish without a trace once I was gone.

To each their own. But I assume I would assume the role of Wally in Dilbery - on an extended at-work sabbatical.

In a way it is kind of the same. The last few years you can do what works for you, not what works for them.
I produced a giant chunk of code which was a big hack but was vital to the division. I knew it was going to fall apart when I left, and I told them so, but they didn’t care so neither did I.
I had a lot more fun coding than I would have if I had pretended to work. But I never came early or stayed late.

Can you please stop using that word? I’m having flashbacks. :grimacing:

So today was the end of the first real week in the new team, between a week of vacation for me and one for the new boss. Today in the (mandatory video chat) team meeting, she announces she’s been moved to another area and in two weeks she’ll be gone. No idea of who will replace her. New month, new boss.

Interestingly, when she announced it, no one one the call (8 team members) make a sound to commiserate, congratulate, or wish her well. Just silence. I wonder if she’s not well-loved among her team. Either that or she told the longer-standing members privately.

StG

I thought you were all re-orged, and she had all new people. Did you just get dumped into an established team?

No, they dropped me into an established team. I was in a minor division, very autonomous, only judged by what I could give my division. Then I was moved to a corporate Center of Data Intelligence. All the other folks work in dashboards in Tableau and other data systems. Although I have some Tableau experience, when we made the Great Leap Forward to SAP, we were told our platform would be Business Objects, so I dutifully learned that.

The re-org was from a survey taken half a year ago about how we spent our time. Then they pulled people who were in the “wrong” areas (I was in Customer Operations, supporting them) to group them in the areas with similar workers.

To summarize - I (still) support a relatively small group in a relatively small division, with a system not used by anyone else on my team, while they mostly support the larger corporate structure. They have over-arching team goals, while mine are individual goals. My job has been to be speedy and responsive, getting the users data in minutes. Now they have to submit a ticket and have that routed to me, instead of sending me an instant message.

And now I will have a new boss.

StG

Ha! It just keeps getting better! As though you needed ANOTHER reason to care LESS! :smiley:

Wow, that was fast. However, maybe the job was just a holding post for her until a managerial position became available in another area. I’ve certainly seen it happen. Or maybe it’s a quiet layoff for her, where they move her around until she gets frustrated and leaves.

Heads down, do your work, repeat to yourself “retirement is the goal.” Good luck.

Repeat after me:

:wink:

I recently got a new boss who was an outside hire. The old boss was really laid back while the new one in onfire and going to change the entire world in three days.

Yes, this did contribute to my decision to leave the organization. Imagine that.

For the last 10 years I’ve had no real supervision. Exemplary reviews, based on what I could do for the department. Almost total autonomy, but total responsibility, too. Nobody else in the department understood what I did or how I did it, it was enough that I could produce fast, accurate results when it was needed. Suddenly I have daily team calls, team goals for projects I’m not on, and so yeah, I’m not happy.

StG

Yes. Our old boss trusted us to do our jobs, and there didn’t seem to be any problems. Well, if there were problems, they were handled as they came up.

Now the new boss wants to micromanage things but doesn’t know what is going on or what people are doing. Consequently, we are now having lots of staff meetings and stupid reports.

I’m planning on leaving before March.

Just wait. Soon, you’ll have to set performance goals, and a career development plan. Rah-rah! Go team!

We’ve always had to set goals, but they were set by me and approved by my boss, and often included things like “give Excel training classes to those in C/S who are interested” and “complete at least two diversity training activities”. I’ve ignored the whole “Career Development Pathway”.

StG

To paraphrase something I heard in another thread, “I’m not interested in how long your company did your job wrong.”

I don’t know exactly what you do (besides something to do with analytics, which I do know something about). But a job where one person has no supervision, total autonomy, and presumably no career growth for 10 years and is the only person in the department who understands how or what you do does not sound like a great operating model.

How does anyone know if you are doing it correctly? How do you?

These are numbers for sales, customers, etc. My immediate boss was the Cust Ops director. I can tie back to finance numbers. I could tie sales data (X sold of item 123456 between date to date range) to warehouse data (outgo of item 123456 between date ranges). We had auditors, both internal and external and customer auditors wanting info to tie back to.

When I returned reports of requested data, my emails always spell out the criteria under which the search was made. Filters for item, date range, warehouse, state, type of product, are all spelled out. This will often lead to additional questions, for example, if we sold $5mm of a certain product in a week, and there’s an associated product, I would often give both pieces of information, because it’s easier to pull in both and anticipate the need.

So when my boss, or my boss’s boss are in a meeting and they need some bit of data, they know they can ping me an have the talking point at their fingertips when they suddenly need it.

As for growth, I told my boss many times I didn’t want to move into management. At my company, shit runs downhill, and the lower-level managers bear the brunt of senior management’s ill-conceived ideas. They first started asking me n my first 6 months, when I was a credit rep, if I wanted to move into a lead, then supervisor position, and I refused. I was happy being a data flunky. I held excel training classes for warehouse folks looking to move into office jobs, and mentored a couple people into data jobs, for the fun of teaching, but I didn’t want to move into training.

StG

Reminds me of the various training sessions we have - none of which is of the least use. I just repeat the mantras: “Say NOTHING! I am getting paid to just sit here.

Sounds like you had a decent gig for some time. Sorry it had to end. Now, just collect the paycheck for as long as you can stand it. And see how many times you can lower your standards and expectations! :wink:

I guess maybe I don’t understand what’s so egregious about your employer that you are looking to quit with 2 years until retirement, just because they asked you to do your job slightly differently. If you change companies, you are going to have to join a new team with a new title and a new boss and make new relationships and learn new systems and procedures anyway.

As for healthcare, you could probably get a large cost of a marketplace plan subsidized, even if you have a relatively decent amount of income. The baseline amount (SLCSP - second lowest cost silver plan) used to determine the credit level for people getting close to Medicare age is extremely high, but the percentage of your income that you have to contribute towards your health care under a subsidized plan does not change as you age, meaning that the government will pick up a much larger tab for those who are older and thus have more expensive health insurance. After I had filed a return for some folks that got back around half the premiums they paid despite making around $100,000, I looked into what I might have gotten, and it would have been zilch, as I was 22 years younger than them - my required contribution was larger than the SLCSP amount.