One of the ironic outcomes of my current maternity leave, during which I've had no semblance of a schedule or focus on my career--has been more time to talk with friends about their careers. Just call while I'm nursing and voila, we can have a somewhat lengthy, spontaneous conversation.
That was the case the other day with a good friend of mine. She called to check up on me, the "new mommy", and found herself, instead, sharing her employment woes and getting my unsolicited career coaching. For me, talking about other people's jobs is a recreational activity; and I seem to have a talent for sucking these details out of people.
My friend had been at her new job for three months. She was excited to get her position, especially after being unemployed for a long time. She had taken a multi-year "hiatus," from the job market, during which time "social media" became watch words, and those with solely "traditional" marketing expertise learned not to admit it. This job was a mixed blessing; it immersed her in the digital marketing realm from which she could leverage jobs in the future, but with a much reduced paycheck and seniority. Despite its shortcomings, this latest job seemed a perfect fit, combining her agency experience with a business development role.
I knew there was more to my friend's story when I asked her about the new job, and she said it was "fine." Three months is a pivotal time during a new job. It's a point of sink or swim, when inherently you know whether you are on a path to greatness, or need to get the hell out of dodge, or will just be a cog in a machine of relative mediocrity. None are inherently bad, if they fall in line with an expectation.
My friend elaborated: She was aware that she'd be reporting into a managing director, but she wished she'd done more diligence on this person in advance. He was the quintessential lone wolf, and very political. Now I've learned to stop demonizing people for being political for the same reason I can't fault people for breathing. Earlier in my career I would have made it my business to ignore the political rumblings and goings-on at my job, but pretending that they don't exist and not reacting to political undertones might get you fired, or worse, stuck in the purgatory of career stagnation.
Moving on: Three months into the job, my friend was crystal clear that her new boss was going to hamper her progress at her job. Though my friend was hired to progress certain accounts, these accounts had been landed by her boss, and he wasn't going to just let her manage them. In essence, he'd agreed to let his new report drive the new car but refused to hand over the keys. He wouldn't provide her with the resources, contacts, and ultimately the trust she needed to do her job well. Once, when the company's CEO came to her for information on a client, which she innocently provided, her boss admonished her for going over his head. Though she had come to the company with 25 years of work experience, she was now afraid to speak at meetings for fear of saying something impolitic, or something that might undermine her impossible-to-please boss.
"I feel like I can't win," she told me. If I don't do the job that I was hired to do, he'll fire me, but if I do the job I was hired to do really well, he may fire me for that. I'm doomed to maintain a status quo that keeps him comfortable."
My friend had assessed the reality of her situation quickly and, I believe, accurately. Now, she said, she needed to determine whether the situation could be improved, and if it couldn't be improved, was it one that she could live with.
Now, before we start taking comments from the peanut gallery, let me interject with more reality: This is the shittiest economy many of us have yet encountered. And though my typical advice to take the entrepreneurial route and tell corporate bosses to suck it has been the stuff of many a blog post in the past, I must say I can respect my friend's dilemma. In fact, my friend's story gave me chills of recognition. I had experienced a situation similar to hers years ago, and wasn't sure if it was wise to jettison myself back into unemployment for the satisfaction of leaving some idiot high and dry of a punching bag for all of a week before being replaced. Sometimes it's OK to just coast, to play second--or third--fiddle, hell, to even be the one forced to play the kazoo and look like an amateur. I wasn't being asked to tell my friend what to do, but rather, to help her see her options for what they really were before acting on them.
"You realize, of course, that this guy isn't going to change ..." was my brilliant contribution to the conversation.
I'm actually not joking; it was brilliant. I wish I had known the same for myself when I had been working for someone who thinks they are ready to hire people but whose self-concept is so entrenched in his accomplishments that anything that removes him from the spotlight, or threatens his control, gets shot down. Rather than live in his endless shadow she would be better off going somewhere with no cloud cover, even if it was uncomfortable, if her goal was to progress at that company.
"Do you have savings?" I asked her. She admitted that her long stint of unemployment had drained her account.
"I need to determine if I can either hold out long enough in this stressful situation to find another job, or even stay in the job and accept this situation."
This led to another line of questioning: How possible was it that her manager would leave, get fired, or be transferred to another area of the company?
Nearly impossible, she said. My friend had built some relationships with others at the company who confided in her that her position had become somewhat of a revolving door, with people either leaving for other jobs or branded by her manager as incompetent and let go. People at the company opted to turn the other cheek, as the manager had proven himself valuable as an individual contributor. He'd brought in the company's largest and most lucrative accounts. His work was rewarded with job security and a management role that he couldn't handle.
I thought back to when I was experiencing my friend's dilemma, years ago. I'd started at a company knowing I was replacing an "incompetent" employee, but my manager had seemed so even keeled that I assumed it was simply a case of a bad fit. A week into the job the veiled threats began, comments like, "You understand me, Jory, right? The last person didn't, and she didn't last long." Similarly to my friend I had answered a question asked by the company president that I wasn't supposed to have answered as honestly as I did. From there, all of my meetings with senior people were cancelled. She spotted a typo in one of my reports and instituted a new rule that everything I wrote had to be proofed by her before being released. But she was unavailable to approve my work, so my work was often horribly delayed. She requested that I check in with her four times a day, but she wasn't available four times a day, and I ended up wasting time outside of her office, trying to catch time with her. After a month on the job she gave me a warning--if I couldn't be more proactive I'd be let go.
A kind co-worker waited until the coast was clear, when we were both slugging out reports in the office over a weekend, to tell me that I was doomed, like the others before me. But my boss had helped to start the company; she was entrenched, and I was the unknown entity. Translation: I really was screwed.
I let the situation play out for another month before quitting, probably moments before the hatchet fell on me. I had no idea what I would do; I fantasized about leaving the corporate world behind and living in Nepal. But a friend who was working for a new media startup pinged me, I interviewed for the position, and found myself in gainful, healthy employment in a matter of weeks.
Interestingly my former manager ended up leaving the company a few weeks after I did. Did her reputation finally catch up with her? I don't know. The co-worker who told me about her departure also said to me, "If only you had held out for a few weeks..." But I don't think that all would have turned up rosy if I'd stayed. My departure might have been the final straw for management, the act that tipped the balance and caused someone to question her. Or I might have been free of that manager, but now subject to a new management that was even more intense than she and had driven her to her madness. Who the hell knows? All I know is that, looking back, there was no other way to go.
I love to say that a door opened when I decided not to put up with another person's issues. But honestly I could have simply been lucky. At the very least I learned that extricating myself from a bad situation and proactively putting myself on a better track paid off. I followed my gut.
"Follow your gut," I told my friend. She agreed that she'd stick out the situation a while longer before determining what she wanted to do.
It seems that this is not an unusual predicament, working for the manager who cannot let go. IMHO: if you find yourself working for one, and you can afford some time in freefall (or want to go to Nepal), just leave.
