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Office Space

Sometimes you’re the bug

Well, the first two months of the year turned out to be a complete shitshow.

Actually, the first 25 days of January were just fine. There was even vegetarian haggis for Burns Night. It’s better than it sounds, really.

But then the 10 minute meeting happened.

Pro-tip: when you and most of your department get a request for a short meeting bad news is on the wind. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the bad news I thought – that my department would be undergoing to some minor cuts to full-time staff due to one of our directors moving out of the group at the beginning of January.

It was actually worse. Oh, so much worse.

The Chief Marketing Officer at LargeFinancialInstitution, where I have been on staff since 2019, decided that my group was “too expensive” and that he would be eliminating approximately 70% of the staff positions (40 out of 57 people), including two of our three directors and our Vice President who has been with the company for her entire 21-year career.

To say it was a shock is the understatement of this barely-legal century. Why such a shock, you ask?

LargeFinancialInstitution declared a profit of over $4B in Q4 of 2020 and ultimately went on to declare a profit of nearly three times that for 2020 overall. Yes, you read that right. That’s billion with a capital B.

Needless to say, that 10-minute meeting extended to 25 because, as you’d expect, when people are told they are about to lose their jobs in the middle of a K-shaped recession caused by a seemingly never-to-end pandemic they have questions. Questions like:

  • When’s our last day?
  • Will there be severance?
  • Where can we get information about continuing healthcare coverage? (oh, so urgent in the middle of a fucking pandemic, this one)

And the CMO had no answers. None whatsoever. Neither did the HR representative who sat mute on the call.

Let’s not point out that LargeFinancialInstitution has a 42-page PDF available on its Intranet to cover just such situations, a PDF the HR rep should have been prepared to direct us to immediately after the meeting but no, we had to sleuth that shit on our own.

The worst cut of all: fucker didn’t even have the courtesy to brush his hair and put on a dress shirt. We got what looked like post-workout hair and his best Nike hoodie.

The only thing he could tell us at the time was there would be jobs posted by COB Wednesday and we were welcome to apply for those jobs. Oh, but wait, he did answer one question: Would we be competing with outside candidates for those jobs?

The answer we got was no, only with other internal candidates. The answer we got was either wrong or a lie as at least three of the jobs ended up posted on LinkedIn at least two weeks before the close date for internal candidates. Of those 19 jobs only 6 of them were even vaguely related to what people in my group do. And, bitterly, none of them were in my specialty area.

I’ve spent the last 6 weeks updating my professional portfolio, polishing my resume, and meeting way more strangers than I ever wanted to meet under pressure. One of my soon-to-be former colleagues describes it accurately as “dating, only not optional.”

And here’s the thing: Searching for a job sucks. It sucks at the best of times. But it especially sucks when companies aren’t sure if they need to hire but put job postings out there anyway, and leave them up long after they’ve made an offer to a candidate.

I’ve had some really great experiences this round – most companies have gotten the idea that a robo email saying they received your credentials is the bare fucking minimum they should be doing – and I’ve had some really shitty experiences – like the recruiter who kept pinging me until I told him to go away. Seriously, who texts someone after they’ve been sent to voice mail after calling twice in 5 minutes?

The layoff experience…It’s not my first time at the layoff rodeo. The only thing Large Financial Institution did right was give us a month’s lead time to telling us our last day was in mid-March.

But that’s a story for after I’ve collected my severance check.

There’s one in every crowd

Sometimes I’m not very good in social situations.  I have a tendency to fill silences, which is a really bad impulse for a writer.  Silence is, after all, a useful tool.

One great thing about curling is it has socializing built in.  At broomstacking after a match you at least have the game to talk about.  It’s the same principle that applies to dates: always go to a movie and dinner that way at dinner you’ll at least have the movie as a topic of conversation.

At my curling club there’s this guy I’ll call T.  No matter what new thing you’ve discovered or what experience you’ve had, T. has already discovered that thing or had an experience that transcends yours.  Go skiing in Aspen over Christmas, T. has been dropped from a helicopter on to Mt. Everest and skied all the way down.  Whale watching trip in Hawaii?  T. got to actually touch a humpback whale while scuba diving in Tahiti.

One of the interesting things about leaving my job the way I did last spring is I’ve started to pay more attention to what’s around me, and one of the things I’ve realized is, there is a T. in every office.

At my last job it was my boss.  No matter what new thing I discovered, oh, he’d heard of it before and wow was it nothing special. In my new work situation, it is one of my team mates.

TGF and I have a friend whose brother-in-law is part owner of a minor league baseball team.  The brother-in-law took our friend to the winter baseball owners meeting. The surprise gift from this for TGF: an official 2016 World Series baseball.

This year for the winter vacation TGF and I are going to Mesa for some Cubs spring training games, and maybe for some autographs on that 2016 baseball.

In discussing my vacation request on our team check-in call last week I explained all this and my boss, also a Cubs fan, expressed her excitement for me and TGF about this trip.

And then the resident T. jumped in.  She’s going on vacation to Florida in February. When asked what she was going we were rewarded with a 5 minute story about where her parents live in The Villages.

If you haven’t heard of it, The Villages is a highly planned community in Central Florida.  Hyper conservative, reportedly totally promiscuous, and, apparently, semi-fascist about access to their property according to my co-worker. Yes, it’s going to be horrible to visit her parents but, duty calls, and she’s going to go anyway.

Never content to let someone else be in the spotlight, the T.’s of the world will always find a way to upstage you.

 

 

 

 

My imperfection does not excuse your imperfection

It is more than marginally ironic that SmallAgency’s relationship with Floundering Non-Profit would be the tipping point to the end of my working at SmallAgency, a tipping point that also included an indicator to what the last straw would be: lack of accountability.

A couple of weeks ago in a project meeting ManBoss, whose pedagogical method is the equivalent of the classic ugly American in Europe (just keep saying the same thing louder hoping whomever you’re talking to will get it), was attempting to explain a concept to me I was only partially familiar with. Being stressed out, I wasn’t asking the right questions. Instead of saying “But wait, it sounds like you’re saying [X] which I know is wrong based on what I do understand about this concept. I can’t be hearing you right.” I kept trying to reconcile the patently wrong information he was giving me with what I knew and asking poorly formed questions. His reaction to this: to lose his temper and scream at me in front of another developer and the project manager on the job, storm out of the room muttering insults under his breath, and then slam the office door on the way out to get lunch about 60 seconds later.

Since I was off the next day, we weren’t able to address in incident immediately, which in retrospect was probably a good thing since his behavior was just the latest in what could most charitably be called “a developing pattern of inappropriately confrontational relationships with staff,” which is management speak for he’s been a condescending, sulky, moody prick for the last six months and I’m not the only one he’s been behaving badly toward. His behavior toward me was just the most extreme incident.

My next day back I asked for a meeting with him and WomanBoss to “discuss what happened in the project meeting” earlier in the week. I’m a little bit proud of myself. I had recently watched this lovely short video from Brené Brown on blame. Dr. Brown often uses herself as an example in her talks, which is something I find very motivating. But the gist of the blame talk is blaming someone else for your choices and actions and refusing to take accountability for your behavior is toxic. It’s infantile and it needs to stop.

In my meeting with ManBoss and WomanBoss I told them I’d been thinking about the incident earlier in the week, that I realized I wasn’t asking the questions I needed to ask in the right way, that instead of contextualizing and airing what I knew and how I was trying to integrate that with what ManBoss has been saying I had been doing all my processing internally leading to poor, confusing questions, and I understood how that was frustrating. I literally said “I take accountability for asking poor questions and I take accountability going forward for asking better, clearer questions in the future.”

Based on a “you get more flies with honey than with vinegar” conversation I’d had earlier in the morning with the Project Manager, who is very Southern and was present when ManBoss completely lost his shit in the meeting, instead of going in hard I asked ManBoss if we could agree that his behavior was inappropriate? His response: attack.

  • My behavior was inappropriate.
  • I “get angry” when people try to help me.
  • It takes me “forever to understand anything.”
  • He’s “just not seeing any improvement in my work.”

By this time we’d both increased our volume a bit and WomanBoss interjects with “I think we’re getting a little angry here.” Given that I wasn’t in the slightest bit angry, I told her I wasn’t angry at all. But yes, she did that silencing thing that often happens to women: if we speak at anything more than a conversational volume level we must be “angry.”

I tried to counter: yes, my work for Floundering Non-Profit wasn’t the best, but I didn’t want to open that can of worms, and I suggested that if he compared that project to the one I was actively on he’d see a big improvement. Nope, more attack.

  • My work on the current project was full of mistakes.
  • He’s constantly having to correct my work.

I allowed as how I hadn’t heard from the PM about any bugs, and I’d had an extensive conversation with her that morning, and if he was always having to correct my work and not telling me about it he wasn’t giving me the opportunity to improve. His response: he just doesn’t have time for that.

This is when I snapped. I got angry, and when I’m really angry I get quiet. I looked him straight in the eye and told him “nothing, no level of frustration, no opinion about the quality of my work or my skills, no amount of salary paid to me, nothing” gave him the right to speak to me the way he spoke to me the other day.

Sometimes, not often, you get to surprise people, and sometimes you get to see it. ManBoss literally did a double take, as if he expected me to just roll over, to not stand up for myself, and just give in.

At this point WomanBoss says we need to table (in the defer sense) the conversation for later while they come up with a work plan. I spent all day that and all day the next day, Friday, alone in the back of the office with ManBoss. It took me three xanax and half a dozen Tums to get through my workday. Sunday afternoon I resigned by email.

Given that ManBoss’ response to me asking him to take accountability for his behavior was a classic abuser response – “If you didn’t make me so mad I wouldn’t have to hit you.” – I think I would have been justified just emailing my resignation and never going back in to the office. Given his response, is it any wonder I didn’t want to be alone with him? Given that for the past six months he’s been snappish, pouty, condescending, and generally cranky not just with me but with the PMs and the other two devs, how am I supposed to predict how he will respond to the simplest question? As TGF points out, he’s a big guy and I had no guarantee that the next time I asked him something he wouldn’t get physically violent.

Monday during the project hand-off ManBoss still took no responsibility for his actions, and I got yet another of those rare opportunities to surprise someone: when I told them I was prepared to offer them three weeks’ notice WomanBoss was visibly shocked, as if I would be unprofessional enough to just walk out that day.

They elected to have my last day be the end of the month, which was the end of the current pay period. So I have been officially unemployed for nine days.

But it hasn’t been all bad. One of the things I’ve discovered is how big and supportive my network of friends and professional contacts is. I am extremely lucky. I’ve already had one job interview. And I will come out of this better off. I’m already better off; I’ve started sleeping through the night more often than not, something I haven’t done in almost six months.

So it’s 6ft tall, blonde, and Swedish with a D-cup

I am enough of an adult that I can take criticism and judge for myself whether it is justified and constructive or it’s motivated by something else and, intentionally or not, serves only to attempt to do damage. Sometimes it takes me a while because I tend to take any kind of critique very personally, but not in the usual way of believing that I can do no wrong. No, I tend to believe that whatever critique I’m getting is justified as I flail about wondering if I’ve missed a deficiency somewhere. And, of course, I have just enough of the human tendancy to deny criticism that I then have to fight off those thoughts before I can look objectively at whether or not I need to make changes. This is why it took me a few days to process the abortion of an annual review I received two weeks ago.

After serious consideration, and looking around at some job listings, I realized that ManBoss was right: I have become complacent in my professional development. I’ve let my skills lapse relying on the fact that my job is basically the same thing over and over again supported by people who have skills in areas where I am deficient. To fix this I looked around at various free and paid training programs. Teaching methods have changed quite a bit since the last time I learned Javascript.

Now instead of pages of reading followed by an exercise at the end of the chapter there are two basic instructional methods: watch a short video then do an exercise or “learn by doing” with bite-sized lessons that accrete to a section ending exercise.

The watching a video method has not proven successful for me (so many unwatched courses bought on sale) so I chose the learn-by-doing route. The price point is roughly the same, about $20/month USD, for pro/premium plans across all providers who take this approach. I picked one and signed up.

I as a pro customer they created custom path that will take me from vanilla Javascript to jQuery to Angular JS. Another path at this provider is a PHP to Python to Ruby progression. They also have a course in using Git which looks interesting. And it seems to be working for me. I’m remembering more and am able to apply it better. I’m also able to squeeze in a little bit of studying every day because each lesson takes less than 15 minutes.

In considering the other critique, the one about my pace, I decided to do a little experiment based on a comment from ManBoss during my review. He acknowledged that my computer is a POS and that it was ridiculous for me to be waiting a minute or more for it to load a page served by localhost.

At this point I would like to rage for a minute: Of course it’s a POS. A Mac devoted guy bought the cheapest Windows laptop he could get away with four years ago. When I was handed this machine new it had 4gb of memory out of a possible eight…four years ago. Everyone in the office, including WomanBoss, who has a perfectly good Mac Mini sitting on her desk, has gotten a new laptop in the past 18 months. Everyone except me. Me, I did some research last summer and found a company that sells compatible after-market memory and got ManBoss to agree to spend under $70 to double the amount of memory available to my machine, which helped a lot, but isn’t the same as a new computer.

To figure out how much of my pace problem is me plodding, and I’m willing to admit that I am probably slower than the average agency would like, and how much of it is a technology issue, I decided to use the tool I’ve been tracking my daily time with to figure out how much of my day I spend working and how much I spend just staring at my computer waiting for it to do simple, routine tasks like clear cache, load pages from local host, compile SASS into CSS files, and load external, work-related sites. I’ve been doing this for nearly two weeks and on average I’m spending a fifth of my tracked time per day just waiting for my computer. One day in the past week I tracked just under 6 hours and spent 54 minutes of that just waiting for my machine. That’s nearly an hour of lost productivity.

I’ve had a very frank conversation with our other PM (not the one who ignored the circus of a project for Floundering NonProfit) about what’s going on and she’s helped provide some balance and perspective confirming that yes, a lot of the underlying management problems I see are really there. Wednesday I had her review a note to my bosses to follow up on my review and let them know what steps I was taking to remedy the things they brought to my attention. She thought it seemed reasonable. I thought it seemed reasonable. Here’s what it said:

Hi ManBoss; Hi WomanBoss,

I want to let you know what steps I am taking to correct the skills and speed deficiencies you brought to my attention during my review.

For the skills piece, per ManBoss’ request I’ve started with Javascript. I’m currently following TrainingCompany’s Javascript path which starts with vanilla js, goes to jQuery, then on to AngularJs. I think their approach – bite sized lessons with small tasks that accrete to a larger task at the end of each section – is working well for me. I’ve also set myself an overall course task of improving on the first unit’s project – rock, paper, scissors against the computer – and being able to apply other things I learn to that program. Once I’m done with this path there is a PHP, Python, Ruby path which I intend on pursuing. They also have a Git course that looks interesting.

With respect to increasing speed, I am applying ManBoss’ suggestions for being less exacting with comps to CurrentHosedProject and it seems to have improved my pace dramatically. Too, I am trying to keep better track of my actual work time vs. time spent waiting on my machine to do routine tasks. If you’ll look in Admin > Dev/Ops you’ll find that time spent waiting for those routine tasks is not trivial. I would like us to come up with a plan to address this – whether that is a new Windows machine or transitioning me to Mac (and giving me the time to learn that new system) – as there is no chance I’m winning the Indy 500 driving a Yugo. 🙂

One thing that would be helpful for me moving forward is if we could more expressly define what is expected of me in my role and position here at SmallAgency – am I to be a front-end dev with some back end skills? a full stack developer (and if so, which stack? with a specific CMS specialty (e.g WordPress or Drupal)) a primarily front-end dev with project management and content strategy experience? This will help me concentrate my time on improving in the areas that are most beneficial and contribute most to the team as a whole.

I also think it would be helpful for SmallAgency in general if we could better define what it means to be a back-end dev and a front-end dev on a project. I say this not so that people can work only to expectations but more so that people can concentrate on primary expectations more effectively and then use additional time to help out where needed.

I look forward to your response. If you would like to discuss this further in person I’m happy to do that as well.

Thank you,
myRealName

Seems fairly resonable: you gave me critique, here’s how I’m correcting it, here are some data I’ve discovered, and here are some requests of you based on those data and some about setting expectations that will help me do a better job for you.  Also this helps me know what your expectations are.  If you’re looking for me to be a 6 ft tall blonde with a D-cup who speaks Swedish then our continuing relationship is a waste of time for both of us: I can never be that and you will always be disappointed.

I admit that this line – (and if so, which stack? with a specific CMS specialty (e.g WordPress or Drupal)) – is missing a question mark inside those parentheses [(and if so, which stack? with a specific CMS specialty (e.g WordPress or Drupal)?)] so it could be read ambiguously but I would say that it’s not the most important thing in the message.

A day later I get this back from WomanBoss (punctuation or lack thereof as sent):

Hi myRealName
Thanks for following up and updating us. We appreciate that. We’re researching a new PC for you and will try hard to slot that in the budget.

Regarding CMSs as you know our primary work is Drupal and WordPress and our developers work in both. We’ll need you to continue to work within both at SmallAgency.

ManBoss will follow up on your other questions.

I had to read it twice and walk away from my computer before I could fully digest this reply. Picking it apart several things stand out:

  • The aforementioned missing question mark and the response to that: Any time you use the phrase “as you know” you’re being condescending. There’s absolutely no call for that.
  • The new computer issue: They’re going to “try hard to slot that into the budget” could mean one of two things:
    1. They’re planning on firing me after the current project wraps up so why bother to get me new equipment?
    2. They’re terminally stupid about how they manage their resources and expectations.

    At this point either of these is just as likely.

  • Following up on my other questions: ManBoss won’t follow up on my other questions. Setting those kinds of expectations would actually require ManBoss to make a decision and not be “improvisational.” It would also set clear boundaries and require both of them to maintain those boundaries. That means they can’t move the goal posts at a whim.

Speaking of moving the goal posts, Alternet ran an interesting article on bosses this week. Seven eighths of it applied, in varying degrees, to where I work.

The coffee should have been my first clue.

I’ve long suspected that my happiness life expectancy at a job is somewhere around four years, and after that point the little things that aren’t right with an employer, or the management style, or the benefits, or the office politics become impossible to ignore. I was hoping this wasn’t the case at SmallAgency.

I was mistaken.

The annual review I had last week crystalized some things I’ve been feeling for a while now, chief among them that I just do not fit in where I work. Much of the criticism I got was totally valid – I do need to up my skill level in certain areas; I have not been moving forward developmentally in my field; and yes, I am probably slower than I should be – but some of it was, to put it mildly, complete and utter horse shit.

We are wrapping up a shit show of a project which is, ironically enough, my second stab at helping Floundering Non-Profit launch a new website. This project is now two weeks overdue. During my review last Thursday I was told that my “slowness is becoming a problem with project timelines.” I responded by saying I know that shit show project was, in fact, a mess and that I bear some of the responsibility for that but besides this particular project were there any other examples of my pace being a problem with a project coming in on time?

Nope. There were no other examples. There was also no recognition from my boss that anyone besides me – like say the project manager who only gave about 60% attention to the project, or my boss himself who completely ignored the project on the grounds that I was the lead developer while simultaneously refusing to let me set any kind of development direction only to deliver everything to me to do my part at the last minute – bears any responsibility for the state of this project. We discussed it further and I mentioned a second time that I realized I was partly responsible for the way the project has been going…and again nothing. No recognition whatsoever.

Smell the bullshit yet?

When I asked how I could speed up we discussed some strategies for dealing with design files with my boss telling me that he never uses all of the shades of gray, and there are often dozens, that our designer puts into a design because there are just too many. Which got me to thinking: if the files our designer produces are too detailed to use all the details why not tell him that, make the color palettes simpler and save our clients some design money while simultaneously giving people who have to work with these files a more clear directive on what to do with them? And how have my bosses not thought of this 10+ years into running their own firm? These are smart people. Surely this can’t be an idea I’m just having now?

How about now? Smell the bullshit?

Or maybe this bullshit should have been my first clue. The replacement rolls are less than four feet away. You have to pass them as you leave the bathroom.
Or maybe this bullshit should have been my first clue. The replacement rolls are less than four feet away. You have to pass them as you leave the bathroom.

The thing is, the bullshit has indicators. For almost four years I’ve been doing office-manager type duties – keeping track of whether or not we have paper products, making sure the water gets delivered in the right quantities, making the coffee every morning (even though I don’t drink coffee) and keeping track of beans and making sure the coffeemaker actually gets maintained – in addition to my actual job, and how we deal with coffee should have been my first clue.

These people like expensive coffee beans. We’re talking $75 for a five pound bag, and we have a gorgeous, burr grinder coffeemaker, that will make as few as two cups of coffee, in which to make it. Routinely my office makes a second pot, 12 cups, of coffee during the day, and just as routinely I throw out 6 to 8 cups of coffee the next morning to make a new batch. Why? Because they won’t drink anything other that freshly brewed coffee.

Now, since I’m not a coffee drinker I can’t really criticize the choice to not drink day-old coffee. What I can criticize is the ridiculous waste of one person brewing an entire pot then drinking less than a quarter of it.

And it’s this ridiculous waste that is really the indicator of the underlying problems.

Yes, it is time to formulate an exit strategy, and while I do, just nod and smile and remember the rules I have forgotten:

  1. I go there for money; it is an exchange of skills and time for salary.
  2. We are not friends. This is business.

Oh, and one more thing: Working remotely is a trap.