To understand the inspiration for Job Hunt 2021, you must know the back story. The reason I’ve arrived at that critical mental state that we sometimes arrive at which is causing me to begin a search for a potential life change. Because, as much as we like to not admit it, our job tends to be a large portion of our lives. 8 hours a day when there are only 24 means a third of your working years are generally spent doing your job. So it’s important that you are somewhat happy at it. I say “somewhat” because (I venture) most of us aren’t the “lucky ones” who love what they do whole-heartedly.

I work to live, not the other way around.

That’s a mantra I’ve tried my best to live throughout my working career. And when it starts to feel the other way around or when I feel underappreciated or when I am just not happy, it’s time to shift my focus and put energy into a job search. They say the grass isn’t always greener – and I am living proof of that. I’ve held 12 “career-type” positions in my 23 year career. Several under a year. Some a little longer. But none longer than 2.5 years until my current position where I’m about to hit my 7 year mark. It’s a strange feeling. I understand now why people stay at jobs they’re unhappy in for a long long time – there’s a certain comfort once you hit a certain threshold:

You’ve earned the trust (hopefully) of your colleagues.

Perhaps you’ve been promoted (a couple times?) and/or gotten significant raises.

Maybe you’ve switched positions within the company.

Or you’ve become the go-to-guy about your service and/or product.

It’s a potentially scary proposition to abandon any of those items. In my case, it’s all of them.

I’ve had a strange knack over the years of being the guy people flock to when they’re unhappy with their jobs…especially current co-workers. I’m not sure why to be honest. Maybe I’m a good listener (an odd thought as I’m clearly one who loves to talk). Maybe it’s my years of job-hopping experience. Maybe it’s something else. Either way, I almost ALWAYS give the same general advice. If you are truly unhappy with your job or your situation – do whatever you can to change it! Yes, it’s a daunting prospect to search out new positions, apply to those positions, go through multiple interviews, and make the ultimate decision to jump ship, however more often than not, it’s worth it!

So back to my situation. Why have I decided now, after 7 years, to move on? Well, to be honest and fair, it isn’t the first time at my current job that I’ve looked to move on. I actually had a verbal offer in place 4 years ago to leave my company for a much more lucrative position (that I was leery of in all honesty) and had even told my boss, who I greatly respected, that this would be happening (BIG MISTAKE). Only to be told by the potential new manager a few days later that the new company was going into a full-on hiring freeze and they pulled my verbal offer. Doh.

So let’s fast forward to December, 2019. A month prior, a new “Chief of Some Made Up Title” was hired over the team I belonged to at the time. And he made some very quick, rash decisions that budgets should be slashed (without regard to the product, the services we provided to our clients, or the profits we made). Almost half of the team I was a member of, including my direct manager and another manager-level employee were dumped just a few weeks short of Christmas. It caught everyone off-guard and did not pass the sniff test. Some folks were let go who clearly shouldn’t have been, and there was no clear plan on how to handle the new, smaller team. When we had the all-hands meeting the next day (typically the “it was a hard decision, and we feel really bad, but we hope this is the only layoff of its kind” meeting), the new C-whatever-level spoke to the team and rather than come off as contrite (this was the first time any of us low-level worker bees had even heard his voice), he brushed off our former colleagues and pushed his new agenda on us…

“…we had to let people go, don’t worry about them, they’ll be fine. We need to look to the future. I was chatting with a buddy of mine who I’d love to bring over here…” And a new VP was hired just a month later…shocker

This was one of the most off-putting things I’ve experienced in the workplace. We started talking amongst ourselves and almost everyone had designs on getting the hell out of dodge. I warned our new boss (the one who was handed the dirty task of letting everyone go even though he didn’t fully know who did what on our team) that more attrition was coming and it seemed the company wanted/expected that. He didn’t disagree. And just a little over a month or so later, 2 more of my colleagues had already moved on – one of which I encouraged and provided a recommendation for him at his new company. While I was sad to lose him (he was one of the best at what he did), that’s never a reason for someone to stay in a toxic workplace which we seemed to suddenly have become.

I, too, started a job search, but I also had a 2-week vacation to Europe planned over the holidays which made it hard to continue my job search in earnest. When I returned, rested and relaxed from an amazing vacation, I had a realization that I could potentially engineer a shift back to a former position I had held the first 4+ years of my employment here and did so, with a start date around the first of March, 2020. Then…COVID.

Two days after returning to my former team, with the boss I liked and trusted, he gave his 2-week notice. Around the same time, it was announced that our team was going to merge into my recently-departed team, which meant, you guessed it, I was back under the VP I had absolutely no respect for. The thoughts of moving on crept back in, but when COVID hit and so many people lost their jobs so fast, I felt a little guilty to be considering a new position when I was so thankful to be gainfully employed during this crazy time. So while I did a little perusing of LinkedIn and Glassdoor, I didn’t look in earnest. Then we re-orged and that’s when things got interesting.

My now-departed bosses former right-hand man was put in charge of the entire newly-merged organization. We also had a couple of newly promoted managers who were over two of the smaller teams, but those of us who merged into my old group continued to report directly to the new man in charge. This was not a problem for me, quite the contrary. I had worked with my new manager for many years when I was on that team originally. And it became quickly clear that he was looking to shake up his new organization a little bit and proposed to me a managerial position over my current teammates. This consisted of just 4 folks and I have had managerial experience in my past, so I thought about it and suggested we do it on a trial basis but made it very clear I wouldn’t do it for free. He agreed and we quickly transitioned me to most tasks he was doing before his promotion – just without the official managerial tasks. This was around early August 2020. Over the fall and into the winter, the potential raise for me kept getting dragged out – my boss was very open and transparent with me, but the two people above him (a VP and the Chief Whatever) seemed to move the goalpost often…or they just didn’t want to discuss it. Ultimately, it was decided to demote on of the other managers and put me in charge of more people on the team (9 total people, including the demoted colleague). Eventually, in December, after our fiscal year flipped on 11/30, my boss had enough and forced the VP to tell me directly what his plans were. I was told that nothing would happen until January but we should have some movement at that time.

So, a couple of weeks after our winter break, I get “warned” by my boss that he heard from his boss that I would be offered the manager position but only if I did it for another 6 months (or longer) at my current pay. To which I laughed. A lot. I had already done the job (aside from the official “managerial” tasks) for almost 6 months and they wanted me to “prove myself” for another 6 months. For free. With no guarantees of what my raise might be at that time (if anything). Mind you, I had been working approximately 50-60 hours per week on average with all my new tasks and I didn’t complain about that fact. I truly wanted to prove myself. And I felt I did. So, as was always part of our arrangement, I took the option of saying “no” and going back to my normal job, which basically meant going back to 40-ish hours per week and just working with my clients.

The problem with all of this is clearly I felt a bit disrespected. But maybe more importantly, I have a strong feeling I would now be viewed as “not a team player” because it was made clear to me that our VP and Chief What’s His Name expect everyone to work in a higher position for free for a full year. I wonder if that’s part of their interview strategy for new-hires:

“Well, we’d like to hire you on at a manager role, but could you do it for Individual Contributor pay for a year (or maybe longer)? If you do a good job, we might give you a raise…sound good? Thanks!”

I found out, through this whole ordeal, that ultimately the VP (and maybe the Chief Car Salesman) decide who gets raises and promotion even though they hardly know the name of our product let alone what people on the team actually do to contribute.

I was very content with the decision to turn them down, but realized this likely means there’s just nowhere for me to go at this company. So that’s it – that’s the “wall” I hit. You know, the wall where you realize there’s no getting around it without leaving the building. So that was the final push I needed to start the job search.

Ironically, many new “initiatives” and “goals” were introduced at around the same time – the kinds of tasks that ultimately take away from your real work (making customers happy/successful/wanting to renew) but are required so the forces that be can track everything you do. It has become clear in the last couple of months that these new tasks are more important than pleasing customers when it comes time to distribute bonuses and/or promotions/raises. So that only solidified the job search…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s dive into the process with my next entry!

-Mike

P.S. Apologies for the length of this. There’s plenty more I could’ve added, but as I said, I like to talk. And typing is just a way for my fingers to talk.