But I’m fairly sure that I’m about to embark on the roughest patch of my professional career as of today. For how long? That has yet to be determined, but if the past year has been any indication, it’s probably not going to end as soon as I’d hope it would.
The funny thing is that back in November, I almost drafted a post about how it felt like I was doing less work but making more money after my promotion in September. How I didn’t really feel like I felt like I knew what I was doing in my new managerial role, and that I felt a little bit of labor guilt on how I was doing actual less labor, but going to more meetings, and delegating tasks, but I was in fact, making more money in the process.
But almost as if channeling Murphy’s Law, as quick as I began having these thoughts, things began changing very fast, and a long-looming black cloud over my career had begun pouring its initial drops of rain onto the landscape, and a few weeks later, here I am, feeling like I’m about to be starting the roughest patch of my professional career.
Obviously, I’m not going to go too in-depth with the context of everything, because one, nobody really cares at the end of the day, and two, work is one of those topics that I try to be deliberately vague and keep some things private if possible.
But long story short, since I’ve found that this situation is often times best described and explained through analogies: my entire team of graphic designers, copyrighters and coordinators have been mandated to change to this new suite of internally-made software, despite the fact that our current existing process is a perfectly well-oiled machine and has warranted the slightest need for change.
Except all of the software is garbage; hastily-made, constantly being updated and tinkered with while trying to be test driven at the same time, making it nearly impossible to really beta test. Furthermore, the entire project is being helmed by an IT guy, who unfortunately sits at a higher paygrade than I do, and subsequently has the pull to force this onto us, without anyone really knowing why an IT guy has any say on how a creative department operates on a day-to-day basis.
Getting back to the analogy, it’s like everyone on my team showed up to work in their cars, but then the IT manager shows up, presents everyone with bicycles, tells them that this is now your primary mode of transportation, and then drives off in his own car. It’s like everyone on my team is working in the Adobe Creative Suite and then being told that Microsoft Office is now the norm. It’s like being basketball players, and then showing up for practice and then the equipment guy rolls in and dumps a sack full of footballs on the gym floor and tells everyone to get to work.
Basically, my entire department is being sandbagged and being expected to perform as normal, when it’s pretty much going to be impossible. I fully predict this is going to accelerate employee turnover, and that I am going to lose some designers, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I haven’t been thinking about potential exit strategies myself.
Words can’t really convey the sheer amounts of frustration I have over this whole situation. I’m aghast over the people who are making this happen, and as cynical as I tend to write, I really don’t like to throw around the phrase that I hate people on individual levels, but I’m 90% sure that I hate the guy in charge of all of this. I already know that I wouldn’t piss on this person if they were on fire, and if modern society weren’t so full of pussies that cry assault at the littlest physical interactions, and I’d get my ass arrested and/or deported, I’d probably punch this guy square in the face at some point.
All I really know is that starting today embarks the deployment of some shit that I’ve been dreading for months. Playing nice, logic, and a laundry list of red flags have completely failed to derail this bullshit from taking off, because when the day is over, the decision to go forward with this were entirely above my paygrade, and the selfish convictions of a fucking asshole have triumphed over the holistic health and careers of many people on my team.
I could say that the failure rate of this project is embarrassingly high, and that the guy in charge of this should have his ass fired if and when it does fail, but I’m also in corporate America – who’s to say that when the Titanic sinks, the captain is the only one who’s going to die? No, I think there’s equally a chance that everyone on the ship sinks with him, and as I stated before, I’m not blind to the notion that it would be best suited if I had an exit strategy somewhere in my back pocket.
