As a wise man apparently said, find a job you enjoy, and you’ll never work a day in your life.
And I’m lucky enough to be finding that true, and have done since 2010 or so.
Now, I’m not expecting specifics. I’m aware that some such as I are asked to not be too blatant about where they work. And for some, it’s a straight up asking for trouble thing.
I do however want to hear about times when you haven’t enjoyed your job or career. As ever, I’ll start.
I count my blessings that I bloody love my career. It’s incredibly interesting to me, and every day brings new and challenging things for me to wrap my brain around. If that’s the key to staying young, I may turn out to be immortal.
The role itself is incredible, and I feel I add genuine value to society. Yet....there was a period where a god awful manager nearly drove me and the rest of my team to pack it in. No matter how much we enjoyed the actual job, that colossal arse made every day a chore.
See, my job involves knowing certain rules and regulations inside out, near verbatim. Yet it also allows for leniency. Where other kinda similar roles can only and exclusively follow the law, my remit is deliberately a wee bit looser.
That manager? That egotistical git! He’d never worked a case in his puff. At all. Not even close. He was ( and with apologies to non- stereotypical middle managers) the sort of middle managers look up to in terms of arbitrary nonsense.
We’d push for a promotion, feeling we’re up to specific guidelines and that? He’d just invent more. And if we met them? More. So on and so forth. He was a toxic presence in our teams. A toady. A crawly little bum lick the Big Boss looked on favourably because he sucked up. Never mind he barely did anything, ever after hours, he’d take the right person out for dinner or drinking etc, and just creep and crawl and pour honey in their ear ( I am categorically not ensuing any kind of physical inappropriate stuff).
Before and after him, our managers respected us. We were a team of perhaps 8, responsible for training and mentoring a division of around 100. In terms of quality and output quantity? We were the tops. Yet every time ‘mmm.....mmm.....mmmmmm I’m not sure because I don’t want it to reflect badly on meeeeeeeeeeee.
Not that I’m bitter,
But hey, that’s the ancient past now. And I’m back to loving each and every day. Even when I take annual leave, I find myself jonesing to get back in the saddle and start tugging on that thread and unravelling the issues.
Whimbrling aside for a second? I came to this specific role about 8 years ago. Before that, was a series of dead end jobs I found something to enjoy in (when I didn’t, I walked. Not ideal, but I’m sadly highly strung my nature, definitely not by nurture). So for fellow Dakkanauts that might not have found the right career yet? Keep the faith, brethren and sistren.
Everyone else? Tells us! Be as specific or as vague about your actual role as you like. It’s the why, not the what I find interesting!
Hmmm. I am a teacher, I teach science (Physics and Biology) to kids aged 11 to 18.
It is a challenging job, but can be very rewarding, and it has excellent holidays where I get a lot of hobby stuff done.
I really enjoy planning lessons, and the part where I am actually teaching the children. That is by far my favourite part. I love my subjects and enjoy getting to explain them. I am pretty good at this part by most accounts these days, though I did not start out great but I have been at it ten years.
But the job is wearing me down. Most people would expect that teaching is mostly what I have described above, but that is only part of the job. Of course, there is marking to be done, and some of that can be quite onerous, especially coursework. But that is par for the course. Every job has parts that are unpleasant but required. Marking is important.
What gets me down is the constant organisational changes for no reason. I am constantly being asked to build and rebuild curriculum to various different specifications and educational trends. In ten years, I have written at least two entire curricula per year every year. I often have to transfer curricula between online platforms and so on so my managers can pretend they follow up on it. Most of the stuff they make me do they then make me throw out the following year when some new trend comes along. The other plague is whole school initiatives. To get a promotion, each manager must oversee a whole school initiative. So every year we have a least four or five initiatives in play simultaneously from the various ambitious managers. Usually, they hang around for two years, implement their stupid initiatives, and then leave to a position managing somewhere else. Then the new person comes in, scraps all the old initiatives, and implements their own. This cycle repeats every 2 years at most, so I have been through it more than 5 times now. It is utterly demoralising and exhausting. Because overseeing an initiative apparently just means assigning a bunch of work to staff with no oversight on the workload. Because of this, I regularly work 50+ hours a week and sometimes have to work 70 hours. Remember this is while classroom teaching, a job that requires you to be fully mentally switched on and full of energy.
Over the past three years this has come to a head to the point where I am pretty burned out. My managers tell me I am a super valuable member of staff and they want my help with things, but I am utterly exhausted and just trying to make sure I do not let my students down. I have tried to communicate the issues to my managers but it falls on deaf ears, as they promise that "once these initiatives are done, it will all be over!" while beefing up their CVs for their next job, not caring what comes after.
Added to this, some of them are extremely ideological about education, for example they have insisted on a system whereby there is no consequence for poor behaviour or late submission of work, so trying to get coursework submitted on time is a massive problem as students take free extensions with no consequence and therefore it is really hard to organise my workflow for marking, and dealing with trivial discipline issues is made more complex by having no consistent system and a management who are overly sympathetic to poorly behaved students. I can manage the behaviour stuff pretty well but it annoys me that it is made more difficult so pointlessly.
I am gonna cut my hours back next year, focus on the older kids and exam classes and try and wall myself off from the incompetent managers as much as possible. Need to get my mojo back.
I'm in a strategic troubleshooter role in the public sector, and I love the job. Although nominally IT, I do a lot of business refactoring, and I've worked with a huge range of wildly different services and fantastic, dedicated people.
Colleagues can be... less than motivated, however.
I am and Efficiency Expert and Call Center Director.
In my last job, other people's livelihoods were on the line all the time and the stakes were much higher for my small community. If I screwed up and couldn't save the money, my neighbors were getting axed. More exciting and rewarding, but much more stressful.
My current role is a bit boring as the stakes are so very low, but the pay is good, and the work I can do in my sleep. If I can;t save the money, it isn't a huge deal and I will still get a big bonus. Boring and safe.
The government saw fit to let me fly their helicopters. Its a good go overall. The actual job is awesome; I've deployed/sailed regularly, flown 7 entirely different platforms so far (two operationally), and its challenging and interesting.
The downside is that I have 'secondary duties' which take up an increasing portion of my time, which cuts into flying or proficiency training/studying. The military is hemorrhaging pilots everywhere because you can make more money and work less in the civilian industry. The gov pension is pretty excellent though, which is why some are still sticking around.
They recently announced a slew of changes to retain pilots which are promising if they coalesce, meaning I'll stay in because other than the burdensome paperwork and unnecessary busy work we're forced to do, the job itself is awesome.
I'm fortunate to have stumbled into my career out of law school. I was hired as a staff attorney for a government agency in their department of administrative hearings. A couple promotions and two moves later, and I'm a Hearing office Director (essentially middle manager/facility head) and I love it!
I work in IT for a pretty big company, I'm a technical lead to a team of people who administer datacenter operations.
I'm not sure I... enjoy it. The pros are that I'm pretty good at it, and I don't take my work home with me, and I like my coworkers and my team. It also pays pretty well.
The downsides are that once I took on the lead position, I definitely feel my technical skills degrading - it's more administrative than I would have liked. I think I have a lot in common with beast_gts.
But it's really all I know how to do, and I'm lazy and complacent, so I am probably here until I retire or die. There are no benefits to me furthering my education in my current area:, I am now right at the highest end of the Y between picking management and programming, and I'm disinclined to one and incapable at the other.
All in all, I wish I had done something else. My dad was a roofer who also did some construction work and it was a very physically arduous job (and he was often injured that I recall), at least he actually, like, built stuff. He had something he could point to, something meaningful, that he helped bring into the world.
All I have to show for my time are a million meetings and conference calls largely centered around wrangling people together and making them talk to each other.
I work as an environmental tech, and while a lot of the work we do is boring and repetitive, there are some gigs (mostly field based) that are really satisfying, and I enjoy being out in the world.
However, it's an industry that's hugely short term contract based, and I'm looking at transitioning to a more stable career in a different field. Working as a pure researcher is among the most stable you can get, and can be hugely invigorating, but money is always tight, and your position is often tenuous.
Looking for a career in the emergency services, which I have a fair amount of experience with through volunteer roles and family members.
My BOSSES, on the other hand, are bound and determined to make it as difficult as humanly possible. And if my immediate supervisor ever gets a clue, HIS supervisor overrides him and continues to make things harder and less efficient than they should be.
Sadly, this seems to be true across all companies in my field, so going elsewhere doesn't help. But I'm just too old at this point to re-educate and change fields; I'd never make enough money in the new field to pay off the new degree before retirement.
I accepted a long time ago that the things I find fulfilling are largely things no one will pay me to do.
So I don't particularly care about work fulfillment? I have a current job that pays well, has great benefits, and I'm very satisfied to do my work as best I can and go home at the end of the day and do what I like.
Yes? No? IDK I work with children with special needs, Specifically i do ABA therapy. I enjoy it but it can be tiring being hit by kids and getting screamed at cause i wont let them play video games for the umpteenth time in the last 2 hours. But i want to continue.
My work seems to love me. Last time we had a meeting of all staff, we got paper shout outs, while otheres received like one or 2, i got 13. I have had supervisors tell me that they are surprised with how good i am with clients.
However.....that comes with a drawback, im put on difficult cases quite often, and being a big guy, quite frankly, i think they put me on cause I intimidate clients(Sure they might hit the 4'10 girl who weighs 120lb, but they wont hit the 300lb 6ft guy that looks like the kingpin)
But all this didnt help when i applied, im thinking "Im a Shoe in, been there the longest, only one applying with higher education and they love me. Well i didnt get it. I was told i wasnt creative enough but i was one of the top candidates, and they want me to stay with the company and grow so they will work with me me to get there.
Here is the thing, I think that is hogwash, I work with several of the most difficult clients there are, ones that have made others quit and where the parents love me, and where upset over schedule changes recently. If i got offered it, i would have been taken off all of those cases and put on significantly easier ones. So im wondering, did i not get it because they wanted me to stay with the difficult clients to avoid parent complaints or others getting put on and leaving?
All in all, I love it, i get tons of vacation and sick pay, i get to do fun things, but im not feeling like im being told the truth.....but who knows.
I'm a researcher and I'm very satisfied where I'm at now. I originally studied Biophysics and have changed the exact topics I'm working on a couple of times, in part because there are a lot of different fields I'm interested in. Luckily my current employer was looking for exactly that, as their research also touches a lot of fields and they were looking for someone with a "broad field of view". It also helps that when I can't answer a question directly, I quite likely know someone from my previous jobs who can help.
Also I usually can handle my work stuff in less time than I'm paid for and therefore are free and actually encouraged by my boss to spend the remaining time for said "broad view". So reading research papers from different fields, communicating with former colleagues or visiting other researchers we might collaborate with in the future, which is great. Also the working hours are flexible and home office possible, the payment good and the position is not limited - another plus as I have small children.
The only downside currently: It's sometimes quite lonely here since my bureau and lab are a bit offside and rarely anyone comes by. I would prefer to have some colleagues around for a chat now and then.
I joined the Royal Air force in 2010 as a weapons technician. I spent the first 3 years getting my engineering NVQ, then moved straight to 5131 Sqn, which was the RAFs explosive ordnance disposal squadron, and something of a specialist role for my trade. I spent the best part of 7 years living out most boys childhood dreams..Blowing things up, using remotely operated vehicles to disrupt IEDs, making and using door breeching charges, firing .5 anti materiel rifles on the range, tearing through towns on blue lights, learning how to make advanced IED circuitry with my american EOD brothers... I wouldve happily done it for my whole life.
Unfortunately last year, in the infinite wisdom of the MOD, the RAF EOD capability was scrapped, under the misinformed notion that the army could carry out our role in amongst their own.
Since then I've moved to a frontline helicopter squadron, and what a step down that was. My work now basically consists of checking the underslung load strops, and occasionally putting a GPMG on the helicopters.
To remedy this I've applied to commission as a UAV operator or helicopter Crewman/Gunner, but this is a long process. I have 2 years left of my contract, and if I dont make the commission, I will be leaving, and probably seeking a job in rolling stock engineering.
I do not like my current role - but it's a zero stress sort of job. No customer contact, only talking to fellow employees, no goals or sales, and it's all sitting in finance programs while I do whatever else on the side.
The plan is to change careers when I'm about 30
I tried teaching and hated it + paid in pennies - my current job pays more than a teacher my age.... and my job is handling some spreadsheets and painting minis, checking reddit, and watching movies while working. It's sort of a low salary but more than a teacher makes. Insane 45+ days PTO but I dont really need to take off. It's simply boring and I don't feel like I'm doing anything of value day to day. I take off 2-3 days a month for no particular reason.
Ghool wrote: I paint miniatures for a living.
So, yeah, I enjoy my job very much.
I did this but I'm no where near as good as you are. I helped out a few studios that needed mercenary deadline/rush jobs as a side gig. I picked up an extra 5-10k a year for a few years doing thi. I wouldnt want to do that full time but 10-20 hours a week already had me at a burn out stage. Luckily I'd work my normal gig while working on client's stuff.
I feel like painting miniatures for work would suck..well wouldnt suck, but I wouldnt enjoy it.. its the reason I never went into anything art related despite having somewhat of an artistic bent. I think the thought of having to work to other peoples designs or ideas, and to a deadline totally turns me off the idea. Its why I could never be a tattooer. because, generally other peoples ideas are cough STUPID cough.
Interesting thread, cool to hear what everyone does.
For me - honestly, yeah, I'm pretty happy.
I work in IT, and do fairly high-level desktop support for a global cosmetics and skincare corporation. I get to tinker with computers, I get to meet lots of (usually nice) people and help them out, and I get to know everyone from global directors to the folks who cart boxes around in the warehouse. I'm generally well-respected (AFAIK!), and am the person most people in the office turn to when they need help - which does feel good, but keeps me busy. For the job I do, I'm also pretty well paid.
The only down-sides are pretty limited scope to actually progress beyond this role, and limited training.
If money was no object, would I keep doing this? Maybe, actually. The only thing that gives me second thoughts there is that, although what I do does help people at an immediate level, ultimately all it really does is help a massive corporation make more money. And if I had complete freedom to do anything, I think I'd like to do something more altruistic than that.
Yes and no.
The job itself is awesome. It's useful, interesting, and I'm very good at it.
As long as pipelines or other industrial tech get built, they need to be checked properly, which is my job.
In recent years however, the company I work for was bought by a corporation which in turn was bought by the Carlyle group, and the corporate parasitism has set in.
On top of that, the office has become increasingly hostile to the people with the actual technical skills to do the job (often abroad in the arse end of nowhere or offshore for 12+ hrs a day 7 days a week for weeks or months on end) with incompetent project managers who not only have no idea of or respect for what we actually do, they have no interest in learning to do anything but bs or jockey for position within the company - to the point clients are starting to notice.
So, currently, I'm looking to save enough money to increase my NDT levels so I can move into a client rep or engineering position elsewhere.
I've been in the Indiana Army National Guard since I was old enough to enlist in 1992 with the exception of a 5 year break in service due to my first wife being a conscientious objector (notice I said first wife...) and picked back up after that marriage collapsed. I enlisted as infantry and spent almost 20 years in that MOS. but due to a spine injury during my Iraq deployment I was forced to get a permanent profile and reclass after passing my Fit For Duty exam. I wound up becoming a cook, which was never my first choice but turned out to be much more enjoyable than I thought it'd be.
After my deployment I was dropping applications places with no real intent on getting work as I had a chunk of unemployment that I could take after all my active duty leave paid out. I applied to Caterpillar thinking that my gak work history would keep me out the door but the application would keep my unemployment going for at least another week. Damn if they didn't hire me, and though I started out assembling large diesel engines there, a layoff and callback landed me in the Machine Shop, where I am to this day. Machining isn't anything I ever entertained the thought of doing. At all. I flat out love doing it, though, and am constantly striving to improve at it.
In short, yes I enjoy both of my jobs, but I honestly wouldn't have thought I would have.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I feel like painting miniatures for work would suck..well wouldnt suck, but I wouldnt enjoy it.. its the reason I never went into anything art related despite having somewhat of an artistic bent.
I feel 100% the same way. I loved art related stuff when I was a teenager, and still do as an amateur hobbyist (just as almost certainly every single person on this forum does, presumably).
I intentionally avoided doing anything art-related when I was in college because I felt that if I did it professionally, I would grow to hate it. Since I also loved computing and technology, and now loathe almost anything related to IT and tech, I think that was a pretty good call in retrospect.
I know people say "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life", but I always thought it more likely if you "do what you love for money, eventually you're not going to love it anymore".
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The role itself is incredible, and I feel I add genuine value to society. Yet....there was a period where a god awful manager nearly drove me and the rest of my team to pack it in. No matter how much we enjoyed the actual job, that colossal arse made every day a chore.
Pretty much sums up my last job. Always loved my career but bad management, not feeling trusted or having my experience valued put me in a very bad spot. It's a couple of years of my life I'll never get back, but at least it's over now.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Since then I've moved to a frontline helicopter squadron, and what a step down that was. My work now basically consists of checking the underslung load strops, and occasionally putting a GPMG on the helicopters.
Doesn't take a supersleuth to work out where you ended up. Armourers have always suffered on Pumas.
I missed them so much I had to come back (at least that's what I tell myself!).
I worked as an admissions advisor not two days ago until I got laid off recently. Honestly, it was my first real office job and the environment was a completely different world for me. It was a new branch altogether in Canada (the first one) for an American higher education company that basically provided coding bootcamps through universities they partnered with. It being a new location meant that I was with coworkers mainly around my age and we actually were able to dictate the work culture since we effectively set up the groundwork for it. There were growing pains, but it was legitimately nice interviewing people and figuring out if coding was for them. There were sales pressure, and ultimately I wouldn't have stayed in my position for too long since I can't see myself doing the same thing for more than 2 years, but it was really the people I worked with that made the difference, especially management being both competent and actually giving a rat's ass about their employees. Alas, all good things come to an end, as a bigger company bought mine out and subsequently decided we didn't match their business model and shut our location down. So while it lasted? I did enjoy my job. But it would definitely not be my "end goal" or aim for my career, I'm still moving towards career counsellor or academic advisor of some kind.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I feel like painting miniatures for work would suck..well wouldnt suck, but I wouldnt enjoy it.. its the reason I never went into anything art related despite having somewhat of an artistic bent.
I feel 100% the same way. I loved art related stuff when I was a teenager, and still do as an amateur hobbyist (just as almost certainly every single person on this forum does, presumably).
I intentionally avoided doing anything art-related when I was in college because I felt that if I did it professionally, I would grow to hate it. Since I also loved computing and technology, and now loathe almost anything related to IT and tech, I think that was a pretty good call in retrospect.
I know people say "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life", but I always thought it more likely if you "do what you love for money, eventually you're not going to love it anymore".
I think that's a fair assessment and I think the problem is that for a lot of people their interest in art-related careers often isn't the same as their competency/ability in being proficient in that field. Art, being more subjective than most industries, seems to have a mixture of both luck and timing that you need a lot more of than other areas of work. If you have the technical skill but what you want to do isn't in demand or currently in vogue, you're out of luck. Or sometimes you have the ideas but you don't have the skill to pull it off. It's a very hit-or-miss type of deal and I think the frustration that comes with that does more to kill that passion than the monotony of doing it for money.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The role itself is incredible, and I feel I add genuine value to society. Yet....there was a period where a god awful manager nearly drove me and the rest of my team to pack it in. No matter how much we enjoyed the actual job, that colossal arse made every day a chore.
Pretty much sums up my last job. Always loved my career but bad management, not feeling trusted or having my experience valued put me in a very bad spot. It's a couple of years of my life I'll never get back, but at least it's over now.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Since then I've moved to a frontline helicopter squadron, and what a step down that was. My work now basically consists of checking the underslung load strops, and occasionally putting a GPMG on the helicopters.
Doesn't take a supersleuth to work out where you ended up. Armourers have always suffered on Pumas.
I missed them so much I had to come back (at least that's what I tell myself!).
I think it's fair to say that i enjoy my job some of the time. I work in the live events industry, doing all sorts of different things, from theatre to corporate conferences. Doing the creative stuff is fun, sitting through yet another session on something i couldn't care less about, not so much. At least it's varied, I can't imagine going into work every day to do the same thing all the time.
I was. Still on camp, but now I investigate the problems the engineers can't fix and write procedures for them. Oddly, I'm now doing a similar thing with rules for a job that I do for Guildball as a hobby. If someone had told me as a kid that having a knack for memorising obscure rules, being able to apply them and being able to create improvements was a way of making a reasonable living, I'd never have believed them.
I was. Still on camp, but now I investigate the problems the engineers can't fix and write procedures for them. Oddly, I'm now doing a similar thing with rules for a job that I do for Guildball as a hobby. If someone had told me as a kid that having a knack for memorising obscure rules, being able to apply them and being able to create improvements was a way of making a reasonable living, I'd never have believed them.
Fair enough! Small World. I only took this posting as it was my chance to pick before it got picked for me and I ended up with somewhere dire like Marham or Lossiemouth. I went for location as the family want to settle in the south west when I demob.
to be fair, there are benefits to this posting. I got to go to SoCal for 2 months, and I can generally go to the gym every day during work time, although I dont know how long that will last.
Got my CBAT next month for RPAS operator/sensor operator
Retail for 20 years... I hate evey, single, day. Contemplated killing my self just so I can get a day off then remember I still have things to build and paint so I don't.
Ribon Fox wrote: Retail for 20 years... I hate evey, single, day. Contemplated killing my self just so I can get a day off then remember I still have things to build and paint so I don't.
Can’t say I like my job, but I don’t hate it most days, so there is that.
I work in medical billing. Specifically the professional component of 3 radiology practices in NYC. The company I work for is much larger, and deal with other clients, which I occasionally come into contact with. Mostly on days where I have to help cover phones (which is only 2-3 times a month for a few hours each). But dealing with incoming patient calls is probably the worst part of the job, and most likely will be the reason I’d quit. 95% of my time is doing back-end AR work. Just sitting down with reports and spreadsheets, making sure procedures have the correct authorization attached, worker's comp/no-fault claims have medical reports attached and mailed, and working denials from the insurance companies. While I’m mostly a middle man, the job I do allows the doctors to spend more time seeing patients, and less time worrying about billing. And two things I do are make sure WTC 9-11 responders never see a bill, and remove people from collections. So I do get to help people and make lives better, if just a little bit.
It’s repetitive and boring, but there is enough different things going on to keep it from getting tedious. And when I punch out at the end of the day, I can ignore it until I clock back in. My coworkers and immediate management are good, but the middle management is a little fuzzy sometimes with random corporate BS. But it’s the kind of stuff you’d find at any other business, so cruel, but not unusual. My first real job was working tech support at a college, so there is some pretty jarring differences between salaried work in education, and hourly wage-slave in corporate. If they trusted me to do my job, instead of micro-managing I’d be a heck of a lot more productive. But I get paid by the hour, so if you want me to track my workflow 3 different ways, it doesn’t make a difference to me. After my work ethic got beat down that is; that was a hard transition.
At this point I’m just killing time, and it’s not a bad place to do so. Once The Boy is off at collage, I’ll not be tethered to the area, and can relocate to someplace where I have a support network. The reason I’m up here is the Ex didn’t want to move away from her family again, but after the divorce I don’t have a huge reason to stick around, besides my son.
Da Boss wrote: Hmmm. I am a teacher, I teach science (Physics, chemistry and Biology) to kids aged 11 to 18.
It is a challenging job, but can be very rewarding, and it has excellent holidays where I get a lot of hobby stuff done.
I really enjoy planning lessons, and the part where I am actually teaching the children. That is by far my favourite part. I love my subjects and enjoy getting to explain them. I am fething excellent at this part by most accounts these days, though I did not start out great but I have been at it fifteen years.
But the job was wearing me down. Most people would expect that teaching is mostly what I have described above, but that is only part of the job. Of course, there is marking to be done, and some of that can be quite onerous. But that is par for the course. Every job has parts that are unpleasant but required. Marking is important and it helps me do the rest of my job better
What gets me down is the constant organisational changes for no reason. I am constantly being asked to build and rebuild curriculum to various different specifications and educational trends. In fifteen years, I have written at least two entire curricula per year every year. I often have to transfer curricula between online platforms and so on so my managers can pretend they follow up on it. Most of the stuff they make me do they then make me throw out the following year when some new trend comes along. The other plague is whole school initiatives. To get a promotion, each manager must oversee a whole school initiative. So every year we have a least four or five initiatives in play simultaneously from the various ambitious managers. Usually, they hang around for two years, implement their stupid initiatives, and then leave to a position managing somewhere else. Then the new person comes in, scraps all the old initiatives, and implements their own. This cycle repeats every 2 years at most, so I have been through it more times than I can count now. I even was one of those people for a while It is utterly demoralising and exhausting. Because overseeing an initiative apparently just means assigning a bunch of work to staff with no oversight on the workload. Because of this, I used to[b] regularly work 60+ hours a week and sometimes have to work 70[b]-75 hours. Remember this is while classroom teaching, a job that requires you to be fully mentally switched on and full of energy.
Over the past five years this came to a head to the point where I was pretty burned out. My managers tell me I am a super valuable member of staff and they want my help with things, but I was utterly exhausted and just trying to make sure I do not let my students down. I tried to communicate the issues to my managers but it falls on deaf ears, as they promise that "once these initiatives are done, it will all be over!" while beefing up their CVs for their next job, not caring what comes after.
Added to this, some of them are extremely ideological about education, for example they have insisted on a system whereby detentions are run centrally instead of me running my own, so dealing with trivial discipline issues is made more complex by having no consistent system and a management who are overly sympathetic to poorly behaved students. I can manage the behaviour stuff pretty well but it annoys me that it is made more difficult so pointlessly.
I cut my hours back last year, now focus on the older kids and exam classes and try and wall myself off from the incompetent managers as much as possible. Got my mojo back
I was a Head of Year for a long time, and gave that up. Due to no-one else doing it, I took on numerous co-ordinator roles. Gave them up two years ago. This year, I had dropped to four days per week. Now I can maintain my energy levels, and instead of bein exhausted on Fridays, I feel able to socialise. I spend every Wednesday at a local library writing a novel, which I think is going well, and love it. It has changed my life and I think I can keep teaching long term, if I need to, whereas previously, I would have been 110% burned out within three years
I love my job. I work in upper management in a government organization. My division has 50 employees. When everyone is getting along and doing their job, I have the best job in the world. When people aren't, it's not. Most days it doesn't feel like I'm going to work. I think that's a good barometer for my job satisfaction.
Sometimes I feel like I'm more of a therapist than a manager. I don't mind supporting my team, it just seems at times that a therapy degree might be more useful to than my administration degree.
The worst part of my job is the long, drawn out discipline processes we have to go through because we're a government organization. They require tons of documenting, meetings, and chances before you can finally separate from a problem employee. It can take six months to a year. I see how some people get complacent about problem employees in this environment. I refuse to be that guy. It's always addition by subtraction for your culture when bad eggs are removed.
The second worst part of my job is telling people they didn't get a promotion. Some people understand, others don't. Both conversations suck.
I love my job, but boy did I flounder before falling into it. Did post-secondary for 8 years and wasn't able to find any work with either of my utterly useless diplomas. Spent a couple of years in security while I figured out what the hell I was going to do with my life, ended up being a good call because while working at a gatehouse I got real chatty with the postman who delivered at the building and he convinced me to sign up.
My 1 year work anniversary with Canada Post was a couple days ago, and I can definitely say I love my job. Winter was not fun, but manageable with the right attire. I lost quite a bit of weight, I rarely work full 8 hour days, get holidays off (anyone who has worked security will understand what a perk that is), and my day goes by pretty quickly. It's the first job I've ever had where I'm not watching the clock.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I feel like painting miniatures for work would suck..well wouldnt suck, but I wouldnt enjoy it.. its the reason I never went into anything art related despite having somewhat of an artistic bent.
I feel 100% the same way. I loved art related stuff when I was a teenager, and still do as an amateur hobbyist (just as almost certainly every single person on this forum does, presumably).
I intentionally avoided doing anything art-related when I was in college because I felt that if I did it professionally, I would grow to hate it. Since I also loved computing and technology, and now loathe almost anything related to IT and tech, I think that was a pretty good call in retrospect.
I know people say "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life", but I always thought it more likely if you "do what you love for money, eventually you're not going to love it anymore".
I'm graphic designer and I can assure both of you - this line of work can be depressive as hell. My first years in this profession were in advertising (it was the only way to earn a living from anything art-related back then). Working two shifts straight, 16-20 hrs a day on a deadline doing mentally intensive work, 240hrs a month being common, takes a toll. But the real burnout comes from the core aspect of the work - you are lucky if 1/100 of your ideas see production stage. Sometimes it took three months of producing 3-6 detailed concepts a day to see one that got past competition stage. You start this job full of ideas, you leave this job not to touch a graphic tablet for a year. I knew people leaving advertising to be a bartender or open a burger joint. Average burnout time is two years.
But, since then me and my partner teamed up for freelance illustrative work for gaming and book industry, and now this is a dream job. I work from home, I can sleep in my hours (I'm an epileptic owl, socially accepted "normal" working hours are direct health hazard for me), I work as much or as little as I wish, I do not have a toxic boss and we have full freedom to turn toxic clients down (one of the worst aspects of working under someone else - usually such person does not understand what is possible, with how much effort or in how much time and usually thinks that a small team can compete with large agencies, resulting in nonsensical dilution of man hours...). We do interesting or well paid or interesting and well paid jobs The only downside is that keeping your hardware up to specs in a constantly advancing field is pricey. But we pay virtually no taxes - effective 8.5% instead of 45% in my country - which is enough to cover added costs.
lifeafter wrote: I love my job. I work in upper management in a government organization. My division has 50 employees. When everyone is getting along and doing their job, I have the best job in the world. When people aren't, it's not. Most days it doesn't feel like I'm going to work. I think that's a good barometer for my job satisfaction.
Sometimes I feel like I'm more of a therapist than a manager. I don't mind supporting my team, it just seems at times that a therapy degree might be more useful to than my administration degree.
The worst part of my job is the long, drawn out discipline processes we have to go through because we're a government organization. They require tons of documenting, meetings, and chances before you can finally separate from a problem employee. It can take six months to a year. I see how some people get complacent about problem employees in this environment. I refuse to be that guy. It's always addition by subtraction for your culture when bad eggs are removed.
The second worst part of my job is telling people they didn't get a promotion. Some people understand, others don't. Both conversations suck.
On the first, you’re doing the right thing. Red Tape be damned, a bad employee impacts more than their own output and that. As someone who loves a challenge, nothing honks me off more than a colleague clearly intent on simply coasting by, at best, and nothing happens. Never mind it means yet more work for me to do, it speaks poorly of the manager.
The second part? Was made clear to me quite early on at my employer (and serious respect for their transparency) that if you’re turned down, you are watched after. If you just get on with things, that’s a positive sign the management might’ve made the wrong decision. If you throw teddy from the Pram and turn into The Incredible Sulk? That’s a sign they were absolutely 100% right.
Me? I can throw a grump initially. After all. Bad news is bad. And disappointing. But I soon belt up and do my best to show they made the wrong call.
You really sound like the sort of manager I’d get on well with! Provided you know that once I’ve demonstrated I can be trusted, you leave me alone to just get on with it!
Good managers are like gold dust. My current direct superior is great, a very experienced guy with a heart of gold and strong ethics. He is also not ambitious any more, and focuses on doing the job at hand. He is not perfect, but I would have quit already without him.
Unfortunately the people above him are less competent, even though most of them are well meaning in their way.
Da Boss wrote: Good managers are like gold dust. My current direct superior is great, a very experienced guy with a heart of gold and strong ethics. He is also not ambitious any more, and focuses on doing the job at hand. He is not perfect, but I would have quit already without him.
Unfortunately the people above him are less competent, even though most of them are well meaning in their way.
A well meaning but incompetent superior still is vastly better then a malicious one....
(Especially if you are just a conscript for the fodder ocupation Off said army)
Gives a whole new meaning to the Slogan of my unit class. Well gave, kinda, thank GOD i am rid of him.
I have had horrendous jobs, and bosses throughout my life. Ive worked retail, insurances/call centres, and ended up in the financial sector for a big firm managing other peoples money.. It was okay for a time.. But in the end but then I had to deal with all the corporate BS and saw it for what it is...Everyone licking everyones butt hole just to get ahead and looking down on people... Then I just sort of had had enough, Following an altercation with a colleague who had the personality of a potato and not being to simply tell her whats what I just walked away and quit everything.. I went got lost in the jungle/travelling trails for months.
This made me re-asses what Iv been doing and get some long term goals. I radically changed fields to manufacturing.
The pros: I can just sit on ebay/dakkaa/internet most of the night...
The cons: I can sit on dakka/ebay/internet most of the night..
I work in manufacturing Quality systems controls during the night shift. So unless things go wrong im basically not needed or anything. But when things start going wrong I get involved sort things out and tell the shop floor what to do.
I haven't seen my boss in nearly a year and I've seen my main manager 3 times since I started this job two years ago... I don't have to talk to customers or kiss anyone's ass which is awesome. If I didn't want to I could just not talk to anyone all day.. Which sometimes suits me fine. I just have to make sure things get done the way they are supposed
Never knew I could make a living by knowing a bunch of rules, and making sure people follow those rules and not take shortcuts...
Being a sort of middle management but not actively having to manae anyone is kinda cool. Unfortunately the company really hates spending money so improvements are an uphill battle to the point you just sort of get apathetic..
Lately I've been feeling myself drifting into a sort of stagnation. This still aint it. Not sure what the next step going to be. But this is a great vehicle to move onto other things.
The second part? Was made clear to me quite early on at my employer (and serious respect for their transparency) that if you’re turned down, you are watched after. If you just get on with things, that’s a positive sign the management might’ve made the wrong decision. If you throw teddy from the Pram and turn into The Incredible Sulk? That’s a sign they were absolutely 100% right.
Me? I can throw a grump initially. After all. Bad news is bad. And disappointing. But I soon belt up and do my best to show they made the wrong call.
When i got turned down the second time, i was really bummed, i had a 4 hour session after that and man was that rough, i was the only one there with a client who wasnt verbal, so i was left alone so i kinda kept going back. Especially cause i lost 10 hours of work because i was requested off a case recently so i needed good news lol. It got to the point i was considering leaving and going. but i been there 3 years so IDK.
But i had my performance eval recently and my supervisor asked "are you going to apply again? it should be coming up again soon and we do need more, you are good at your job and we know you can do this"
So honestly, im really confused about it LOL.
lifeafter wrote: I love my job. I work in upper management in a government organization. My division has 50 employees. When everyone is getting along and doing their job, I have the best job in the world. When people aren't, it's not. Most days it doesn't feel like I'm going to work. I think that's a good barometer for my job satisfaction.
Sometimes I feel like I'm more of a therapist than a manager. I don't mind supporting my team, it just seems at times that a therapy degree might be more useful to than my administration degree.
The worst part of my job is the long, drawn out discipline processes we have to go through because we're a government organization. They require tons of documenting, meetings, and chances before you can finally separate from a problem employee. It can take six months to a year. I see how some people get complacent about problem employees in this environment. I refuse to be that guy. It's always addition by subtraction for your culture when bad eggs are removed.
The second worst part of my job is telling people they didn't get a promotion. Some people understand, others don't. Both conversations suck.
On the first, you’re doing the right thing. Red Tape be damned, a bad employee impacts more than their own output and that. As someone who loves a challenge, nothing honks me off more than a colleague clearly intent on simply coasting by, at best, and nothing happens. Never mind it means yet more work for me to do, it speaks poorly of the manager.
The second part? Was made clear to me quite early on at my employer (and serious respect for their transparency) that if you’re turned down, you are watched after. If you just get on with things, that’s a positive sign the management might’ve made the wrong decision. If you throw teddy from the Pram and turn into The Incredible Sulk? That’s a sign they were absolutely 100% right.
Me? I can throw a grump initially. After all. Bad news is bad. And disappointing. But I soon belt up and do my best to show they made the wrong call.
You really sound like the sort of manager I’d get on well with! Provided you know that once I’ve demonstrated I can be trusted, you leave me alone to just get on with it!
I agree and thanks for the vote of confidence. The number one thing I'm trying to do is establish a culture where people are happy and feel inspired to work. I'd rather hire someone with middle level experience who's an amazing coworker than someone who's god's-gift to the field but also a jerk. I'm a believer in the Everybody Matters philosophy. I definitely trust people and let them do their job.
You're right on about people throwing fits really showing their true colors. It's such a narrow sighted reaction. Jobs open all the time, but if you react poorly to not getting one, you can really harm your chances of getting one in the future. I give everyone a week to sulk and get over it, at least externally. I know the disappointment can stick around longer, but after a week your disappointment can't be pouring into the rest of the office. The people who react appreciatively for the opportunity and who show me through their actions I should have hired them, they're the ones I'm looking at the next time opportunities come up. I've been passed over in the past, and I kept positive and showed them that I can understand and support management. The next time an opportunity came around, I had that reaction working in my favor.
When i got turned down the second time, i was really bummed, i had a 4 hour session after that and man was that rough, i was the only one there with a client who wasnt verbal, so i was left alone so i kinda kept going back. Especially cause i lost 10 hours of work because i was requested off a case recently so i needed good news lol. It got to the point i was considering leaving and going. but i been there 3 years so IDK.
But i had my performance eval recently and my supervisor asked "are you going to apply again? it should be coming up again soon and we do need more, you are good at your job and we know you can do this"
So honestly, im really confused about it LOL.
I don't know enough about your situation to give you real specific advice, but I have a few general comments. A lot of supervisors really struggle with giving honest feedback. It's a lot easier to explain to someone, "you don't have a master's degree, or they have more experience," than it is to say, "this person is a better fit culturally for where we are right now than you." I'm not saying you say the second sentence to someone without a lot more conversation getting to it; I'm oversimplifying because this is a forum reply. Sometime supervisors say, "oh this is going to open up again so you should apply again" as a way to soften the blow. It's a natural way to try to soften the disappointment of delivering bad news but they don't really mean it. Other times they do mean it. Remember that delivering bad news is stressful too, and sometimes people are looking for shortcuts to dealing with the stress of it.
The other thing to keep in mind is you never really know who you're up against or what they sold during their interviews. Don't worry about them, sell the best you. I've walked away from several interviews not hiring someone but having a heck of a lot better impression of them.
Be honest in your self assessment and honest in how you process your supervisor's feedback. If you keep getting passed over and you want advancement, go somewhere else. If you believe the organization cares about you, stay. Just be honest enough with yourself to recognize when the actions of the organization are showing a promotion's not coming. Because, unfortunately, not all managers are going to be honest enough to not string you along.
I turned down several offers of promotion because I believe it would have taken me out of the frontline position that I am valuable and skilled at and put me in a position I would have been less competent at (middle management, which is in any case a crappy job as you get crap thrown at you from below and it rains down on you from above with limited ability to do anything about it).
So my managers just gradually upped my workload to the point where it is unsustainable and I am gonna go part time.
They seem to forget how challenging it is to do the basic job once they become managers and keep adding extra crap, and expecting me to want to do it to stay in their good graces. I am interested in doing a good job for my students and their parents, not particularly in beefing up the CV of my superior.
thats what I dont understand about some people in soceity nowadays... everyone seems to think that you should be climbing the ladder... but me right now, I just think, when I leave the service and get a civillian job, as long as it pays well, am I even going to care about climbing the ladder? I think id rather just earn my money, then go home to my family. sure becoming a supervisor or something would probably be alright, but going into management and office stuff? sounds terrible, paperwork, bureaucracy, responsibility for employees and their F*** ups, late finishes, less time with my family.. nah youre alright.
That's the kicker, that whatever you get will not pay well enough to cover your the life-style you'll need to make up for how your job erodes your soul. So you'll want to move up the ladder from not being able to afford stuff to being able to afford stuff. It's not really a ladder though, it's a pyramid, because not everyone is going to move up.
but if your wage covers your expenses and leaves you enough to live a decent life, then whats the issue? I've been on a steady wage for the last 7 years, only getting a few % increase each year, and it does me just fine.
All depends on what you’re wanting to advance toward.
Me? I’m going up the ranks within my current role. Not only does it mean more money (hooray), but more responsibility and more interesting cases to look into.
That done, it’s a single step to the role I really want to do.
So for me, it’s as much about self improvement and that than simply advancing for advancing’s sake. No, the extra money doesn’t hurt one bit, but it’s not the main driving factor.
Though working over your hours is firmly discouraged where I am. There’s a difference between staying maybe an extra hour when you’re in the zone, and putting in an extra days worth of work just to hit target.
One is arguably healthy. It lets me put something properly to bed, and not have it preying on my mind when off the clock. The other? Problematic. My career allows my current lifestyle, but will not become my life.
When i got turned down the second time, i was really bummed, i had a 4 hour session after that and man was that rough, i was the only one there with a client who wasnt verbal, so i was left alone so i kinda kept going back. Especially cause i lost 10 hours of work because i was requested off a case recently so i needed good news lol. It got to the point i was considering leaving and going. but i been there 3 years so IDK.
But i had my performance eval recently and my supervisor asked "are you going to apply again? it should be coming up again soon and we do need more, you are good at your job and we know you can do this"
So honestly, im really confused about it LOL.
I don't know enough about your situation to give you real specific advice, but I have a few general comments. A lot of supervisors really struggle with giving honest feedback. It's a lot easier to explain to someone, "you don't have a master's degree, or they have more experience," than it is to say, "this person is a better fit culturally for where we are right now than you." I'm not saying you say the second sentence to someone without a lot more conversation getting to it; I'm oversimplifying because this is a forum reply. Sometime supervisors say, "oh this is going to open up again so you should apply again" as a way to soften the blow. It's a natural way to try to soften the disappointment of delivering bad news but they don't really mean it. Other times they do mean it. Remember that delivering bad news is stressful too, and sometimes people are looking for shortcuts to dealing with the stress of it.
The other thing to keep in mind is you never really know who you're up against or what they sold during their interviews. Don't worry about them, sell the best you. I've walked away from several interviews not hiring someone but having a heck of a lot better impression of them.
Be honest in your self assessment and honest in how you process your supervisor's feedback. If you keep getting passed over and you want advancement, go somewhere else. If you believe the organization cares about you, stay. Just be honest enough with yourself to recognize when the actions of the organization are showing a promotion's not coming. Because, unfortunately, not all managers are going to be honest enough to not string you along.
While im still new to work culture i like to think this job is a lot more honest and open then others. It helps that our job is one where we work with alot of kids and it ends up being better.
As too feedback, I get it all the time, its part of the job, like a big part of our evaluations the happen every month is "did they accept the feedback properly throuout the month" and such.
But as too not feeling honest with the culkturally sometimes i feel that. Like it stings when someone got the job who has been there only 6 months and has less of an education than you. they then tell you are not creative enough and they want to work on you with it, when your pretty sure that the person who got it because they are always chipper and happy.
Im not gonna lie and say i wasnt bitter for quite a bit, never let it show though.
Showing disappointment is normal, and arguably shows you cared about the new role. But if you wallow in it and let it show for too long, it reflects badly.
hotsauceman1 wrote: While im still new to work culture i like to think this job is a lot more honest and open then others. It helps that our job is one where we work with alot of kids and it ends up being better.
As too feedback, I get it all the time, its part of the job, like a big part of our evaluations the happen every month is "did they accept the feedback properly throuout the month" and such.
But as too not feeling honest with the culkturally sometimes i feel that. Like it stings when someone got the job who has been there only 6 months and has less of an education than you. they then tell you are not creative enough and they want to work on you with it, when your pretty sure that the person who got it because they are always chipper and happy.
Im not gonna lie and say i wasnt bitter for quite a bit, never let it show though.
Well, a positive attitude will get you promoted faster.
In my experience, promotions tend to be far more about soft skills than about technical skills, at least in any job where you are working with people.
hotsauceman1 wrote: While im still new to work culture i like to think this job is a lot more honest and open then others. It helps that our job is one where we work with alot of kids and it ends up being better.
As too feedback, I get it all the time, its part of the job, like a big part of our evaluations the happen every month is "did they accept the feedback properly throuout the month" and such.
But as too not feeling honest with the culkturally sometimes i feel that. Like it stings when someone got the job who has been there only 6 months and has less of an education than you. they then tell you are not creative enough and they want to work on you with it, when your pretty sure that the person who got it because they are always chipper and happy.
Im not gonna lie and say i wasnt bitter for quite a bit, never let it show though.
Well, a positive attitude will get you promoted faster.
In my experience, promotions tend to be far more about soft skills than about technical skills, at least in any job where you are working with people.
That I understand, but honestly that is the gakky thing, if your job has technical skills that it is about, then that I why you should get promoted.
I get that isnt how it works, and will never work, it does make me wonder, why bother sometimes.
God.......is this what being an adult in the workforce is about? I have a long road ahead of me.
That I understand, but honestly that is the gakky thing, if your job has technical skills that it is about, then that I why you should get promoted.
I get that isnt how it works, and will never work, it does make me wonder, why bother sometimes.
God.......is this what being an adult in the workforce is about? I have a long road ahead of me.
Depends on the job obviously, but it's often the case that as you progress, even a technical role becomes less about the actual technical stuff and more about managing the people that do the technical stuff, prioritising workload and so on.
That's kind of where I am now. I can either progress by moving into a more specialised field and learning a pretty much completely new skillset, or I can progress by going more into management and getting less technical.
Da Boss wrote: "Soft skills", yes, as a euphamism for blowing smoke up the right arsehole.
I disagree. Not entirely though.
See, to me Soft Skills means knowing how to talk to people to get them onside. To be assertive rather than aggressive.
When investigating a fraud case, it’s amazing now a well phrased question can unearth decisive information. For example, I’m an exponent of never, ever letting them know just how much I know about stuff. Be that having an interesting call recording, a better knowledge of processes, or similarly useful nuggets.
Being quite pally with them over the phone means whilst their guard isn’t exactly down, it’s not up. It’s the pantomime of pretending to simply take their every word as gospel. Get someone chatting, and something is gonna slip. And yes, I absolutely love Columboing people - just one more thing.... Timed right, case is more or less closed, barring the letter.
From there, it’s also knowing how to tell an outright change to a story, and simply a variation of the same story. The former is a sign someone is lying, the latter a sign someone has genuinely remembered something more.
Absolutely anyone can learn those techniques, I’m just lucky enough to have them come easily.
Example? Though I can’t go into detail... Just last Tuesday I was having a phone chat with someone, someone I haven’t believed for a second. We were discussing The Thing (not the movie). They claimed my information was ‘just a matter of opinion’. I asserted ‘I’m afraid it’s not, it’s a solid matter of fact. The Thing you’re on about simply does not do what you’re claiming it does’.
Hopefully I pitched it right (assertive/aggressive is a fine line), and I guess I’ll find out when I login tomorrow on my return!
Either way, my soft skills definitely make my life easier. Coaching people through what I can and cannot do early on, not suffering fools etc means they’re better braced for a negative outcome.
That I understand, but honestly that is the gakky thing, if your job has technical skills that it is about, then that I why you should get promoted.
I get that isnt how it works, and will never work, it does make me wonder, why bother sometimes.
God.......is this what being an adult in the workforce is about? I have a long road ahead of me.
Here's the thing with technical skills: they are, on the whole, easier to teach than soft skills, especially since people try harder to learn technical skills. So, while not everybody can learn every technical skill, the when you combine people able to learn the technical skills with people who demonstrate proper soft skills, that starts to limit the pool.
So, sure, people get promoted based on technical skills, but senior technicians are often relied upon to train new people, or interface with clients, or otherwise use interpersonal skills. they may also be given more work than they can handle, so they need to use time management or triage skills. Soft skills aren't just about communication, they also include things like use of judgement, political savvy, and "reading between the lines." They also include self reliance and appropriately asking clarifying questions (too many questions is annoying, too few is dangerous).
In the end, the reason managers look at soft skills is because outside of a small handful of positions, the difference between a pretty good technician and a fantastic one is minimal, and having a person who is easy to work with is much more important.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Da Boss wrote: "Soft skills", yes, as a euphamism for blowing smoke up the right arsehole.
I suppose sometimes, actually. I've been a supervisor almost six years now in a government hearings environment, so I deal with pretty educated people. I have no real talent for sucking up to bosses, but I know that a compliment here or there can get the most out of some employees. We had a front desk receptionist in my first office who was very high strung, and I made sure to stroke her ego at least weekly to get the best out of her.
My problem with that is, my ability to climb and therefore make a better life for myself is based around skills they never tell you you did need. They say you should have X skills with x requirements, but then there is this how other thing they never tell you that you need.
I know I'm young and this comes across as incredibly petty or something and I will understand when I'm in the work field longer but I can't help but feel in all my jobs there is this weird song and dance to do.
hotsauceman1 wrote: My problem with that is, my ability to climb and therefore make a better life for myself is based around skills they never tell you you did need. They say you should have X skills with x requirements, but then there is this how other thing they never tell you that you need.
I know I'm young and this comes across as incredibly petty or something and I will understand when I'm in the work field longer but I can't help but feel in all my jobs there is this weird song and dance to do.
It’s a hard thing to define at the interview stage, in ‘Their’ defence.
And they very much vary job to job, role to role.
If I want an IT guy to sort me out with a kick ass network? Does it matter if they’re particularly social? It’d be a plus, but not a deal breaker if not.
If I need staff for an IT hotline? Far more of a plus. Nobody likes feeling small when reporting a problem, so social skills do then come into it,
If I need an IT peep to do repairs? Decent body hygiene is a genuine soft skill. So whilst Mr Whiffy is no less suited to working in the bowels of the infrastructure, someone who showers regularly and uses deodorant is a plus.
I’m massively sorry to IT workers for what are fairly demeaning comments. I do not lump you all in together! Just relying on a typically lazy stereotype. Please.....keep our systems working and machine spirits appeased!
Automatically Appended Next Post: But for hotsauceman1? It does take time and experience to not only develop certain skills, but to know which skills will be desirable.
You’re young dude, there’s plenty time left. The best advice I can give you is not to merely hear feedback, but to listen.
That was my weakness for a decade and a half. Mostly because nobody gave useful feedback, just ‘you no do good’, without ever defining what ‘good’ was.
Even if it’s negative, so long as it’s constructive, take it on the chin, take it on board. It’s far from easy at first, and can leave you feeling pretty beat down when delivered poorly.
But it’s one path on the road to self improvement.
That I understand, but honestly that is the gakky thing, if your job has technical skills that it is about, then that I why you should get promoted.
I get that isnt how it works, and will never work, it does make me wonder, why bother sometimes.
God.......is this what being an adult in the workforce is about? I have a long road ahead of me.
Depends on the job obviously, but it's often the case that as you progress, even a technical role becomes less about the actual technical stuff and more about managing the people that do the technical stuff, prioritising workload and so on.
That's kind of where I am now. I can either progress by moving into a more specialised field and learning a pretty much completely new skillset, or I can progress by going more into management and getting less technical.
It definitely depends on the job, but generally speaking there are way more people qualified to do the job than there are people who would be great fits for your culture. It's not only about how many widgets you can make in an hour because how well you get along with your coworkers impacts their productivity. Id rather have someone who makes 80 widgets an hour and everyone likes than someone who can make 100 but nobody wants to work with.
All work should be a team effort. When everyone is pulling in roughly the same direction, the better the results.
Hence my own distaste for ineffective management. Even if it’s a colleague that’s a clear problem (sitting around not contributing etc), it’s on the manager to sort that, one way or the other.
Hmmm. I disagree that everything is a team effort or should be, though usually some level of collaboration is required. Though my employment history probably influences that (I was a specialist researcher before I became a Physics teacher and I am usually the only Physics teacher in my school, so I generally have to get on with things by myself. I prefer that, I always hated group work )
I don't mind group work, as long as it's tbe right group. I'm a technical person, and by nature fairly direct - I'm a Dutchman through and through. I don't tolerate bs, although I do appreciate people who can talk the talk to get me what I need to get the job done.
So some people others find hard to work with, I get along with swimningly, and others everybody likes I get along with like a house on fire.
Da Boss wrote: Hmmm. I disagree that everything is a team effort or should be, though usually some level of collaboration is required. Though my employment history probably influences that (I was a specialist researcher before I became a Physics teacher and I am usually the only Physics teacher in my school, so I generally have to get on with things by myself. I prefer that, I always hated group work )
For me, it’s a matter of less productive team members being open to mentoring.
It’s not always possible, horse and water for example. But when you can have some one on one chats with someone and you see that lightbulb above their head fizz into life? That’s totally worth the initial frustration.
For example (and I’m painfully aware I’m being egotistical here) I’m known and respected at work for just ‘getting to the point’. It’s something I’ve always had a knack for, and during my mentoring years I’ve learned how to show others in different ways exactly how my thought process goes.
Drilling past the drivel and looking for the heart of the matter is important. Showing someone different ways of parsing the information pays dividends.
For me, the trick is never to present oneself as an absolute authority (lord knows I’m not!) but to show things in a different light.
Aye. We have recently had turnover of staff and the dynamic has shifted in a way that makes everyday interactions a bit more tense. There is also a difficulty with different cultures in my workplace, as our boss is romanian, I am Irish, and the rest are British. The British staff are all really conscientious and hard working but they tend to communicate indirectly, which can leave my romanian boss (who is a lovely man) at a bit of a loss at times!
I work as a software developer for a medium sized company. I really enjoy it.
Programming enterprise software may not sound fun, but it pays well. I don't have to work crazy hours, I get interesting logic problems to solve, and I get to create things which are used by people around the world.
Also I have a team I get along well with.
Polonius wrote: Here's the thing with technical skills: they are, on the whole, easier to teach than soft skills, especially since people try harder to learn technical skills.
Well put. As someone who has worked in IT for my entire adult career, the refrain has always been "We can teach you how to do a process, we can't teach you how not to be an donkey-cave".
Hmmm. I have good soft skills for sure, I know that. But I have never seen it as something that is easy to teach, that is true. Just something you kind of have, or don't have.
Teachers who have poor soft skills are likely to struggle. But at the upper levels, poor technical skills will also bite you in the backside.
The further you up the ladder, the more soft skills are essential to get anything done. You see, as the "Boss" my success is not based at all on what I personally do. It is based on what my team can do. My role on that team is to provide some direction, guidance, and support to build the results to drive us through the roadblocks to get something done.
Therefore, soft skills are the name of the game. What does X, Y, and Z need to see and hear to support the effort. What does A, B, and C need to hear to get their part done? What does 1,2 and 3 need to build and do they have the right skills and motivation to do it?
As an efficiency expert I can show you some amazing technical skills, but that is only as useful if I am telling a story you are willing to hear.
hotsauceman1 wrote: While im still new to work culture i like to think this job is a lot more honest and open then others. It helps that our job is one where we work with alot of kids and it ends up being better.
As too feedback, I get it all the time, its part of the job, like a big part of our evaluations the happen every month is "did they accept the feedback properly throuout the month" and such.
But as too not feeling honest with the culkturally sometimes i feel that. Like it stings when someone got the job who has been there only 6 months and has less of an education than you. they then tell you are not creative enough and they want to work on you with it, when your pretty sure that the person who got it because they are always chipper and happy.
Im not gonna lie and say i wasnt bitter for quite a bit, never let it show though.
Well, a positive attitude will get you promoted faster.
In my experience, promotions tend to be far more about soft skills than about technical skills, at least in any job where you are working with people.
In my experience, it goes to the person who says they can deliver the stars, the sun, and the moon even if they can't deliver s...ewage. But management eats that sort of attitude up with a spoon, and they buy it every. single. time.
I've given up on promotions. I have too much pride in doing the job RIGHT to do a halfway job just to have time leftover to schmooze with.
I work in sales for a large US insurance company, every aspect of my job is based off numbers. Big change from my former job working as a prison guard. Pay is great and I’m good at my job became a senior rep in a 1.5 yrs, dealing with customers is a lot easier then dealing with inmates. Honestly I hate my job, never had a job I liked as an adult. My favorite job I ever had was mowing grass on a big tractor on 50 acres as a kid, Fresh air, birds flying by picking off the insects, nobody bothered me, maintenance on my tractor on rainy days...plan on doing it again someday after retirement
Automatically Appended Next Post: But for hotsauceman1? It does take time and experience to not only develop certain skills, but to know which skills will be desirable.
You’re young dude, there’s plenty time left. The best advice I can give you is not to merely hear feedback, but to listen.
That was my weakness for a decade and a half. Mostly because nobody gave useful feedback, just ‘you no do good’, without ever defining what ‘good’ was.
Even if it’s negative, so long as it’s constructive, take it on the chin, take it on board. It’s far from easy at first, and can leave you feeling pretty beat down when delivered poorly.
But it’s one path on the road to self improvement.
Oh yeah I listen to feedback, infact I seek it out quite a bit from supervisors.
I know I'm young and I still have alot of my life ahead of me. But I can't help but feel alot that I got to get gong or else I'm going to screw myself over.
But as to my job, I'm inclined to believe them and trust them. My job has a 70% turnover rate and they know it's tough. The the reason they told me I didn't get it the first time made sense, I needed to be more creative with my job and I do not do arts and crafts with clients which is what this job would need and they would work on it with me. And when I had a check in a week later(a former supervisor who was bad at their job made a list of all the bad things we all did and sent it to HR before she got laid off. I got in trouble for my crack showing and my feet stinking lol) they said they really want me to stay and not to take this badly and continue to improve.
But I'm dragging on, I have been sitting on this for while and while it was nice to talk to real adults about this, it's turning a bit bloggy lol
You guys who are never getting promotions and are blaming it on being "too technically focused" and losing out to people who can't deliver anything other than smooth talk... I think you should maybe look inward a little and reflect. I'm saying this, hand to heart, trying to be helpful and not crappy.
Either you actually have some unacknowledged problems with your soft skills - which are required to some degree just to function will with other human beings, and increasingly so as your job gets increasingly skilled - or you work at highly dysfunctional organizations, in which case you are wasting your time and should be seeking employment elsewhere (taking whatever steps necessary to make yourself more employable, as needed).
Either way, the next steps belong to you.
Unless, of course, you are happy where you are! In that case, no worries.
Ouze wrote: You guys who are never getting promotions and are blaming it on being "too technically focused" and losing out to people who can't deliver anything other than smooth talk... I think you should maybe look inward a little and reflect. I'm saying this, hand to heart, trying to be helpful and not crappy.
Either you actually have some unacknowledged problems with your soft skills - which are required to some degree just to function will with other human beings, and increasingly so as your job gets increasingly skilled - or you work at highly dysfunctional organizations, in which case you are wasting your time and should be seeking employment elsewhere (taking whatever steps necessary to make yourself more employable, as needed).
Either way, the next steps belong to you.
Unless, of course, you are happy where you are! In that case, no worries.
\
This is spot on. The world is full of frustrated guys who can't get over the hump in their careers, but in five minutes, they'll reveal a poor attitude, or lousy communication, or a complete lack of understanding of the context for their job, or some other glaring red flag for advancement.
The best career advice I ever got was from a second line manager about four years ago. She didn't like me very much, but she knew I was looking to promote out of her office. I'd been there about 4-5 months when she just told me that I was intimidating/annoying my coworkers (other supervisors) with my attitude and efforts to get my way through force of will. She couldn't give me specifics, and at first I was pissed at this vague, kind of petty advice. But.. then I made an attempt to tone myself down, be more conciliatory and diplomatic. I supported other people's ideas, and stopped trying to do things my way. Flash forward just over three years, and I eventually get picked up for a promotion to a new office as the director. Suddenly I'm running my own management team, and getting their input and promoting their ideas is key to my success. If I had laughed off what she said, and focused instead on how I had the best ideas on the team, sure, I might have nudged things my way a bit, but I'd also be stuck there doing that job instead of running my own (admittedly much smaller) office.
The thing is, the soft skills that we're talking about are taught, we just forget them. it's about playing nice, letting people take turns. It's about basic leadership skills. If you read your Dale Carnegie (How to win friends and influence people) you're about 60% of the way there.
I'm working on #2 currently - the organisation I work for has actually become dysfunctional.
I work in the field with clients directly, and they're noticing it too, to the point we're losing projects because of it.
Ouze wrote: You guys who are never getting promotions and are blaming it on being "too technically focused" and losing out to people who can't deliver anything other than smooth talk... I think you should maybe look inward a little and reflect. I'm saying this, hand to heart, trying to be helpful and not crappy.
Either you actually have some unacknowledged problems with your soft skills - which are required to some degree just to function will with other human beings, and increasingly so as your job gets increasingly skilled - or you work at highly dysfunctional organizations, in which case you are wasting your time and should be seeking employment elsewhere (taking whatever steps necessary to make yourself more employable, as needed).
Either way, the next steps belong to you.
Unless, of course, you are happy where you are! In that case, no worries.
\
This is spot on. The world is full of frustrated guys who can't get over the hump in their careers, but in five minutes, they'll reveal a poor attitude, or lousy communication, or a complete lack of understanding of the context for their job, or some other glaring red flag for advancement.
The best career advice I ever got was from a second line manager about four years ago. She didn't like me very much, but she knew I was looking to promote out of her office. I'd been there about 4-5 months when she just told me that I was intimidating/annoying my coworkers (other supervisors) with my attitude and efforts to get my way through force of will. She couldn't give me specifics, and at first I was pissed at this vague, kind of petty advice. But.. then I made an attempt to tone myself down, be more conciliatory and diplomatic. I supported other people's ideas, and stopped trying to do things my way. Flash forward just over three years, and I eventually get picked up for a promotion to a new office as the director. Suddenly I'm running my own management team, and getting their input and promoting their ideas is key to my success. If I had laughed off what she said, and focused instead on how I had the best ideas on the team, sure, I might have nudged things my way a bit, but I'd also be stuck there doing that job instead of running my own (admittedly much smaller) office.
The thing is, the soft skills that we're talking about are taught, we just forget them. it's about playing nice, letting people take turns. It's about basic leadership skills. If you read your Dale Carnegie (How to win friends and influence people) you're about 60% of the way there.
This is a great example of how you adjusted your mindset and experienced success after receiving a hard to hear message. Kudos to your supervisor for being direct and honest with you, and even more kudos to you for being self reflective enough to actually accept her feedback. A lot of people fall short on both delivering and receiving this stuff.
Carnegie's book is a solid recommendation. I'm also a big fan of Everybody Matters by Bob Chapman. My management philosophy is heavily influenced by this book. It's all about how treating people really well results in better functioning and productive organizations. As a manager, I find the book useful for stories on management successes. But for anyone who's struggling to understand how a work environment can be more important than just focusing on production numbers, I'd recommend it.
I’m making preparations to leave my current line of work ASAP, once I handle a few loose ends. Got enough stashed away to live for about a year, during which I hope my little business takes off. Can’t come soon enough too.
lifeafter wrote: Carnegie's book is a solid recommendation. I'm also a big fan of Everybody Matters by Bob Chapman. My management philosophy is heavily influenced by this book. It's all about how treating people really well results in better functioning and productive organizations. As a manager, I find the book useful for stories on management successes. But for anyone who's struggling to understand how a work environment can be more important than just focusing on production numbers, I'd recommend it. [/size]
I'll have to check that out. My Agency (I work for the federal government) doesn't put a lot of emphasis on management training, to its detriment. I end up learning a lot of stuff on the side. I recommend Dale Carnegie not because it's the best (it's not), but because it's the most generally applicable book on soft skills I've seen. While it's focused on sales and management, it's useful for anybody that works with others.
The other book I got a lot out of was given out by the old director I mentioned above: Crucial Conversations. It's a really great book on how to have tough, productive conversations about sensitive topics. ironically, I ended up using what I learned from that book to confront my director about something she did. It's so valuable, that when somebody asked me why the government was paying to move from Maryland to Georgia for this job, I replied with "because I'm comfortable having tough conversations with tough employees."
Oh my organisation is definitely dysfunctional. But I am also not complaining about not getting a promotion, I don't want one, I would be worse as a manager than I am as a teacher so I don't quite see the point.
Ouze wrote: You guys who are never getting promotions and are blaming it on being "too technically focused" and losing out to people who can't deliver anything other than smooth talk... I think you should maybe look inward a little and reflect. I'm saying this, hand to heart, trying to be helpful and not crappy.
Either you actually have some unacknowledged problems with your soft skills - which are required to some degree just to function will with other human beings, and increasingly so as your job gets increasingly skilled - or you work at highly dysfunctional organizations, in which case you are wasting your time and should be seeking employment elsewhere (taking whatever steps necessary to make yourself more employable, as needed).
Either way, the next steps belong to you.
Unless, of course, you are happy where you are! In that case, no worries.
Soft skills are great and all, but if the people getting promotions are doing it because I'm carrying half OR MORE of their workload just so I can get MY job done on time, because they're too busy schmoozing the boss to DO their work in a timely manner...
Well, you can imagine how that might impact one's workplace attitude. Sure, they have GREAT attitudes, they're only doing half their own work! And my attitude sucks, sure, because I'm doing THREE TIMES THE WORK THEY ARE!
Ouze wrote: You guys who are never getting promotions and are blaming it on being "too technically focused" and losing out to people who can't deliver anything other than smooth talk... I think you should maybe look inward a little and reflect. I'm saying this, hand to heart, trying to be helpful and not crappy.
Either you actually have some unacknowledged problems with your soft skills - which are required to some degree just to function will with other human beings, and increasingly so as your job gets increasingly skilled - or you work at highly dysfunctional organizations, in which case you are wasting your time and should be seeking employment elsewhere (taking whatever steps necessary to make yourself more employable, as needed).
Either way, the next steps belong to you.
Unless, of course, you are happy where you are! In that case, no worries.
Soft skills are great and all, but if the people getting promotions are doing it because I'm carrying half OR MORE of their workload just so I can get MY job done on time, because they're too busy schmoozing the boss to DO their work in a timely manner...
Well, you can imagine how that might impact one's workplace attitude. Sure, they have GREAT attitudes, they're only doing half their own work! And my attitude sucks, sure, because I'm doing THREE TIMES THE WORK THEY ARE!
I have bad news for you. If you want to read it..... keep going. If you don;t want to know, just skip the rest of this post. Keep in mind, it is coming from a place of love.
No one cares about the worker bees that put their head down and get things done. That is the BASELINE for getting promoted. It is all the stuff beyond the core work that matters. No one wants to interview a prospect and hear about "This one time I did what I was supposed to do." They want to hear about all the times you went above and beyond your core role in a way that made life better for the customer, the business, and for your team.
As an executive, my job is to move work down the chain, so I can free up my time to work up the chain. Why are you doing their workload? If you are the one that the work is moving down to.... you need to think about how you do your work so that you can start spending time working up the chain too. It is not about working hard.... it is about working in a way that makes you visible.
If you are not doing the job of the person above you before the position is even available, you aren't going to be moving into that job. As you do more of the person above you's job, that frees up their time to do the job of the person above them. Then, when they move guess who the natural successor is. You. You need to position yourself as the person to do the job before the job is even available.
I find getting a mentor to take me under their wing at least two steps above my current role is very helpful in understanding the promotion process and track within your company. However, to get a mentor you need to take initiative and find one.
Just how it has worked for me. Your mileage may vary.
Vulcan wrote: Soft skills are great and all, but if the people getting promotions are doing it because I'm carrying half OR MORE of their workload just so I can get MY job done on time, because they're too busy schmoozing the boss to DO their work in a timely manner...
Well, you can imagine how that might impact one's workplace attitude. Sure, they have GREAT attitudes, they're only doing half their own work! And my attitude sucks, sure, because I'm doing THREE TIMES THE WORK THEY ARE!
First, my general philosophy is to take stories like this with a grain of salt. In most organizations I've worked in, the truly exceptional/promotable people do both far more than their share of work, and also have time to schmoozing. My top employees in my office certainly do both, and when I was a production employee I regularly completed 120% or more of my work while spending tons of time BSing with others.
Second... if what you're saying really is true, then who is the chump?
Da Boss wrote: This all assumes a steep and multi layered hierarchy. Something I see as more common in Anglo-American organisations.
I prefer a flatter hierarchy personally where people are more task focused and less focused on being visible and climbing.
As do I. In fact, one of the first things I typically do in an organization is flatten the hierarchy and democratize the workplace as much as I can. Some organizations cultures can handle it better than others.
I prefer a lot of things, but I also have to deal with what the reality I am living in is.
Da Boss wrote: Hmmm. That was a highly dismissive and condescending reply.
I'm sorry, but I don't agree at all.
To cycle back to what I said earlier: If you're constantly not getting promoted, and you want to be, it's a problem with you. Either you lack some skill - technical, organizational, or personal - or you have a highly dysfunctional org. If it's the latter, then you should leave, and do whatever you need to do to make yourself more hireable someplace that will give you what you want. In either situation, ultimately it's up to you. If you're doing the work of 3 people and they're advancing and you aren't, but you continue to work there... then that's a choice you are making.
Yes, it can be hard - I'm not handwaving that away at all. Going to school, or retraining, or relocating - those are all very tough life changing things. But deciding they're too hard is also a choice, usually, and people should own that instead if blaming others for their lack of advancement.
I'm not trying to be a jerk or talk down to anyone (I swear). Much like with love, people accept the employment they feel they deserve. You generally can change your situation if you really want to badly enough. Sure, some people are really really stuck - one-horse town, sick parents, only big employer.... but those are edge cases, generally.
I replied to Polonius, who dismissed Vulcan's experience and implied that he was probably bitter or a fool.
I am sorry, I do find that dismissive and condescending.
As for leaving, listen, I would like to.Not because I want a promotion, I do not, but because the incompetent people above me who are more focused on their own advancement than doing our core job properly make my life a misery. But for some of us, that is not always an option, especially not suddenly. I have a sick wife who needs me to keep things steady so she can focus on recovery as best she can. So I am gonna stick with it, do my best, argue against stupid or unethical decisions and do my core job.
Some of this self help stuff is applicable and sensible to bring up. But putting absolutely everything at the individual's door also absolves the system of responsibility, and particularly those with more power in the system.
So far as the system.... ugh, I really don't ever expect anything from it other. Maybe my POV is skewed because I'm American and not particularly well-travelled.
It genuinely is helpful for some people to hear the self help style, you gotta make the change yourself kind of stuff. But I do see it as a more American approach that is much more individualistic and tends to ignore systemic problems and let the powerful off the hook.
But I am sure both yourself and Polonius are giving genuine advice from your point of view.
Ouze wrote: You guys who are never getting promotions and are blaming it on being "too technically focused" and losing out to people who can't deliver anything other than smooth talk... I think you should maybe look inward a little and reflect. I'm saying this, hand to heart, trying to be helpful and not crappy.
Either you actually have some unacknowledged problems with your soft skills - which are required to some degree just to function will with other human beings, and increasingly so as your job gets increasingly skilled - or you work at highly dysfunctional organizations, in which case you are wasting your time and should be seeking employment elsewhere (taking whatever steps necessary to make yourself more employable, as needed).
Either way, the next steps belong to you.
Unless, of course, you are happy where you are! In that case, no worries.
Soft skills are great and all, but if the people getting promotions are doing it because I'm carrying half OR MORE of their workload just so I can get MY job done on time, because they're too busy schmoozing the boss to DO their work in a timely manner...
Well, you can imagine how that might impact one's workplace attitude. Sure, they have GREAT attitudes, they're only doing half their own work! And my attitude sucks, sure, because I'm doing THREE TIMES THE WORK THEY ARE!
I have bad news for you. If you want to read it..... keep going. If you don;t want to know, just skip the rest of this post. Keep in mind, it is coming from a place of love.
No one cares about the worker bees that put their head down and get things done. That is the BASELINE for getting promoted. It is all the stuff beyond the core work that matters. No one wants to interview a prospect and hear about "This one time I did what I was supposed to do." They want to hear about all the times you went above and beyond your core role in a way that made life better for the customer, the business, and for your team.
As an executive, my job is to move work down the chain, so I can free up my time to work up the chain. Why are you doing their workload? If you are the one that the work is moving down to.... you need to think about how you do your work so that you can start spending time working up the chain too. It is not about working hard.... it is about working in a way that makes you visible.
If you are not doing the job of the person above you before the position is even available, you aren't going to be moving into that job. As you do more of the person above you's job, that frees up their time to do the job of the person above them. Then, when they move guess who the natural successor is. You. You need to position yourself as the person to do the job before the job is even available.
I find getting a mentor to take me under their wing at least two steps above my current role is very helpful in understanding the promotion process and track within your company. However, to get a mentor you need to take initiative and find one.
Just how it has worked for me. Your mileage may vary.
If I wait for them to do their own job, my job never gets done. I HAVE TO do their job for them, because I need their job done FIRST before I start MINE. Otherwise they wait until the last minute to do theirs, leaving me NO time to do my job and I am the one who gets in trouble, not them.
Why? Because the boss likes them because they spend half the day chatting about nothing.
Mr. Executive, does this sound like you're creating the most productive and engaged workforce? From here it looks like you're paying someone to NOT work (inefficient), and actively DISenganging another (also inefficient). Perhaps you should come down to the level of the workerbee a bit more often and see what's actually going on. You'd probably save a bundle by NOT employing the ones who DON'T WORK, making more profit and increasing your own bonus.
Da Boss wrote: I replied to Polonius, who dismissed Vulcan's experience and implied that he was probably bitter or a fool.
I am sorry, I do find that dismissive and condescending.
As for leaving, listen, I would like to.Not because I want a promotion, I do not, but because the incompetent people above me who are more focused on their own advancement than doing our core job properly make my life a misery. But for some of us, that is not always an option, especially not suddenly. I have a sick wife who needs me to keep things steady so she can focus on recovery as best she can. So I am gonna stick with it, do my best, argue against stupid or unethical decisions and do my core job.
Some of this self help stuff is applicable and sensible to bring up. But putting absolutely everything at the individual's door also absolves the system of responsibility, and particularly those with more power in the system.
This. Altbough in my case it's a wife with two little kids who's having to adjust to a different culture while still learning the language
Ouze wrote: You guys who are never getting promotions and are blaming it on being "too technically focused" and losing out to people who can't deliver anything other than smooth talk... I think you should maybe look inward a little and reflect. I'm saying this, hand to heart, trying to be helpful and not crappy.
Either you actually have some unacknowledged problems with your soft skills - which are required to some degree just to function will with other human beings, and increasingly so as your job gets increasingly skilled - or you work at highly dysfunctional organizations, in which case you are wasting your time and should be seeking employment elsewhere (taking whatever steps necessary to make yourself more employable, as needed).
Either way, the next steps belong to you.
Unless, of course, you are happy where you are! In that case, no worries.
Soft skills are great and all, but if the people getting promotions are doing it because I'm carrying half OR MORE of their workload just so I can get MY job done on time, because they're too busy schmoozing the boss to DO their work in a timely manner...
Well, you can imagine how that might impact one's workplace attitude. Sure, they have GREAT attitudes, they're only doing half their own work! And my attitude sucks, sure, because I'm doing THREE TIMES THE WORK THEY ARE!
I have bad news for you. If you want to read it..... keep going. If you don;t want to know, just skip the rest of this post. Keep in mind, it is coming from a place of love.
No one cares about the worker bees that put their head down and get things done. That is the BASELINE for getting promoted. It is all the stuff beyond the core work that matters. No one wants to interview a prospect and hear about "This one time I did what I was supposed to do." They want to hear about all the times you went above and beyond your core role in a way that made life better for the customer, the business, and for your team.
As an executive, my job is to move work down the chain, so I can free up my time to work up the chain. Why are you doing their workload? If you are the one that the work is moving down to.... you need to think about how you do your work so that you can start spending time working up the chain too. It is not about working hard.... it is about working in a way that makes you visible.
If you are not doing the job of the person above you before the position is even available, you aren't going to be moving into that job. As you do more of the person above you's job, that frees up their time to do the job of the person above them. Then, when they move guess who the natural successor is. You. You need to position yourself as the person to do the job before the job is even available.
I find getting a mentor to take me under their wing at least two steps above my current role is very helpful in understanding the promotion process and track within your company. However, to get a mentor you need to take initiative and find one.
Just how it has worked for me. Your mileage may vary.
If I wait for them to do their own job, my job never gets done. I HAVE TO do their job for them, because I need their job done FIRST before I start MINE. Otherwise they wait until the last minute to do theirs, leaving me NO time to do my job and I am the one who gets in trouble, not them.
Why? Because the boss likes them because they spend half the day chatting about nothing.
Mr. Executive, does this sound like you're creating the most productive and engaged workforce? From here it looks like you're paying someone to NOT work (inefficient), and actively DISenganging another (also inefficient). Perhaps you should come down to the level of the workerbee a bit more often and see what's actually going on. You'd probably save a bundle by NOT employing the ones who DON'T WORK, making more profit and increasing your own bonus.
Yes, you are right. Too many executives and managers do NOT go down and follow the workflow and never walk the processes they are in charge of overseeing. They do not get the input and information from the people who actually do the work. I see it far too often, and it is a scourge in the modern workplace.
I recommend looking at it as a process that is broken, it is not about any individual, but the process itself. If we swapped in different people at various places in the process, could the same thing happen? If the answer is yes, the process is broken. As a downstream person, you will ALWAYS be subject to upstream delays. Therefore, the process needs a tweak to avoid this issues around the "Waste of Waiting/Motion/Transportation".
So, what have you done to document the process and create trackable workflows to help you tell the story without being perceived as the "problem"? Have you created a workflow that demonstrates the impact of each step and how they are interrelated in the process? The expected vs. current time at each step (including your own) and bulleted out common pain points? Have you documented any of the work steps you completed and how often? Have you reached out for support from your peers and documented their response with the boss on CC? If the boss is not responding, what is your relationship with their boss? Who else is impacted below you in the process? What is happening to their work stream?
I ask, because there is a good likelihood that the boss doesn't know any of this, because they are not properly walking the process flow. If the Boss doesn't know, they can not help you. Right now, the Boss is only hearing the point of view of the people that talk to him. This of course is excluding your own voice.
Boring Storytime:
I recall the big turning point in my career. I was telling my leader about a broken process and looked expectantly at them to fix it.
They said, "What are you going to do about it?"
I blinked twice, momentarily stunned and said, "I did do something. I told you."
"That's not doing something about it. That is complaining about it. How are you going to fix it?"
"I can fix it?"
"Yes, tell me what you think it should look like, and what you will need to build to make it look like that; then get back to me."
So, I did. My life became easier, my boss looked good, and I was suddenly on the radar for advancement. I had differentiated myself from my colleagues as not only could I find problems, but I figured out ways to fix them.
After that, I have never been the victim of a broken process or my work colleagues again. I was always making choices and putting together ways to make my own life easier. These methods typically helped my peers, my reports, the customer, and ultimately the company. I have been climbing ever since, and all I ever have to do is to try and be as lazy as possible. I have picked up better tools and ways to share my ideas in a way that my bosses can grasp or care about along the way; and some of those were technical certifications even. However, it was always in service of learning to speak the language of the people I needed to influence so I could be lazy.
Who would have thought that ruthless laziness was the key to corporate ladder climbing?
Da Boss wrote: I replied to Polonius, who dismissed Vulcan's experience and implied that he was probably bitter or a fool.
I am sorry, I do find that dismissive and condescending.
You're right, I could have been more diplomatic.
There are people genuinely stuck in a position, due to family issues or other factors, who really can't afford to rock the boat or leave. And sure, that's a crappy position to be in. Not for nothing, but if you ever see a decent middle manager, they are probably in that very situation themselves. At the end of the day, ladders don't all go that high, and most of us end up in dead end jobs of some comfort level or another.
But yes, workplaces will absolutely allow people who work hard to do far more than their share. At the end of the day, hard working people tend to work hard because they are wired to work hard. It sounds callous, but it's also true. Also, most places have more people able to work hard than are good at communicating or leading. the tragedy is that a lot of really hard working people are more afraid of looking lazy than they are bothered by doing more than their share, so they take on work they don't need to do.
As Easy E made clearer in his very fine reply, if you're doing work to cover for another person, that's something you should probably share with your boss. If they simply shrug their shoulders, than you have a terrible boss and probably want to move on. If not, then just, you know, stop covering. Document why you can't do something. But you know, "managing up" is also one of those dreaded soft skills.
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Easy E wrote: After that, I have never been the victim of a broken process or my work colleagues again. I was always making choices and putting together ways to make my own life easier. These methods typically helped my peers, my reports, the customer, and ultimately the company. I have been climbing ever since, and all I ever have to do is to try and be as lazy as possible. I have picked up better tools and ways to share my ideas in a way that my bosses can grasp or care about along the way; and some of those were technical certifications even. However, it was always in service of learning to speak the language of the people I needed to influence so I could be lazy.
Who would have thought that ruthless laziness was the key to corporate ladder climbing?
I had a boss who used to say "if I did my job perfectly, all I would need to do is sign the documents only I can sign, and everybody else would do everything." That's not laziness, it's delegation and good management. Only bad managers want people to work harder, faster, or longer. Good managers want to get more work done, which often means working less, not more.
It takes cajones, but HR aren’t just there to sack the little people.
I once ‘ratted’ on a couple of colleagues who were accessing documents they really shouldn’t have been. Was even password protected, and contained lots of personal details. I was pooping myself throughout, but they wound up sacked, and I garnered further respect.
If you feel a manager is letting someone away with clear underperformance, and may have an inadvisably close relationship (not even that far, I know what you were thinking!) document it. Make a log of each time you had to cover for the slacker. Document what your manager says when you challenge them etc. Keep it written down.
In a caring profession, you are often not covering for a colleague, but making sure the people who depend on you are not left short.
I mean the advice you are giving is also good advice. You should do those things. Recently I sent my employer a detailed explanation of my hours and the workload I was dealing with, and why it was unsustainable. They acknowledged it was crazy and wrong but also said they saw no alternative in the short term as there was no one else with my skillset to do this work in the organisatiion (due to the fact that they asked me last year if they needed to hire another person with my skillset and I said "Yes, absolutely" and they chose not to advertise the position even. I dunno why.)
Anyway, while explaining this stuff it became apparent that my managers THOUGHT they knew what my job was, but actually had no idea about pretty core parts of the job, and therefore no idea how much time was required. This meant they thought staff had loads of free time to do all their little pet initiatives when they actually do not. (In my example, they did not realise that each piece of coursework I submit has to be thoroughly annotated, a process that takes 1-2 hours per piece of coursework if you do it properly and which if you do it poorly can negatively impact student attainment).
I was shocked. I had considered the main role of a manager to be to understand the workload and workflow of their staff and then assign work packages as best as possible to meet the goal of the organisation. I think they see it more as a way to pursue pet projects and gain status and power.
Anyway. I readily admit that my workplace is dysfunctional, but I reckon that is honestly more common than not. Like I said, good managers are like gold dust, and good middle managers are possibly some of the most critical people in any organisations. I do not hate managers, they are doing a difficult job that I have literally turned down because I percieve it as too difficult for me to do properly. But I definitely think there are basic things every manager needs to have their eye on.
As to colleague under performance, I will give people a break for a good long while, maybe up to 6 months, as I don't know what they might be going through. After that I will stop helping them. If they do something unethical, I will report them. (Not like you have a choice with that, in my line of work).
Vulcan wrote: If I wait for them to do their own job, my job never gets done. I HAVE TO do their job for them, because I need their job done FIRST before I start MINE. Otherwise they wait until the last minute to do theirs, leaving me NO time to do my job and I am the one who gets in trouble, not them.
Why? Because the boss likes them because they spend half the day chatting about nothing.
Mr. Executive, does this sound like you're creating the most productive and engaged workforce? From here it looks like you're paying someone to NOT work (inefficient), and actively DISenganging another (also inefficient). Perhaps you should come down to the level of the workerbee a bit more often and see what's actually going on. You'd probably save a bundle by NOT employing the ones who DON'T WORK, making more profit and increasing your own bonus.
You can get mad at getting advice you don't like, but at least try to listen when you rebut it.
Executives are usually at least three levels away from real work. You have pure workers, front line supervisors (with authority varying widely, but tend to focus on carrying out plans), middle managers (who tend to focus on creating plans of action based on goals and strategies) and executives (who create the goals and strategies). Usually middle managers are the highest people to actually know individual workers, and the lowest people who regularly affect an organizations big picture.
So no, the only way an executive would know that Joe Schmo on the line is holding up work due to screwing around with a supervisor would be if somebody told him, and that means probably a middle manager. You need to message this stuff up the chain if you want anybody to fix it.
The only problem I see with that scenario is that 9 times out of 10, it's those middle managers who are the problem.
I know they are in the company I work for. What's worse is the few who are good at their job are swamped trying to keep things running...
Da Boss wrote: I was shocked. I had considered the main role of a manager to be to understand the workload and workflow of their staff and then assign work packages as best as possible to meet the goal of the organisation. I think they see it more as a way to pursue pet projects and gain status and power.
You're conflating three different topics here. The role of a manager is broadly to accomplish organizational objectives through other people. The tools and skills of management includes understating workload and workflow, as well as understanding team member strengths and weakness, and many, many other things. and finally, people seek out or stay in management for many reasons, and status/power is usually the main one.
I'd agree that a good manager should understand what their people do, how they spend their time, etc. I think it's pretty obvious based on this thread that many managers are bad at their jobs.
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Bran Dawri wrote: The only problem I see with that scenario is that 9 times out of 10, it's those middle managers who are the problem.
I know they are in the company I work for. What's worse is the few who are good at their job are swamped trying to keep things running...
I was specifically addressing the accusation of what an executive should do.
Middle management is the classic dumping ground for the peter principle. It's frankly the rung of the ladder that can go the longest being incompetent, but eventually poor middle management catches up with an organization, usually because front line supervisors are acting inconsistently and often improperly
I'm a middle school language arts teacher, for 11-14 year olds (middle school here). I do very much enjoy my job. After 14 years in, the pay finally clicked over to where I think I'm well compensated for my efforts, and next year I'll be 15 years out from retirement- my break even year. After I learned to stop worrying about evaluations, and concentrate on how best to teach my students, I became a much better teacher, and the job got much easier. Because teaching is a non-competitive profession, you start at the top. There's nowhere to go. So you hone your lessons, sharpen your skills, and always try your best to help new teachers stay in the field- because it chews them up fast. But the more experience the teachers around you have the easier the job gets.
I’d like to back up Polonious’ earlier point, but purely from my own experience.
See, up until I was 30, I was a bit of a male chicken. Full of myself, and always believed I knew best.
Then? I got honest feedback. Funnily enough from GW. I’d gone for a full time position, and fluffed the interview. And that feedback changed my life. It was the first time I’d had to acknowledge that I was the problem. And indeed the first time I’d ever been told why I’d failed the interview.
Now, remember, this is me talking about me (for a change ) and is only referring to myself.
After that? How do the Space Wolves put it in the Heresy novels? Probably not quite right, but “I recognise my failing , and will be sure to correct it”. (Googled it in the end! Bloody good quote!)
Man that seriously changed my life. I started listening to feedback, and acting on it. Even when I felt it was overly harsh, I still acknowledged I am not the best judge of my own actions. None of us are.
I learned to take that metaphorical step back, and start seeing the forest for the trees.
Now, 10 years later? I’m doing so, so well. That slapdown left a mark, and it’s a mark I cherish.
Final time, this is only me talking about me. I seriously hope none of you were the butthole I was at the time. But I also hope you’ll read this, and maybe take a minute or two to also step back, take a bit of a breather, and try to see yourself as others might do.
It’s a harsh lesson, but one definitely worth taking on board
Then? I got honest feedback. Funnily enough from GW. I’d gone for a full time position, and fluffed the interview. And that feedback changed my life. It was the first time I’d had to acknowledge that I was the problem. And indeed the first time I’d ever been told why I’d failed the interview.
That's a tough moment, so good on you for taking advantage.
The thing is... our minds are really good at creating ego defenses. We chalk up losing out on things to politics, or favoritism, or some conspiracy... when sometimes you really aren't as ready for the next step as you think.
I spent about three years interviewing for jobs at my current level, and my skills and abilities between when I first started interviewing and when I was selected are vastly different.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I
Now, 10 years later? I’m doing so, so well. That slapdown left a mark, and it’s a mark I cherish.
You can do two things with failure. You can double down and ignore it or learn from it. The biggest failings in my life left the biggest formative teaching experiences. Nothing teaches complacency like success.
All depends on feedback. If there’s none forthcoming, there’s nothing to really learn from.
When I went for my current position (four or so years ago. Maybe a smidge longer) I again received honest feedback.
Not a ‘no’ in Nice Terms. But not brutally honest. For me, just the right mix. That meant I could focus on where they didn’t feel I was up to snuff, and work on them.
It’s not been a smooth road (fun with mental elf!), but my managers have always commented and remarked on my ability to take feedback square on the chin.
Is that a soft skill? Possibly, possibly not. I’ve only ever been me, so cannot comment for anyone else, and certainly won’t paint things in broad strokes.
But that learning has genuinely served me well. Even now, I’m tempted, now and again, to Just Go For It with promotion. Not recklessly so, just the ‘reckon I squeak this’ type of confidence. Feeling 51% ready if you will. Because I can trust my employee to give similar feedback, and from there know exactly where I stand, and work from there.
I know that besides the pay and manifold benefits, that I’m incredibly, incredibly lucky to have that sort of employer.
But equally.....do you know what I never did beforehand? Actually al for feedback.
Granted if it’s an entirely new employer you’re whistling in the wind on that one. But if it’s your current employer? Just ask. Constructively.
What do I mean by constructively? Don’t be confrontational. That’s not gonna get anyone anywhere, ever. Instead, couch in terms akin to “did they say what or where I wasn’t quite right for the role” type stuff. Open question. Don’t be defensive, don’t be disgruntled (not with the question). Open a dialogue. Ask your current boss or your boss’ boss to help come up with an action plan type thing. Not a mere tick box exercise.
Where I am professionally, that also helps show you’re taking it seriously and not just climbing for the sake of climbing the ladder.
No, it’s not easy. But I have to date found it immensely rewarding.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I
Now, 10 years later? I’m doing so, so well. That slapdown left a mark, and it’s a mark I cherish.
You can do two things with failure. You can double down and ignore it or learn from it. The biggest failings in my life left the biggest formative teaching experiences. Nothing teaches complacency like success.
Easy E wrote: No one cares about the worker bees that put their head down and get things done. That is the BASELINE for getting promoted. It is all the stuff beyond the core work that matters.
So much this. I don't know how many appraisals I've given over the years, but the core of the interview has remained the same for a while. It usually goes something like...
Young guy: I'm really good at my job but I keep getting passed for promotion.
Me: When it comes to promotion, nobody gives a if you are good at your current job. You are supposed to be good at it as a minimum but that doesn't entitle you to be promoted.
Young guy: But that's not fair and the system is broken if people who are good at their job don't get promoted.
Me: No, that's exactly how the system is supposed to work.
Young guy: WT!
I then have to follow this up with a lengthy chat but the essence remains the same. Most people just don't understand how promotion works and therefor think it is unfair and their managers are crap. Those who take the time to reflect and learn undoubtedly very quickly become suitable for promotion
(christ - I've been doing this so long the words spill out like second nature)
Bran Dawri wrote: The only problem I see with that scenario is that 9 times out of 10, it's those middle managers who are the problem.
I know they are in the company I work for. What's worse is the few who are good at their job are swamped trying to keep things running...
I was specifically addressing the accusation of what an executive should do.
Middle management is the classic dumping ground for the peter principle. It's frankly the rung of the ladder that can go the longest being incompetent, but eventually poor middle management catches up with an organization, usually because front line supervisors are acting inconsistently and often improperly
I got that.
I was pointing out an obvious flaw in that system - that the executive hears (if at all) about the problem from the people who are the problem and will more likely than not be at the very least trying to deflect blame if not outright trying to deny the problem.
And those front line supervisors are just trying to keep things running with no support or guidance from the people who are supposed to provide just that - they're not the problem, but they do get blamed. At best, they, or their conduct, are a symptom.
AFAIK the majority of managers try to arrange things so they have the time to play those sorts of political games and present themselves in the best light which is likely why so many have no idea about core things in their area of responsibility.
Good managers are amazing but there are a lot of built in incentives to behave poorly unfortunately.
Easy E wrote: No one cares about the worker bees that put their head down and get things done. That is the BASELINE for getting promoted. It is all the stuff beyond the core work that matters.
So much this. I don't know how many appraisals I've given over the years, but the core of the interview has remained the same for a while. It usually goes something like...
Young guy: I'm really good at my job but I keep getting passed for promotion.
Me: When it comes to promotion, nobody gives a if you are good at your current job. You are supposed to be good at it as a minimum but that doesn't entitle you to be promoted.
Young guy: But that's not fair and the system is broken if people who are good at their job don't get promoted.
Me: No, that's exactly how the system is supposed to work.
Young guy: WT!
I then have to follow this up with a lengthy chat but the essence remains the same. Most people just don't understand how promotion works and therefor think it is unfair and their managers are crap. Those who take the time to reflect and learn undoubtedly very quickly become suitable for promotion
(christ - I've been doing this so long the words spill out like second nature)
I think the usual misapprehension is that promotion is akin to levelling up a character in D&D, when in fact it's more like multi-classing. My manager does not do 'the same thing as me but slightly better'. if anything, I'm better at my job than he would be - because I do my job day in, day out. He does other, more managerial stuff - and is probably better at that than I am - but his technical skills are falling by the wayside.
If you're looking for promotion, yes, you need to be doing well at your job as a baseline. Proving you're a good employee and so on. But you really want to be aiming for showing that you're going to be good at the new job you're aiming for.
There should also be more opportunities for recognition in the system for exceptional performance in one's current role outside of promotion though. Which seems a strange way to recognise good performance if you ask me. "You're doing really well at this thing. We're going to stop you doing it and make you do something else instead."
It’s also understanding the role, and why you do what you do, and why, even, especially, when you disagree with management, it’s done a certain way.
That’s a conversation you can have with your manager. Trick there I’d say isn’t to come across as questioning, so much as curious. Have your suggestion ready to go of course, as if your manager has been off the ‘front line’ for a while, it’s entirely possible they’ve missed opportunities to increase efficiency and accuracy etc.
Interact. Show that you want to progress for the right reasons. Going back to my OP? I’d say the butthole manager was a manager for all the wrong reasons. Never did our role, never understood our work. He just liked lording it over people, micro managing everything, and changing rules (even those set by The Powers That Be) on a whim. My good managers ( and there have been a great many of those) supported us. They found out what we needed in terms of support, and spoke up for us. They’re in the right place for the right reason!
The only job of mine I’ve ever enjoyed was the summer I spent working at the zoo. Sad to see it’s facing closure now. Haemorrhaging money.
Wait, I tell I lie. I also enjoyed the time spent working as a researcher for my alma mater before budget cuts closed that whole department down....I’m sensing a pattern here....
Future War Cultist wrote: The only job of mine I’ve ever enjoyed was the summer I spent working at the zoo. Sad to see it’s facing closure now. Haemorrhaging money.
Wait, I tell I lie. I also enjoyed the time spent working as a researcher for my alma mater before budget cuts closed that whole department down....I’m sensing a pattern here....
I know someone who moved from Blockbuster to Woolworths to BHS. They work for Debenhams now.
So, what have you done to document the process and create trackable workflows to help you tell the story without being perceived as the "problem"? Have you created a workflow that demonstrates the impact of each step and how they are interrelated in the process? The expected vs. current time at each step (including your own) and bulleted out common pain points? Have you documented any of the work steps you completed and how often? Have you reached out for support from your peers and documented their response with the boss on CC? If the boss is not responding, what is your relationship with their boss? Who else is impacted below you in the process? What is happening to their work stream?
I ask, because there is a good likelihood that the boss doesn't know any of this, because they are not properly walking the process flow. If the Boss doesn't know, they can not help you. Right now, the Boss is only hearing the point of view of the people that talk to him. This of course is excluding your own voice.
Boring Storytime:
I recall the big turning point in my career. I was telling my leader about a broken process and looked expectantly at them to fix it.
They said, "What are you going to do about it?"
I blinked twice, momentarily stunned and said, "I did do something. I told you."
"That's not doing something about it. That is complaining about it. How are you going to fix it?"
"I can fix it?"
"Yes, tell me what you think it should look like, and what you will need to build to make it look like that; then get back to me."
So, I did. My life became easier, my boss looked good, and I was suddenly on the radar for advancement. I had differentiated myself from my colleagues as not only could I find problems, but I figured out ways to fix them.
After that, I have never been the victim of a broken process or my work colleagues again. I was always making choices and putting together ways to make my own life easier. These methods typically helped my peers, my reports, the customer, and ultimately the company. I have been climbing ever since, and all I ever have to do is to try and be as lazy as possible. I have picked up better tools and ways to share my ideas in a way that my bosses can grasp or care about along the way; and some of those were technical certifications even. However, it was always in service of learning to speak the language of the people I needed to influence so I could be lazy.
Who would have thought that ruthless laziness was the key to corporate ladder climbing?
Yes, it's been mentioned to the bosses. Yes, it's been documented and presented. Their response? I'm obviously just trying to steal credit for Mr. Brownnoser's hard work.... which I just showed you HE NEVER DID.
This is not unique to my current workplace. It's endemic everywhere I've been. This is the system as it exists. Sure, maybe Mr. Brownnoser will be the greatest manager ever once promoted. But how can you promote someone who DOES NOT MEET MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS FOR THEIR CURRENT JOB?
I had a boss who used to say "if I did my job perfectly, all I would need to do is sign the documents only I can sign, and everybody else would do everything." That's not laziness, it's delegation and good management. Only bad managers want people to work harder, faster, or longer. Good managers want to get more work done, which often means working less, not more.
Now this I agree with, and when I'm in a leadership position this is what I strive for - and what I want MY bosses to strive for. I want my team to be able to do their job with absolute minimum input from me (be it anything from collecting, collating, and analyzing data to unloading a truck and getting everything onto the shelf for sale), so I can then jump in and help pull the load and make proper use of my prior experience as a workerbee. And it might surprise you to learn that when I'm ALLOWED to do this, my teams are among the most efficient in whatever location I'm in.
Sadly, most bosses WANT to stick their noses in and rearrange things to their satisfaction... usually in INefficient ways, because they never bothered to learn how to do things EFFICIENTLY (they were too busy schmoozing their boss to learn). Thus do they 'show' their bosses that they are 'in control' of things which somehow 'makes them look good'. I never figured out how making things less efficient makes one look good, but that's the 'communication synergy' modern businesses in America seem to demand.
EDIT: Reading several other posts, I'm starting to wonder if this last bit is the whole problem. By proving myself a more efficient manager of a small team than current management is, I become a threat to their positions. And why am I more efficient a manager? Because instead of politiciing and blowing my own horn I buckle down and WORK hoping the results will speak for themselves.
Bloody politics, always interfering with ACTUALLY accomplishing something efficiently...
I'm starting to think my problem is my upbringing. "Working hard is the first step to success." "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right." "Do it right the first time so you won't have to do it over."
While modern business seems to operate on 'It doesn't matter what you do IF ANYTHING, all that matters is blowing your own horn and stomping down anyone who might threaten your position and/or advancement.' My parents, teachers, and other role-models seem to have missed telling me about that part...
Also makes me wonder if succeeding at anything DOING something is actually worth bothering with anymore. If business thrives on backstabbing and boasting instead of actual accomplishment... well, that explains quite a bit about America and it's governmental and corporate culture.
Vulcan wrote: I'm starting to think my problem is my upbringing. "Working hard is the first step to success." "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right." "Do it right the first time so you won't have to do it over."
While modern business seems to operate on 'It doesn't matter what you do IF ANYTHING, all that matters is blowing your own horn and stomping down anyone who might threaten your position and/or advancement.' My parents, teachers, and other role-models seem to have missed telling me about that part...
Also makes me wonder if succeeding at anything DOING something is actually worth bothering with anymore. If business thrives on backstabbing and boasting instead of actual accomplishment... well, that explains quite a bit about America and it's governmental and corporate culture.
This is why I have worked for myself for the last 15 years. Working hard for someone else makes them rich. The salvers slaver and the slavers slave. That's the world. So long as you're in a situation in which you're selling your labor to somebody else trying to turn it into profit, you're going to be over a barrel regardless of what particular form that takes.
In the corporate world it's more evident than anywhere else. Chances are if you're good at what you do but not a squeaky wheel you'll simply wind up pulling someone else's weight. Management doesn't care how it gets value, only that it does.
Vulcan wrote: I'm starting to think my problem is my upbringing. "Working hard is the first step to success." "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right." "Do it right the first time so you won't have to do it over."
While modern business seems to operate on 'It doesn't matter what you do IF ANYTHING, all that matters is blowing your own horn and stomping down anyone who might threaten your position and/or advancement.' My parents, teachers, and other role-models seem to have missed telling me about that part...
Also makes me wonder if succeeding at anything DOING something is actually worth bothering with anymore. If business thrives on backstabbing and boasting instead of actual accomplishment... well, that explains quite a bit about America and it's governmental and corporate culture.
I wouldn’t describe that attitude as problematic in the least.
But, do take time to schmooze when you can! It’s a silly, dirty word, but Networking is a thing. Get your face out there. Rooty toot toot you’re own trumpet, because sadly, ain’t no other bugger gonna do it for you.
Keep your eyes on the prize. The feeling of being financially stable and overlord free is indescribable and, like time, has a value far greater than money.
Roberts84 wrote: Keep your eyes on the prize. The feeling of being financially stable and overlord free is indescribable and, like time, has a value far greater than money.
Amen.
I’m not really cut out for the world of work anyway...not good at taking orders...
Very happy to take orders, provided my overlord understands I’m of a creative enough bent that they need to be incredibly precise, lest I interpret other than intended.
Which again, with a Fair and Reasonable mandate, is why I’m so happy in my current job! Provided I can justify my choices, I’m golden, even if it gets overturned at the second and final level!
Automatically Appended Next Post: It really is all about chancing your hand though,
Me? I’d never considered or imagined I’d be good at this job. Yes, I’m an argumentative sod (look back at my posts from a few years back, and wince as I do now!). But had always assumed I was doomed to dead endery.
Landed a job in insurance, and found a way to better channel my argumentative nature. Learnt the minutiae and nuance, and proved highly competent.
Sadly, in that role ‘face didn’t fit’. Decided to chance my hand by applying to the industry Big Boy (biggest boy as it happens), got accepted, and the rest is 8 years of history.
If you’re thinking of going self employed, it’s definitely worth looking into the practicalities. Being in the U.K., I find the legal protections of being an employee too appealing. Yes, I could go Contractor where I am, and near double my wage, but I like annual leave, private pension etc which I’d lose in doing so.
Self-Employed
1. Your work is for you (and your employees)
2. Need to be an expert in everything
3. Be prepared to lose all your friends, family, and money
4. Get to be a "pillar of the community"
Yeah I reckon it takes a particular kind of person to make it in self employment. I respect it, I think it is very difficult. My uncle built his refridgeration company up from pretty much nothing, and he employs a few people now, but it is a tonne of work and he has to be pretty confrontational and dogged in getting people to pay up for work sometimes and that sort of thing.
I am happy when I can get on with my core job of teaching and looking after my students. I am also a pretty good "second" to a manager if I think that manager is ethical and sensible (as my direct boss is). I think I would be a poor leader, as I dislike making judgements of colleagues and am not very well organised. I am glad when other people take on thsoe roles as long as they are ethical and competent.
Hmmm, interesting topic for me this. Some of the following may be surprising given my 'reputation'(?) on here.
Though technically I've had more than 3 jobs, I've had 3 main job roles throughout my lifetime;
1. Lifeguard. I used to be a very good swimmer so this was a natural fit for a young'n still in education. Basically a glorified cleaner that sometimes watched people swim. It was often boring, though the various teams I worked in were all entertaining for different reasons and it paid very well for my age. Though I didn't enjoy the cleaning, I did enjoy the banter.
2. Teacher(ish). After leaving uni I went to work for a charity that effectively led "enterprise" (business studies) days in schools. My remit was a bit of a hodge podge of selling the enterprise days to various schools in the county, organising volunteers from corporate organisations and delivering the teaching sessions to groups of 10-200 students. The age range varied from primary school up to university students. I loved the teaching elements of the job where I engaged with students. I hated the office side of the job that consisted of various menial tasks and administration. I learnt a TON during this role, not just about the workplace in general, but also about what I enjoyed in terms of my own worklife. I was thinking about becoming a proper teacher full time but instead went into...
3. Sales. And here I stayed. I now work for a large multinational corporate group selling medical equipment to organisations that provide care. I. Love. This. Job. And the weird thing is that I've always loved it. I started as a "consultative" (support) type role and have progressed to my current role of Senior Manager. What I love about it is the freedom. I work from home and I'm responsible for my own diary. I decide what I work on on any given day. It's also easy to see how successful (or not) I am (based on my figures). For me the job is all about building relationships and, though some of you may find this hard to believe, IRL I don't find this very hard at all. I'm currently responsible for bringing in approximately £1.5m for the company I work for. That's not to say there aren't elements about the job that I dislike, or that things couldn't be better, but I couldn't see myself doing, or enjoying many other roles. Of course this is all down to dumb luck, I needed a career change when I left the charity mentioned earlier and this happened to come up. The intention was to "get some real world experience" before going back into teaching. Obviously that never happened and it looks like it won't any time soon.
Some interesting reads.
For me, my current job is a recent (of two years) job, that I don’t dislike, but am not in love with necessarily.
It’s the situation that having this job brings with it, that I do love.
Basically I work nights now, just a couple a night, in the care industry.
This allows me to spend my life at home, with the kids (and games and hobbies all mixed in if they are occupied for a moment or two )
It is sure a far cry from my original work. For 15 years since leaving school I worked in retail. Starting at a weekend and part time role, right up to an Area Manager.
It was Long hours at the end, with quite a bit of travel to other stores, and many a phone call and email on my days off or in the evenings.
Now the wife didn’t like so much not seeing me when I was off work, and I felt I was missing out on a lot of time with our then 6 month old boy.
So when the opportunity arose to be an almost stay at home dad came up, I was pretty happy for the opportunity.
Now he’s almost 3 and our second is coming up 4 months, and I’m always there (almost like a job itself ha).
I do miss it a bit, but the of pressure and targets and conference calls and everything it all entailed, I am happy without those for sure.
I recently changed jobs so that, for the first time in my life, I'm not working first line or shifts and, for the first time in a very long time, I don't have anyone beneath me in the chain of command.
I miss the buzz of activity of first line, I miss the convenience of having weekday mornings to do house work and head into town, and I definitely miss the mind blowingly stupid stories that the young folks tell of what they got up to last weekend.
On the other hand, for the first time in forever, I have a regular sleeping pattern. I'm losing weight without having changed anything else. I'm more alert in work and less grumpy outside of it. I'm no longer tired all the time. When my new colleagues complain about how bad they think things are I just sit and grin and laugh to myself.
I've gone from fighting fires all day, worrying about my subordinates and being exhausted all the time. Now, I'm thoroughly de-stressed and happy. A little bit bored at times, but I'm happy again.
I'm an archaeologist. I teach in a university and do some freelance survey and map-production stuff (because I only have a zero-hours teaching contract).
I enjoy parts a lot. A fair bit of my year is spent on excavation in Israel or Iraq. It's fun but living in excavation accommodation and the 4am-9pm work days aren't. They're quite varied experiences, too. Because I'm a surveyor I deal with everything on a site through all periods so it's more interesting than being confined to one area. Also, excavations are quite different across countries - so in Israel it's all academics, students, and some volunteers, whereas in Iraq we have a small team of academics and everyone else is hired from local villages.
Teaching, similarly, is varied. I really enjoy teaching honours, but MA and levels 1 and 2 can be frustrating. I mostly teach archaeological theory and ethics, or social theory in Ancient Near Eastern contexts, which I find far more interesting than just teaching ancient events and cultures. I also, unusually, quite enjoy marking.
The parts that frustrate me are the being obliged to run at the speed of the those who do the least work, and having to deal with the variability of educational backgrounds. For instance, at tge start of underground, students arriving from the US are leagues ahead of most of those from Europe - especially the UK. By the time of honours, things are pretty balanced by honours, and the at everyone who's done a European undergrad is generally miles ahead of those from the US and Europe is a big ol' mix. Germany and France seem to produce people with immense factual knowledge but that really struggle to process material (actually a common characteristic of Oxford students, too). On the other hand, UK-trained students are usually really good at applying knowledge but their factual basics are shaky. It's interesting but a teaching challenge.
Meanwhile, I teach a lot of ancient texts which everyone with a cursory knowledge of thinks they're an expert in. Especially Hebrew Bible. Resisting eye-rolling spills legit be bonus money.
Obviously, the most frustrating bit is that there are so few jobs. There are two Near Eastern archaeology lecturing jobs in Scotland.
Obviously, the most frustrating bit is that there are so few jobs. There are two Near Eastern archaeology lecturing jobs in Scotland.
I know what you mean. A friend of mine was hunting for a job in the US a few years ago; and there was exactly -one- tenure track post for a Professor of Modern British History in the whole US.
He ended up with a job as a historian for the US airforce despite having specialised in nineteenth century military stuff.
I feel like my life taught me really early on that brown nosing is an important life skill, however much some people might knock it. You get more understanding, cooperation, and help when you need it when you engage in some low level sycophanting. Schmoozing is an important skill.
But I feel like a system that functions that way is an inherently broken system more naturally navigated by sycophants and sociopaths (which I think does explain a lot) than people who just want to live their lives. The only way to get past that is to just stop worrying about it and prioritize your goals, but that's bs in itself. Broke systems should be fixed, not accepted as 'this is just what you have to do.' But that's an easy mentality for people who don't have student loans and bills to pay, which is probably why the system stays broken.
I also think my experience is that pretty much every workplace is inherently dysfunctional. Maybe not completely non-functional, but I've never seen a workplace where I didn't go 'wtf' about something and how little sense it made.
The thread you mentioned is from 3 years ago, but the topic of career satisfaction and challenges remains relevant over time. It's great to hear that you were able to overcome a difficult period in your job and are now enjoying your career.
Yeah not sure if it is necromancy but it was interesting to me to read my posts from that time with where I am now. In some ways I followed Fifty's example from earlier in the thread, which at the time I remember feeling downhearted about because I felt I couldn't drop my hours as he'd done.
I basically lobbied to teach another high level subject with a small class size, which allowed me to trade 60 students for 4 for the same number of teaching hours. This dramatically decreased my workload because it cut the marking I had to do by a factor of 15.
I've now started to evaluate my job partially on "students per hours taught" and try to get myself in a position where I'm minimising that number to keep my workload manageable while still being paid the same as I was for being responsible for far more students.
So, Ouze and Polonius if you're still around, you guys were kinda right and I DID have more agency than I thought at the time. Part of my issue was seeing this as "wrong" because managing my workflow was "not my job", but ultimately that really does not matter, what matters is that I can cope and keep going.
I dunno. Being able to look back on old threads is one of the cool things about fora. I hope others that were having a tough time in work also found a way through.
I also looked back on my old post here despite the necro. I switched teams at my job, no longer billing for radiology, but doing dental billing now. Phones still suck. The promise of less incoming patient calls turned out to be a lie (not entirely their fault). I have a lot more hours taking calls, but less volume. More waiting for it to ring, which does not help with my anxiety. Less feeling of helping people. It’s still a basic office job, and cooperate America is loves its micromanagement. It’s a grind, but an easy job I can step away from at the end of the day and not worry about.
My current "job": Retired. So generally yes, I'm enjoying it. I've found that his time of year ("Christmas Season") though I'm a bit bored sitting on the sidelines.
My previous job: Yes, very much so everyday.
I spent 30 years in big toy retail doing everything from lowly cashier on up through district/regional duties. Multiple jobs/positions for the same company over the years.
Still where I am, still enjoying it. There are some grumbles, by the High Heedyins finally feel like they’re more or less in gear and have remembered there’s an awful lot of very clever people who haven’t been treated all that fairly over the past few years.
My role is getting a bit stale, but that is fine. Some of this is cultural to the company, and some of it is what the company is asking me to do. I have done that stuff before, several times; so it is more like getting people to buy in and apply the known solution.
The stability and security allow me to focus my energy on other things though. That's a plus.
It is interesting to look at my older post here and see how quickly things have progressed since I last worked in my previous company where I was laid off. I was able to complete my career development practitioner diploma during COVID, got a 3-month contract for full time work as an Employer Liaison in lieu of a unpaid practicum, my boss really liked me so she kept me on for another 6 months, transitioned to getting a full time job there in that role, and in less than a year's time I applied to a Program Coordinator role in the same program I was a part of and got promoted there, so I've had a lot of rapid growth in the career development field given that I've only been in the sector for little over 2 years so far. Very happy to be helping my client demographic of immigrants as well as our program is targeted to help them actually work in jobs of their field from their home country rather than them having to settle for survival jobs at Tim Hortons. Now more change is on the horizon as I've been attempted to be poached by a university and my boss just quit, so I might be applying for the manager role here instead.
Overall, pretty satisfied with my current position but I am still ambitious enough to keep an eye out for other roles (working 2 days in the office and having a 10 minute commute to the place is a lot of incentive to stay at the moment lol). Goes to show how quickly things can change and how far reaching God's plans can be in hindsight, as I wouldn't have gotten my current job without the position I was laid off from.
I'm primarily an at-home dad. For the past 7 years I've been working part time in various capacities at the same Community Development Corporation that I worked at 20 years ago when I was right out of college. At this point I've got over a decade with this organization, 15 years total (all my actively working years) if you count my time working for a Health Center started by the same church.
I like it here because I believe in the mission (affordable housing, community organizing, etc) and I like the people and I have near absolute flexibility in terms of hours, attendance, etc. It's also nice to have adult professional interactions throughout the week.
Even though I can't commit the time and regularity to take on substantial responsibilities/projects/etc I'm able to be pretty useful doing odd jobs, organizational stuff and often knowing the organization's history and location of documents far better than most other employees. The pay is laughable compared to what my breadwinner wife brings in, but it definitely does help out the family finances.
I guess I like being useful to the mission and being also able to do things on my terms, which I realize is a luxury. I've got several more years until both kids are in High School (no longer in need of daliy transportation from me) and then I'll be able to re-evaluate what a full-time job would work like.
I think I am suffering from a version or a variant of the 'Peter Principle'. Whilst I have not been promoted above my own competence level, I have been promoted to a position where I no longer enjoy my job due to the work load and the level of responsibility it entails. Unfortunately, I am somewhat painted into a corner now because of the related salary; if I want to change careers or change jobs, it would mean a large reduction in salary which is untenable. My wife doesn't work, we are a single income family so I am kind of stuck doing what I do whether I like it or not.
Oh man, this is interesting, so much for me has happened. around 2021 i was promised alot from my company, a path for a promotion, alot, but i was denied that due to a supervisor lying about his feth up, and blaming it on me.(Funny thing is, my partner in the job got the promotion as well, and it just as responsible for what my supervisor said I did, but because i brought it up, i was blamed)
early 2022 i got a big promotion and im doing that now, after a stint with a bad manager, i have a good one now that while he expects alot, he is VERY supportive.
That siad, im tired of times im expected to work, im expected to be available for 12 hours a week from 4-730 to accomadote children and family, which means less time for myself TBH. they never give me morning clients cause for some reasons kids are starting school at like, 2 now. I have had several talks with parents that due to us being a medical service, work is required to give you time off weekly for our meetings, per FMLA, but they always push back.
Not quite
I need to be available for 30 hours direct for a week. No including all my other duties.
I'm also required to be available for a total of 12 hours a week from 4-730, due to those being peak hours. It can be in an combo of it. But that means most likely I'm starting at 9 or 930, and getting don't at 6-7.
It's a messed up field in terms of hours
So, Ouze and Polonius if you're still around, you guys were kinda right and I DID have more agency than I thought at the time. Part of my issue was seeing this as "wrong" because managing my workflow was "not my job", but ultimately that really does not matter, what matters is that I can cope and keep going.
I got into machining in 2010 and have never looked back. Had you told me this would be my longest standing career outside of the military I would have laughed in your face. As it stands? I can't picture myself doing ANYTHING else for a living.
I'm a college lecturer (UK, so not University equivalent) and I am hating the job. Teenagers/Young Adults are a total mess post pandemic, and the UK education system, including OFSTED and the government, can't seem to get their head around that it is a serious serious problem that we can't do anything about it when funding is horrendous for further education and you only really have 12 hours contact time with the students.
Behavioural issues are just as common as quite severe mental health issues.
I've wanted to do a masters conversion into data science/analytics for a while now.... Might be worth the cost just to save my sanity.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: I'm a college lecturer (UK, so not University equivalent) and I am hating the job. Teenagers/Young Adults are a total mess post pandemic, and the UK education system, including OFSTED and the government, can't seem to get their head around that it is a serious serious problem that we can't do anything about it when funding is horrendous for further education and you only really have 12 hours contact time with the students.
Behavioural issues are just as common as quite severe mental health issues.
I've wanted to do a masters conversion into data science/analytics for a while now.... Might be worth the cost just to save my sanity.
Might be an idea. I did a week in a school watching teachers and realised it wasn't for me. I can barely stand teaching undergraduates most of the time - not on a personal level, but there's just too many coasting along doing the bare minimum because they feel they need the bit of paper at the end. I can only imagine how much worse it must be when they're actively compelled to be there still.
Secondary teaching at the moment is horrific compared to pre-pandemic. It's just constantly battling against poor behaviour, rudeness and entitlement, and parents who complain over the smallest of issues. We are haemorrhaging quality staff, and can't replace them because we have no money and there aren't enough new teachers coming in, or wanting to stay. At the moment, it just seems like everyone hates teachers, from the government to the parents to the students.
Our senior management is genuinely burying their heads in the sand, in fact, middle management and then upper management are evidently, and actively working from home so they don't have to deal with and acknowledge the behaviour themselves. Genuinely awful, and I could have my salary doubled and I still wouldn't be happy with the conditions.
We have an OFSTED inspection coming anyway, I'll be amazed if we get a good rating, we totally would not deserve it.
I'm a facilities/plant engineer currently, supporting R&D and manufacturing for high-end national security and defense systems. Enjoyed what I did and what I worked on, who I worked with and for, etc. greatly for the first 7 years with the company. I did some cool gak, learned a lot, was given a lot of trust and responsibility, was rapidly promoted and recognized for my contributions at a very high level, had some great mentors and senior folks who took an interest in my career and giving me growth and development opportunities and was being prepped to take next steps to level up.
The past year, not so much. The problems started when my boss announced his retirement last September, along with half my department whk were offered early retirement packages.I was told that his boss would be interviewing me to replace him (which was basically a slam dunk for me as his boss was one of those who took interest in my career and gave me direct tasking and development opportunities). I was basically congratulated for my upcoming promotion by all the other department heads at the meeting in which my boss announced his retirement, as in they literally went "Congratulations on your retirement Big Boss! And congratulations on your promotion chaos0xomega, when are you moving into his office?" But then, a bit more than a week before he was due to retire, his boss very suddenly quit in pretty dramatic fashion. His bosses boss was apparently pissed off and refused to take phone calls or answer questions, etc. So my boss left without my team knowing who we reported to or who was in charge or who would be interviewing me, etc. A few days later we finally had a new org chart flowed down to us with a bit of a restructuring of our business organization, etc. Nothing too dramatic, I knew some of the new senior leaders in my org from past projects I'd worked on with them and was optimistic about the direction things were heading in for us because I thought they were pretty high speed, etc. Then a couple days later, the guy who would have been my new boss had I actually been promoted announced that a guy on my team who reported to me was the new acting site manager.
He was new to the team (only there for 18 months vs 7 years for me) but had a higher title than me even though he worked for me, as he had a very specific skillset we needed and were paying him for, but had no real experience in the majority of what we actually did, had no experience with plant or facilities operations maintenance or management, very little project management and execution experience, zero team management experience, etc. Basically he was a very experienced and highly qualified design engineer who was hired to support the team by doing in-house design work and provide engineering support to the projects team where needed - hecwas good at it but that's only like 20% of what we do as an organization.
I cried foul almost immediately, and his boss was basically like "sorry, nobody told us, we didn't have an org chart for you guys and we weren't able to speak to Big Boss before he left. We just assumed that he was the senior guy based on his title. Don't worry we'll give you an opportunity to interview for the role when we open the req for the permanent position, but the company just declared a hiring freeze so we are stuck for now. For now though he's in charge, it's only fair we let him have this opportunity, think how bad you would feel if you were given this opportunity and then it was taken away from you" - to which I pointed out I didn't need to imagine it because he literally just did it to me. I had communication from my retired boss in writing and a copy of the department succession plan so was able to prove that I was the one who should be in the acting role, etc but they wouldn't budge (kind of understandably I think, it would be somewhat publicly embarrassing in a Steve Harvey kind of way for everyone involved to announce a correction there). I decided to suck it up and be a team player and put my trust in leadership to do right by me when the time came. Big mistake, I should have left then and there.
Acting boss very rapidly demonstrated he was not cut out to do the job and started dropping the ball and creating problems from the getgo. He was also caught doing some sketchy gak, including lying to his boss about what he was working in and who was responsible for what
There was also some questionable behavior that others on my team think was targeted towards me to try to limit my ability to be successful and demonstrate my skills to new leadership, etc.pr otherwise try to harm my reputation - let's just say that I was suddenly being excluded from a lot of meetings and communications that the rest of my department was being included on or which were previously meetibgs that I attended or ran, etc, as if my acting boss suddenly forgot that his former supervisor existed, which was odd because at that point I was 1/5th of the remaining team. There was also a lot of communication that never made it to me pertaining to efforts I was working on, such that I'd do something that I had been planning and then get yelled at because I was supposedly told not to do it that way, etc. (except it was told to acting boss who never passed it along to me). And then there were the projects that had been assigned to me by outgoing boss which suddenly I was no longer working on (without anyone even telling me about it, it was fun how I found out about some of those).
I eventually started lodging complaints with his boss (including documented evidence of all sorts of gak), all I was told basically was "be patient, it's obvious he's inexperienced, none of this is targeted at you, I'm trying to coach him, this will get better I promise, you'll still have an opportunity to interview, and none of the stuff that's happened to you will be held against you, I promise". Nothing got better, and I started applying for internal transfers to other teams and departments to get out of what seemed a gakky situation, to no avail. Eventually I started lodging complaints with HR about the situation and basically begging them for help to get assigned somewhere else, and they basically ghosted me and stopped responding to my calls and emails.
Eventually, acting boss created a big enough crisis that it caused major problems for the production team that rose to the attention of a senior corporate leader. Acting boss blamed his boss for tying his hands and basically said that as acting manager he didn't have authority to make certain decisions and had to rely on his boss who worked at another site 6 hours away to make those decisions for him, etc (in reality he never even communicated this gak to his boss, he himself just dropped the ball and it blew up in his face). Senior corporate leader basically sided with the acting guy and forced my acting bosses immediate promotion and gave his boss a pretty dramatic wrist-slapping for mismanaging his organization and team by not having promoted acting boss sooner, etc. So no interview or promotion for me, and the feth-feth games being played by my now-permanent boss continued.
Within a couple months of his promotion it became apparent to both me and his boss that he was continuing to cause problems. My boss had been instructed to set up a regular 1:1 meeting with me and assign certain tasks to me, which he told his boss he had done but didn't actually. Once it was realized that hadnt been done, there was a 2 month period where his boss was asking me weekly if he had done it yet, to which my response was always "no", until I finally lost my gak and exploded on his boss in a manner that probably should've had me brought to HR myself, but basically I calked out the total lack of accountability and directly called into question my bosses integrity and competency. Around the same time the senior leader that forced my bosses promotion left, which I had hoped would open the door for some changes but nothing materialized though my boss got a talking to and things improved a good bit, though not totally.
I continued to give his boss an opportunity to make things right but nothing has yet materialized after 15 months of having been snubbed for the acting role in the first place. Boss has continued to generally demonstrate he doesn't really know what he's doing and I've been called on to step in and save the day multiple times. While he does have that regularly scheduled 1:1 with me now, he was supposed to have a mandatory mid year performance review meeting with me (literally a corporate policy requirement) which he never did, it's coming up on 4 months past due this week, HR and his boss continue to not hold him accountable though his boss regularly expresses his "disappointment" that he hasnt done it yet and his "hope" that things will improve. More recently I sent his boss a 17-18 page long email calling out what a shitshow the team has become and how transferring my roles and responsibilities to the rest of the team over the past year without any real discussion or planning has made our organization an inefficient and ineffective mess that will have long term consequences for our business ops, including metrics (ex - we currently have over 7,500 open work orders. That number averaged around 180-350 up until my boss retired, but has blown up because the maintenance supervisor who also used to work for me isn't managing to process and nobody on the team is tracking or reporting metrics anymore because new boss doesn't care or understand them and i was told off by his boss when I tried to report them to him instead, before he understood what my role on the team actually was - he thought I was just a project manager when in reality I was our operations manager and projects team lead).
To his credit, my bosses boss took the feedback to heart and basically acknowledged that he fethed up and that I should have been promoted from the getgo and apologized that things got as bad as they have, and that he knows id have done a better job, and that he understands that I'm frustrated because my boss isn't demonstrating himself to be worthy or capable of the opportunity he is given yet, etc. But also basically said that he's committed to coaching my boss and getting the team back to high performance under his leadership and that my boss deserves more chances, etc. Also that as the senior guy on the team he needs me to take this on the chin and carry the rest of the team and keep things going as smoothly as I can until he can rebuild the team and coach my coworkers and boss up to do the things that they should already be doing, etc. And that he "promises" me that he recognizes im the real rockstar on the team and he wishes the rest of his staff was more like me and that there will be some big career advancement opportunities for me in the future but his hands are tied by the current business environment and it might be another 2-3 years before he is in a position to promote me into the role he thinks I should be in, etc.
For me, that was the straw that broke the camels back and I've given up trying to get justice in my current role or transfer internally (the business environment is honestly pretty bad ATM, we've had a lot of turnover in senior leadership and the entire sites business ops are in shambles, given my experiences over the past year it's not hard to imagine why. There's basically no internal openings available and the company has started laying off other teams). Other contributing factors are that over the past 2-3 months I've started getting complaints about my boss from other department heads as well as our vendors and contractors about how my boss is dropping the ball and asking me to do his job for him - I've been forwarding them to his boss, including one from a long-time contractor that has worked with us for 35+ years and maintains mission-critical equipment for us. They've been trying to fulfill a contract with us for the past year and get paid, but my boss has ghosted them, even while he told the team and his boss that the work was completed over the summer - yet another lie). Ive even overheard other senior leaders abd even some of our customers discussing how useless and ineffective my boss is.
Likewise, about 2-3 months back we hired another guy onto the team (who came very highly recommended by others in senior roles within the company)to backfill my bosses old position plus some additional duties (basically, there's also a PM aspect to it as I'm the only remaining project manager on the team and can't keep up with all the work that was previously being done by a team of 3 guys previously). Within about a week, the new guy was complaining to me about all the same crap I was complaining to my bosses boss about. It helped put a lot into perspective for me and that I wasn't just holding everyone to unfairly high standards, etc. He didn't realize that I had been here longest of everyone on the team and that my boss previously worked for me. When he found out he was basically like "why the he'll aren't you in charge, you seemed the sharpest and most on the ball person here from the moment I first met you and you're the only person here who actually seems helpful or even seems to know what they are doing". Last week he put his two weeks in and decided to leave because he can't stand how ineffective and dysfunctional the team is. He even went so far to complain to my bosses boss about what a gak job my boss is doing and outright told him that if not for me he would've quit weeks ago and that it's obvious that I'm the one here who should be in charge, etc. and apparently lavished me with possibly excessive amounts of praise while burning the reputations of everyone else in my department.
So as of last week I've been applying for work elsewhere. I'm probably not going to stay in the defense industry, as I can get about 2x more in the private sector (esp after you account for the promotion i should have received), even if the work isn't necessarily as interesting. Not entirely sure I want to stay in the same type of role though, I have enough project management and continuous improvement experience, as well as manufacturing engineering experience, that I can be kinda flexible in terms of what I do next and I've been casting a wider net, the real challenge is that because I didn't get the promotion I expected my current title is lower than it should be for my level of capability and skill, though my resume otherwise speaks for itself and will hopefully help me bridge the gap and convince employers that I'm not overreaching.
The one wrinkle in this is that a coworker caught my boss discussing the aforementioned 17-18 page email with the head of security, who was apparently accusing me of divulging sensitive information in the email and threatening to investigate me and telling my boss to "keep me in line". The two of then have a pre-existing relationship before my boss was hired here and are known to be buddy buddy and in cahoots. Incidentally (or not) the aforementioned email included accusations against an unspecified anonymous "senior leader" at the site who I caught making discriminatory remarks, bullying employees (myself included), and telling my boss to do some dishonest gak to further his career - that senior leader in question *is* the head of security and the accusations are specific enough that he's no doubt aware that I was borderline calling him out if hes seen the email. I've made some backup copies of various documentation and communications just in case I need to sue someone over workplace retaliation, etc. And I have a meeting tomorrow with my bosses boss in which I intend to discuss this development with him.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Our senior management is genuinely burying their heads in the sand, in fact, middle management and then upper management are evidently, and actively working from home so they don't have to deal with and acknowledge the behaviour themselves. Genuinely awful, and I could have my salary doubled and I still wouldn't be happy with the conditions.
We have an OFSTED inspection coming anyway, I'll be amazed if we get a good rating, we totally would not deserve it.
Ah mate, that's rough. Our SLT clearly don't know what to do, but they are at least there and trying.
Good luck with OFSTED. We got done last year, and we were deep dived. It was an exceedingly shallow one; I think that they are very much on 'light touch' after Ruth Perry. I was observed. She watched me talk and question my year 13's on literary movements for 10 minutes, then asked me to leave so that she could ask if I 'talk to them.' I hope that it goes well for you.
It is in fact a whole lot of not fun. I don't know how or why I put up with it for as long as I did, I think it's because I had it so good for so long and invested so much into it and had such a promising career that I didn't want to let go of it even when it was obvious I should (he'll, I even had my old boss early on telling me I was getting screwed over and that I should leave promptly knowing I could get at least 50% more elsewhere).
Now though I'm just burnt out, last couple weeks I've stopped caring about my work entirely and am putting in bare minimum effort, I don't like it but I can't muster up anything more. I've had bouts of depression and anxiety over all this for the past year but nothing quite like what I'm experiencing now. It's like I've already quit and checked out mentally but I don't have the new job yet. Only good thing is that me procrastinating and sandbagging it is still greater levels of productivity and responsibility than the rest of my team on a good day lol.
I’ve been at the company I am at now for almost 10 years. Had a couple of promotions in that time, but basically still doing the same thing I was doing 10 years ago. The reason i have stayed so long is because I enjoy what I do and who I do it with. Generally speaking the culture at the company is great and I can see myself staying here for at least another 10 years.
Having said all that I know how quickly things can change. All it takes is for my boss to leave and get replaced by a muppet and suddenly things aren’t looking so rosey. It’s happened to me before in other companies and looking at some of the comments in this thread it happens elsewhere too.
I’ve been at my company long enough to have seen some high profile characters leave (including in the last couple of weeks). Often that person is replaced by someone with grandiose plans who doesn’t last 2 years in the business. A lot of people I work with say there are big changes afoot in 2024, I’ll believe it if I see it though. So far in the last 10 years I’ve managed to stay out of the firing line.
As I said I am under no illusion that things couldn’t go south for me very quickly. This is why I save as much as I can, paying off mortgages and putting a healthy amount into my pension and other investments. Building up some FU money, as people from the US would say.
I’m getting thoroughly sick of senior “leaders” and their “visions”. They come in, ignore the frontline problems that are causing us day-to-day pain in favour of enacting their “strategic vision”, get 18-months in and then bugger off to a shinier looking job somewhere else. Meanwhile their “vision” gets abandoned before it ever gets implemented and replaced by the next person’s “vision” and we’re still dealing with the same gak down in the trenches.
Just to my English teaching comrades - I'm amazed they have any teachers left in the UK given the pay and conditions and really variable quality of leadership, which tends to skew towards the bad.
Where I'm working now has issues but at least I can say the kids are all pretty nice and the behaviour is usual teenager stuff. When I worked in the UK we had students trying to batter down the doors of staffrooms to beat up a teacher and stuff like that. Absolutely mad. It made me really interested in what had happened in the UK to cause the collapse of the social fabric to that extent, because I'd been teaching in an inner city school in Dublin before that with a lot of heroin and gang issues, and the behaviour in my middle class academy in Essex was genuinely worse than what I'd experienced there.
So impressed with the professionalism of my English colleagues from that time, I learned a lot from them and I think you have to be pretty good just to survive in that system. Made me laugh when they were talking about increasing the maths instruction - I broadly agree with the policy, but where did they think they were going to summon all the extra maths teachers to do it from? Obviously out of touch.
The education system here is unfortunately designed to maintain the status quo. Subjects don't equip students with the skills or knowledge needed to make meaningful changes, and teachers are made so focused on exam performance that we don't have the confidence or time to teach those skills off of our own volition. England is a monarchy pretending to be a democracy, and the education system is deliberately left to rot to maintain that illusion.
JamesY wrote: The education system here is unfortunately designed to maintain the status quo. Subjects don't equip students with the skills or knowledge needed to make meaningful changes, and teachers are made so focused on exam performance that we don't have the confidence or time to teach those skills off of our own volition. England is a monarchy pretending to be a democracy, and the education system is deliberately left to rot to maintain that illusion.
Er... yes? The history of public education is interesting, but the primary remit is teaching socialization and national identity, not innovation. Just getting the basics of literacy and mathematics is a bonus.
Jadenim wrote: I’m getting thoroughly sick of senior “leaders” and their “visions”. They come in, ignore the frontline problems that are causing us day-to-day pain in favour of enacting their “strategic vision”, get 18-months in and then bugger off to a shinier looking job somewhere else. Meanwhile their “vision” gets abandoned before it ever gets implemented and replaced by the next person’s “vision” and we’re still dealing with the same gak down in the trenches.
Legit. My direct manager just quit a month ago and pretty much everyone in my team and even outside my program thought that I was a shoo-in for taking over for her since I was already basically a manager all but in name since I covered so much of the everyday operations between the different parts of my team. Unfortunately, my director basically didn't even approve my attempt to apply for the role, saying that the position was "senior" so I wouldn't be able to qualify even though I was already doing 90% of the job and I had all the program knowledge. We still don't have a manager right now and I'm running things as if I was manager and I'm currently looking for other jobs at the moment but it's a bit tough since I had already booked a trip to Japan in March and currently most places have frozen hiring before the Christmas season, and there's enough work I have to cover currently that it's hard to find time to apply and network for jobs. My director is waxing lyrical about what his ambitions are for the program in our next call for proposal but frankly, with how little he seems to understand some of the frontline staff are struggling in their roles (we've had a crazy amount of turnover in the past year), it feels very hollow and out of touch when it seems we can barely keep things running with our current team as is without adding further things to the program.
JamesY wrote: The education system here is unfortunately designed to maintain the status quo. Subjects don't equip students with the skills or knowledge needed to make meaningful changes, and teachers are made so focused on exam performance that we don't have the confidence or time to teach those skills off of our own volition. England is a monarchy pretending to be a democracy, and the education system is deliberately left to rot to maintain that illusion.
Er... yes? The history of public education is interesting, but the primary remit is teaching socialization and national identity, not innovation. Just getting the basics of literacy and mathematics is a bonus.
It isn't even doing that, any more, and the sector is very different to what it was only 4 years ago. Many of the students leaving UK schools at present will be in no way socialised to function well as adults, or in a manner that will allow them to have a positive future in the work place. Where once we were essentially preparing them for 9-5 work for 40 years, a significant proportion are leaving school with a mindset that will make employment for them impossible.
Jadenim wrote: I’m getting thoroughly sick of senior “leaders” and their “visions”. They come in, ignore the frontline problems that are causing us day-to-day pain in favour of enacting their “strategic vision”, get 18-months in and then bugger off to a shinier looking job somewhere else. Meanwhile their “vision” gets abandoned before it ever gets implemented and replaced by the next person’s “vision” and we’re still dealing with the same gak down in the trenches.
Legit. My direct manager just quit a month ago and pretty much everyone in my team and even outside my program thought that I was a shoo-in for taking over for her since I was already basically a manager all but in name since I covered so much of the everyday operations between the different parts of my team. Unfortunately, my director basically didn't even approve my attempt to apply for the role, saying that the position was "senior" so I wouldn't be able to qualify even though I was already doing 90% of the job and I had all the program knowledge. We still don't have a manager right now and I'm running things as if I was manager and I'm currently looking for other jobs at the moment but it's a bit tough since I had already booked a trip to Japan in March and currently most places have frozen hiring before the Christmas season, and there's enough work I have to cover currently that it's hard to find time to apply and network for jobs. My director is waxing lyrical about what his ambitions are for the program in our next call for proposal but frankly, with how little he seems to understand some of the frontline staff are struggling in their roles (we've had a crazy amount of turnover in the past year), it feels very hollow and out of touch when it seems we can barely keep things running with our current team as is without adding further things to the program.
Heh, your situation isn't too dissimilar from mine, the guy who screwed up my promotion and isn't fixing the issues he's created in my department is also an out of touch director w lofty ambition.
To me it seems that you have successfully run into the 4 personalities that are often visible in state and or close to state companies. Mostly in combinations, mostly harmless or even surprisingly usefull, often also dangerous.
The lazy, incompetent, ambitious ( to the point of pathology) and idealists. And it seems that you are confronted by the incompetent-ambitious which are the most problematic people in any such system.
So basically General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's classification system?
“I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90% of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.”
Also sometimes translated as:
I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
It can be really hard when a "patron" leaves the organization. Typically, they leave because their influence is gone or spent. Therefore, anyone they were a patron of is immediately on the outs too. It is best to cut bait and get out of dodge.
This can be really hard to do, because you have invested so much effort and time. You perceived yourself to be a rising star, and you were.
However, that old regime is gone and those that have replaced it will want nothing to do with the old one. You pretty much get black-balled so investing new time and energy into changing perceptions is very difficult. So difficult in fact that it is best to start fresh someplace else.
I'm probably a bit weird but I never really wanted a promotion in my work. I don't think I'd be a very good manager of colleagues, and I'm not a big fan of emails either.
So it's interesting to watch "from the bottom" how all this politics plays out. I'd say Easy E, you're right, and I've seen this sort of thing play out as chaos0xomega has described too. I think that the mistake we often make is thinking those who're "above" (yuck) us have the same goals as us, or care about the outcomes we care about.
But they often don't. People who push ambitiously are often pretty selfish, and the outcomes they care about are self centred ones rather than ones that are good for the organisation. Like I've seen that situation where an obviously bad candidate gets promoted over a much better choice a bunch of times, and I think it's partially because the leadership structure was a bit unstable, and they didn't want anyone competent showing them up and wanted someone a bit weak who they could control, who would rely on them for patronage, rather than building up their own power base.
If that impacts the rest of the workers, or the students in my case (school), who cares? That's secondary to securing power and making sure there are no threats to it. Problems can always be pinned on someone lower down.
It's hard not to grow contemptuous when you see this over and over, but those few managers you get who actually understand the job and do it properly can have such a massive positive impact, and they are so valuable. It's a shame that it seems like a lot of organisations don't really value that or reward it.
(For myself, I think a lot of the problem is creating hierarchy where there doesn't need to be one - teaching is full of assistant head type roles that are not really needed but act as steps on the ladder and goodies to hand out to favourites. I think we'd mostly be better off without all that - make schools a bit smaller, have a head, deputy head and secretary and everyone else is just a teacher. Give out extra responsibilities for specific tasks as needed but no need for fancy titles and crap.)
Jadenim wrote: I’m getting thoroughly sick of senior “leaders” and their “visions”. They come in, ignore the frontline problems that are causing us day-to-day pain in favour of enacting their “strategic vision”, get 18-months in and then bugger off to a shinier looking job somewhere else. Meanwhile their “vision” gets abandoned before it ever gets implemented and replaced by the next person’s “vision” and we’re still dealing with the same gak down in the trenches.
Legit. My direct manager just quit a month ago and pretty much everyone in my team and even outside my program thought that I was a shoo-in for taking over for her since I was already basically a manager all but in name since I covered so much of the everyday operations between the different parts of my team. Unfortunately, my director basically didn't even approve my attempt to apply for the role, saying that the position was "senior" so I wouldn't be able to qualify even though I was already doing 90% of the job and I had all the program knowledge. We still don't have a manager right now and I'm running things as if I was manager and I'm currently looking for other jobs at the moment but it's a bit tough since I had already booked a trip to Japan in March and currently most places have frozen hiring before the Christmas season, and there's enough work I have to cover currently that it's hard to find time to apply and network for jobs. My director is waxing lyrical about what his ambitions are for the program in our next call for proposal but frankly, with how little he seems to understand some of the frontline staff are struggling in their roles (we've had a crazy amount of turnover in the past year), it feels very hollow and out of touch when it seems we can barely keep things running with our current team as is without adding further things to the program.
Heh, your situation isn't too dissimilar from mine, the guy who screwed up my promotion and isn't fixing the issues he's created in my department is also an out of touch director w lofty ambition.
Yeah, your story was a lot more in-depth than mine (and obviously on a much larger scale since you're in a significantly bigger industry and in much higher management) but your post really resonated with me and I feel for you man, it's really rough when incompetency seems rewarded rather than punished, and the inertia of bad decisions seems almost impossible to overcome. Fingers crossed you get a new position where you don't feel like you've been dragged across the coals, it's rough when you're underappreciated and overworked. Based on what I see from your story, you definitely have a good source of references for when you apply for jobs outside your current organization and you clearly have the skills to back it up, so it's just a matter of networking and hoping the openings are there for you to take it.
chaos0xomega wrote: So basically General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's classification system?
“I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90% of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.”
Also sometimes translated as:
I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
In essence but not on outlook and a bit more indepth. I tend to blend these personalities with intelligence aswell as their mainline motivator.
F.e. a lazy official is honestly a good official as long as he does what he is told to. Sure economically he isn't efficent as it should be, otoh he is also not likely to use the sledgehammer that is the state in a way that is devastating, far too lazy to do so, can however rationalise parts of the state if he is also intelligent enough so that his lazyness is a net gain.
The incompetent are a class in and of themselves, basically the private economy would've rationalised them away. combined with lazy they are annoying, but can be reigned in.
The ambitious come in 2 colours, the incompetent ones often tied to nepotism and the idealists often tied to ideology. The later is devastating for a whole slew of reasons but he can be reigned in through his amibition. The former is basically a lickspittle to what follows.
The idealists that are ambitious. Those often trend torwards competent but being sourounded by a core of the ambitious incompetent ones. This is the archetype of the power-tripp-monster and makes career in more authoritharian and centralised systems. Basically avoid at all costs these in any type of state structure, contrary i regard it as a duty of any sane political system to remove them for the danger they represent. Sadly that lesson is refused to be learnt by a lot of politicians, to their own detriment because it enforces an ideological bureucracy on the elected politicians which is atleast partially responisble for the lack of actual reform you can wittness in certain western states. And if the foundation of the system is authoritharian well, you get in essence a russian type cleptocracy of apparatchicks.
The reality is that a lot of decisions are made to cover up earlier decisions, because the big boss needs to save face. And in most work cultures, taking a step back is seen as a big hit, so we tend to let people stay in roles they aren't suited for (the peter principle).
Unfortunately, it can take quite a while to ride out a bad manager. The best bet is almost always to find another job.
Most companies will not reward you for tenure. Therefore, some pros think if you are not switching roles every 2-3 years you are actually falling behind the pay curve due to raises that are often flat or less than inflation. By switching jobs you are "jumping" up higher than the usual annual raise.
Thats certainly the plan for me, look elsewhere and chase a better paycheck and better opportunity.
I just got out of the 1:1 with my director, it went... well? For the first time in a year hes communicated to me where he kind of sees things going for me and the opportunity that he hopes he can carve out for me in a few months time. I'm not sure its 100% aligned with my goals or will pay me what I might get elsewhere, but its more than what I had before, sadly might be a little too little a little too late to keep me from going. Truth is on a personal level I really do enjoy working with and interacting with him, I just can't put up with the mismanagement I've suffered under him.
More importantly though is he's taking the situation with the head of security pretty seriously and is concerned (as well as surprised) by that turn of events. Hes going to take the issue up with higher echelons of HR apparently to try to figure out how best to handle it, as he doesn't trust local HR to do anything right (and referred to them as "incestuous" which tells me hes had other issues that werent addressed).
Whilst I can’t pretend I make anywhere near that, I remain thankful I am at least on a perfectly comfortable income, which covers a good deal more than my bare necessities.
Plus, I can now make custom mugs (for tea and coffee and that), so once I’ve figured out how best to advertise, I can have a nice extra income. Which will first be put toward paying down debts, then go into a separate savings pot for Very Nice Things, like perhaps another trip to New York!
Whilst I can’t pretend I make anywhere near that, I remain thankful I am at least on a perfectly comfortable income, which covers a good deal more than my bare necessities.
Plus, I can now make custom mugs (for tea and coffee and that), so once I’ve figured out how best to advertise, I can have a nice extra income. Which will first be put toward paying down debts, then go into a separate savings pot for Very Nice Things, like perhaps another trip to New York!
Bear in mind that it took a raise, copious amounts of overtime, and some upgraded bonuses, and having two with special needs gobbles a bit of that up. I can't complain, though, as I find myself loving the work far more than I ever thought I would.
Whilst I can’t pretend I make anywhere near that, I remain thankful I am at least on a perfectly comfortable income, which covers a good deal more than my bare necessities.
Plus, I can now make custom mugs (for tea and coffee and that), so once I’ve figured out how best to advertise, I can have a nice extra income. Which will first be put toward paying down debts, then go into a separate savings pot for Very Nice Things, like perhaps another trip to New York!
Slightly off topic but other than 'acceptable debt' in the UK, e.g. car finance, mortgage and student loan.... I will be officially debt free by July. No more credit cards or overdrafts.
I could pay it all off now, but it is 0%APR and I am earning 4.5% on savings, so just laying out £250 a month to settle the balance right now. I cannot wait, feels like a huge life achievement after stupidly racking up some debts in my youth. Unbelievably managed to sustain a plastic crack habit along side this paying off the debt as well.
Awesome, good work. We had similar around 20-odd years ago, ran up a bit of debt on credit cards to make ends meet when my wife was long-term sick. Shuffled it around on 0% balance transfers and chipped away over some years. Felt great when it was gone!
Crispy78 wrote: Awesome, good work. We had similar around 20-odd years ago, ran up a bit of debt on credit cards to make ends meet when my wife was long-term sick. Shuffled it around on 0% balance transfers and chipped away over some years. Felt great when it was gone!
Aye, one of the good things about the early part of the pandemic was being able to clear off credit cards out of the way.
Doing so is probably part of the reason my side of buying a house has been fairly smooth sailing so far - just a shame, as far as I can tell, about the vendor's solicitors!
It is a great feeling to get your debts paid off. To have all your post-tax income to yourself, less essential unavoidable bills, you suddenly feel incredibly rich!
Though the sensible part of my brain encourages me that, once I’ve paid it off (I could do it in a year if I really committed), to match the pay-off period with a saving period.
It's like unlocking a whole new level of financial freedom, right? The idea of matching the pay-off period with a saving period is super sensible and smart! Planning for the future is like giving yourself a high-five down the road.
IDK if this is technically threadomancy.
But after the results of a company wide survey my work realized a lot of us where getting tired and burntout. They realized a lot of people where calling out before. we had a meeting where we aired grievances and more.
Just had another one and there are alot of action items to help up reduce burnout, more PTO, reduced work days and workweek requirement, unless its an emergency, i can no longer be called to sub before my first session of the day or after my last. Alot of kinda cool stuff.
So, remember, there are good workplaces out there!!!!
- my current job pays more than a teacher my age.... and my job is handling some spreadsheets and painting minis, checking reddit, and watching movies while working. It's sort of a low salary but more than a teacher makes. Insane 45+ days PTO but I dont really need to take off. It's simply boring and I don't feel like I'm doing anything of value day to day. I take off 2-3 days a month for no particular reason.
Doesn't take a supersleuth to work out where you ended up. Armourers have always suffered on Pumas.
) and is only referring to myself.
if you are good at your current job. You are supposed to be good at it as a minimum but that doesn't entitle you to be promoted.
