Jobs That Beat The Caring Out Of You

“The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

Unknown

Before I get into this article, let me say that this appears to be a thread going around today (on April Fool’s Day, no less). I decided to add to the chorus.

But before I do, here are the other articles (all with the same title) that inspired me to write this. I especially list Jen first, since she appears to be the one who started this thread.

• Jen McCown
• Grant Fritchey
• Greg Moore

Feel free to read their stories. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Okay, now I’ll add on with my own story. This involves the company where I worked before I latched on with my current one. For reasons that I think are obvious, I will not name the company (I’ll simply refer to it as “The Company” — and I think capitalizing even that is giving it too much credit), nor will I describe who they are or what they do, other than that they’re a software company. I will leave it at that. Those of you who know me well will likely know the organization to which I refer. Everyone else… well, you’ll just have to play along.

So here’s the scoop. Essentially, I was fired from The Company.

I suppose a little background story is in order.

I’ll start at the beginning. I was hired at The Company as an application developer. I was hired because I have experience with classic ASP — an old technology that isn’t widely used anymore. It seemed like a good place, and I was looking forward to getting started with The Company. Indeed, the people were friendly, and I am still friends with many of them to this day.

Nevertheless, there were warning signs from Day One, and I didn’t pay heed. Only now through hindsight do I recognize those signs.

The first sign: my very first day on the job, I was poking around the application. My very first question: “where is the documentation for this?”

And people looked at me as though I had two heads.

There was absolutely no code documentation anywhere. It simply did not exist. It barely even existed as code comments, and even those were rare. I was expected to understand how the code worked just by looking at it and remembering how it all worked as I went through it — without writing anything down. I’ll say it again for emphasis: I was expected to be able to do this.

That should have been a major red flag there. But there’s more.

There appeared to be a lot of employee turnover at The Company. People seemed to come and go on a regular basis. As I would tell people years later, “this place didn’t just have high turnover, they had a revolving door.” This was another major red flag.

It seemed like a fun place to work. Once a year, they closed the office for a day for a company picnic. It included a golf outing, food and games. Every year around the holidays, they would have a holiday party where they would give out large prizes (including cash bonuses and TVs), and The Company even sprung for a hotel for the night. They would do it again in late winter or early spring, and refer to it as a “blow off steam” party. They regularly had a massage therapist come to the office once in a while to give free massages. I even remember one day where The Company achieved a major success (it was either a successful release or gained a major client — I don’t remember which), and to celebrate, they had girls walking up and down the aisles with trays of hors d’oeuvres. I didn’t even need to eat lunch that day. Indeed, it seemed like a party atmosphere, and they made it out to be a fun workplace.

(I’m guessing that, at this point, those of you who know me know who “The Company” is.)

However, looks can be deceiving. And a “fun party” workplace doesn’t do much for one’s career.

To say that I struggled as a developer is an understatement. I couldn’t grasp a lot of what The Company was doing in their applications. I did my best to keep up, but the lack of documentation was a major stumbling block. I started to doubt my own coding skills — and a lot of that doubt still continues to this day. It’s one of the major reasons why I’ve been moving away from my technical skill sets. I do enjoy writing code, but that experience made me question whether or not I was really cut out to be a developer. At one point in my career, I was hoping to do more as a developer, but my harrowing experience with The Company has since dashed those aspirations.

Let me go back to the part about lack of documentation. I made it clear to management that I had a Master’s degree in technical communication and professional experience as a technical writer. I let them know that I was willing to take on documentation duties, and offered my services as such. They had a company Wiki that was underused, and only a few people had access to it. I asked for, and got, access, and documented what I could, which wasn’t much.

There were clients asking for a system administration guide. I saw what they were sending out. My opinion of the document — the only good place where it could’ve been used was the bathroom. The document was absolutely horrific. It had absolutely no structure whatsoever, and it was impossible to read. It basically looked like a bunch of scratch notes just thrown together into a Word doc that was given to clients — which was pretty much what it was. The excuse I got was, “these people are techies just like us. They don’t need formal or good documentation.”

I offered to rewrite the system admin guide, and I did what I could. I threw out the old guide and rewrote the entire thing. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an infinite improvement over what they had before.

The Company insisted on an addendum to the system admin guide. They insisted on sending out a document — which they insisted on writing in Excel (!!!!!!!!) — out to clients. They sent it out without review, and likewise, it was horribly written.

The Company wasn’t just disinterested in documentation. They were openly hostile to it.

The Company had absolutely no interest in developing their employees. The prevailing attitude was, you don’t need to develop your skills. You’re going to do what we need, you’re going to do it our way, and you’re going to do it well.

Now, I’ve practically made an entire career out of adjusting to my environment. When I realized that I wasn’t going to make the grade there as a developer, I offered my skill sets in other areas, especially in communication. I offered to write full-time. Eventually, they moved me to an area where I was responsible for client software releases. They were showing me that they had no interest in me and my development. They didn’t care about what I wanted. They just wanted something from me — something I could’ve offered, had I been in a decent, nurturing working environment — which this was definitely not.

I was called to HR and told that I was on probation. I had (I think it was) sixty days to shape up. So I worked harder. I worked on improving the quality of my work. I picked up the pace.

I should note that two things happened around this time.

First, I updated and actively (and discreetly) pushed my resume. I had gotten to the point that I was absolutely miserable working there, and wanted to leave as soon as I could. I wanted it to be on my terms, not The Company’s.

Second, I wrote this article. I could see the handwriting on the wall.

Several weeks later, I was called into HR again. I was told I was being let go. They noted the effort I was putting in, but said I was not improving my skill sets they way they wanted.

Not once during my probation period was I told that that was what they wanted me to improve. Not once.

I was cordial during my interview with HR. I asked questions like, “well, how will such-and-such be handled after I leave?” That was the face I gave them. In the back of my head, I was silently saying things to them that I cannot repeat in this article.

There is actually some more details to my story, but I don’t want to discuss them. By now, I think you have the gist.

I told myself then and there that I would never recommend The Company to anyone ever. I didn’t burn bridges with them; they burned them with me. The Company effectively discouraged me from pursuing positions as a developer. I could’ve been a lot more in my career than I am now, and The Company took that away from me.

I have since spoken with other people who experienced The Company, and every one, to a person, has said similar things. One of them went as far as to say, “I hope The Company goes out of business.”

So I suppose the moral of the story is to beware of bad places to work. If you’re not careful, they could adversely affect your career.