I told you I had more to say, including some vicious parting shots. Did you think I was bluffing?
Problem 6: Corporate Schizophrenia.
“We are in hyper-growth mode. We cannot grow fast enough and plan to invest more in this line of business.” Weeks later, mass layoffs. This was the most prevalent scenario I encountered. On half a dozen occasions I was in rounds 4 or 5 of interviews with a company only to be informed that hiring for the position was put on pause despite mere days ago being told that the company was desperate to fill the position. Weeks later you see the headline in the news about 30, 40% of the company getting canned. How does this happen? Is this a dead-beat dad telling lies to his-family that things are going great while the repo man tows the family minivan away? The c-level lying to their employees that all is fine and dandy while secretly crying over the latest company financials? Or is the company so pathetic that the C-level was in fact blindsided by their own failure? Finally, someone bothered to review the numbers and pulled the emergency brake. What the hell is wrong with these morons?
Problem 7 – The Prudes:
They like you. The conversations are great and leave both sides feeling positive about each other. Everything is “looking promising” and “the feedback continues to be great”. But nothing ever goes anywhere. No results. No output. No offer letter. No satisfaction. This company just isn’t ready to put out yet. They love the flirting. They are flattered by your interest. It makes them feel warm and fuzzy and appreciated. But the clothes are staying on. I learned (and am embarrassed to admit it) the hard way back in 2021. I had 14 interviews with a company and was flown in to meet with the leadership team. 14! Let that sink in. I knew I was in trouble when I asked the hiring manager at the very end how the other candidates were looking. She’s not a good liar: Looked up and to the right and changed her inflection when talking about the clearly fictitious competition. It all ended with the recruiter calling to tell me that not only were they not going to hire me but that they would be re-evaluating the position in general. This grotesque corporate blue-ball taught me to always press the issue and cut things off after 5-6 interviews. What I still don’t understand is this: I understand someone in their personal life looking for validation and attention and pleasant dialogue, but why the hell would you waste your employees’ time shooting the shit with a stranger that will never be their colleague?
Problem 8 - My former employer
A 10x decline in share price in 2 years. That takes talent. I saw that it rebounded a smidge of late but is still hot trash. Had we all gone on hiatus those two years rather than follow the CEO’s intrepid leadership the stock price wouldn’t have fallen as much. We almost got de-listed. Twice! In a largely bull market.
Here’s another leadership gem: The division shut down and everyone at the director level and below got canned. Yet the division chief and VP-level of the division lingers on to this day. A head coach, an offensive coordinator, a defensive coordinator with no players to coach and no games to play. Why the fuck are they still on the payroll. I like all but one of them, so I am truly happy for this obscene arrangement but it’s the most absurd thing I have ever seen in my life.
Also, nobody told the clients about the division getting shut down. I had folks leaving me clueless voicemails asking for this or that for weeks after I got canned. One client called me wishing me a happy new year and said she was looking forward to working with me this year; 6 weeks after I got canned.
“Is she mocking me?” I thought to myself. “Did she secretly hate me the whole time?”
Muzzled by the terms of my severance agreement, I couldn’t tell her the news. Other “strategic accounts” were humiliated by having random people forwarding them the news from yahoo finance and other similar publications. When I inquired with my old coaching staff about this the response was: “I thought the other guy was gonna notify them”.
Last but not least, the head coach. Bro, not only have you proven yourself to be irrefutably incompetent, but even worse, you have no honor. You are a fucking disgrace. A disgrace! I actually had to google how to unfriend someone on LinkedIn. I was getting emails from linkedin almost daily alerting me to the fact that this bozo had “liked and commented” on some post by the overall company CEO. Sure enough, within 5 minutes of some company post, this sycophant was reposting and adding his own puffery to the mix. I couldn’t take it anymore. Shut the FUCK Up. You failed spectacularly on all 3 initiatives you pursued. Now you have nothing to do all day but cling desperately to a salary and role that you clearly never deserved. A half-million-dollar fluffer. Let me give you some real talk, chief. Whether you’re getting paid dos mil pesos or $500k – the activity is still the same
The last and biggest problem – Most people on the inside are worthless
In one of this publication’s earliest posts https://www.mrjamoke.com/post/relentless-pressure I regaled you with how grotesquely worthless most employees are. The only thing worse that working with these hapless half-wits…………… being on the outside and begging them to let you in. You get on the phone with some moron that knows half as much as you about the industry and has no common sense; yet YOU are the one asking HIM for approval.
Actually. Come to think of it. It all makes sense. The farcical, inefficient, contemptuous process of landing a job can be explained by exactly that. It’s just a power trip for mediocre people. They command no respect at work, at home, or in society, and they deserve none. The one and only area in which they have any authority is in hiring. So no wonder they make it hard. Even in the rare occasion where they truly want to hire someone and want to put their best foot forward in the recruiting process, they STILL fuck it up cause they are incompetent!
My nightmare mercifully ended in June but good lord was the first half of this year awful. Thank you to many of the jamoke readers for their support and leads. I promise you all, next time I get laid off I am not going back to a fucking desk job. It will be the universe’s way of telling me it’s time to leave the world of powerpoints and pencil pushing and ZERO value add to society. Perhaps I’ll write more, perhaps I’ll walk dogs, maybe I will start my own property management company and quickly win mass marketshare by virtue of simply not being a total moron and asshole. Maybe I’ll finally partner with one of my readers to open up a bar where we treat our patrons poorly but they don’t care cause we only pour doubles.
Either way I will have more zest for life and respect myself. A stark contrast to my old head coach – going through half a dozen Chapsticks a day.
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