I was leading a team of thirty five people in the US and India and working weekends and holidays powering through a death march of one terrible release after another. I got a lot of accolades for work; called out at town halls and even a hand written letter from our CTO thanking me for everything I'd done. Things were slowly improving as we collected metrics to improve poor code quality and shoddy releases that were…
I used to lead a global team of 80+ devs at a senior management level. I inherited my team which was an absolute train wreck with a poor track record of poor performance who delivered nothing causing much angst to the business. Over 3 years, rebuilt the entire team, let go of these who brought toxicity/incompetence, set strategy, tightened comms and developed leaders with clear lines of responsibility and accountability. Shipped one product after another. Put the team on the map internally and externally. Accolades from every part of the organization. Made my leaders look like world-beaters. I was known to be an authority on my subject area and the rising star. My reports looked up to me, I inspired my team buy being an empathetic leader and I was hailed as a change-agent. Frankly, I outdid myself and it was one of those times, we sometimes have in our careers where we fire on all cylinders without a single misstep.
Come time for promotion, I had a rude awakening when my boss got promoted thanks to my back-breaking work but I got passed over and to add to the insult my newly promoted boss decided to fill the vacancy by bringing in a transplant from another part of the company to add an new layer. The new guy was well known to be the biggest ass-kisser in the organization so a total smooth operator to his credit despite being clueless in the domain. My challenge was to continue leading my team with a straight face despite taking this gut punch every day when faced to my new reality. It was a depressing time when I was also dealing with a personal loss in my family. I had naively assumed my work did the talking and my personality, relationships and overall competence/qualifications would continue my ascent. Its hard articulating this but the amount of time my own achievements were reinforced by outcomes and my prior leadership made me feel I could do no wrong until this point.
My big mistake was that my ego fed a sense of entitlement that made the change harder to deal with. My reports were now well entrenched and confident as I had always wanted them to be with large teams. I sensed a feeling of disappointment from my own teams over my lack of elevation and the impact it would have on their careers. Over a period of time, I went from being the shining star to someone about whom everyone wondered as to what’s wrong. I felt vulnerable in taking decisions that I once took confidently and my confidence took a beating. I mentally beat myself up as well for not playing my political cards well as well as sometimes questioning my own abilities. Added to the daily ignominy of reporting to someone obviously not qualified, was every decision/outreaches/opportunities/credit that were usually mine in the past due to my domain expertise now being passed over to my new boss who would emphasize the same with a lack of class and competence. I also got a sense that the new guy resented my abilities and would now start having direct lines of communication with my reports sometimes even not giving me visibility. He just wanted to get rid of me since my presence probably constantly reminded him of his lack of involvement in this teams prior success. People who would consult me for critical decisions would tend to leave me out as I was not deemed that important considering I was no longer the main decision maker. There were so many incidents that I unfortunately still recall that happened over a 1 year period that I stayed on after this development.
For me though, that was a lesson in humility and my own vulnerabilities. My swagger is gone and I don’t things for granted as I once did. Thanks to my own qualifications and experience, I had several external opportunities the beckoned that I could execute on and did do so. However, that feeling of being totally ripped off, a sense of anguish at losing something I built, sadness at dealing with a team that you built and loved that turned on you still remains and part of me is still bitter. I still love leading teams and getting the best out of people but the politics is toxic and can seriously damage your physical and mental well-being. I know why some of the best leaders I know remain relegated to lower levels of their organizations and I respect them even more knowing the balancing act they deal with. I don’t get too attached to teams, products, jobs anymore and am prepare to lose it overnight and rebuild. I continue leading large teams but I could still get a job as an individual contributor and be happy with it if it ever came to that.