201–210 of 230 posts
Early in my career I worked for a small company that was acquired by an obnoxiously large megacorp (about 40k employees). The business unit we were merged into was run by a retired Army general. His divisions beneath him were run by retired Colonels and so on down the line until they got to former Captains, Lieutenants, and if no other choice former enlisted. Over a year or two what started to happen was when former…
Required reading for every technical leader: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/ > Resignations happen in a moment, and it’s not when you declare, “I’m resigning.” The moment happened a long time ago when you received a random email from a good friend who asked, “I know you’re really happy with your current gig because you’ve been raving about it for a year, but would you like to come visit Our Company?…
I wonder how much the present work-from-home situation has insulated people from this, as people can't just be invited to check out a company when the company is remote.
After reading the article one thing that struck me was the " internal candidates who were rejected after interviewing with the hiring manager were half as likely to exit as those rejected earlier in the process." Working at a fortune 100 top 10 company I've applied for multiple higher level positions after 5 years and multiple high marks on my reviews and not gotten 1 recruiter call. I did get with one recruiter and…
Years ago I applied for a C-level position at a company I worked for, somewhat to my surprise sailed through the interview process, and was officially offered the job.
A few days later the CEO stopped by for a chat and told me they weren't going to offer me the job. He seemed surprised when I told him I'd already been offered it despite that everyone involved in the process had met and agreed to offer it to me.
Cue shenanigans, partly self-inflicted, because I really wanted that job.
Turns out they had someone else in mind they wanted to give it to (I'm not sure at what point they'd realised this) so they added some additional selections stages that were basically engineered to ensure I'd fail so they could give the job to this other person.
With hindsight I should have quit there and then, and sued them for constructive dismissal.
I didn't do that because a relative with whom I was close was terminally ill and I didn't think it was a good time to act in a way that felt rash with everything around that going on. I was also concerned about having to deal with a potentially protracted legal case in the midst of all this, and how I'd keep paying my mortgage with no income.
Still, this was a mistake. I should have done it. I'll explain why below.
I ended up staying for about another year, although I'd obviously made the decision that I was going to leave at the first opportunity. For part of that year I worked for the person they'd given the job to. It was shit. For the rest of it I was in a different team, where I actually worked pretty hard, but that work was targeted (by me) at skilling myself up to enable myself to find a new position. I'm not saying it didn't benefit the company, but any such benefit was very much a secondary objective.
As you can imagine, this was by far and away the most humiliating episode of my career, and I came away from it extremely disillusioned, and with my confidence in tatters. Even all these years later, typing this now and in some limited form reliving the experience, I find myself surprised by how angry I still feel. The one positive is that it's had a profound impact on the way I choose to deal with people, and obviously particularly when hiring. A key lesson is know what you're looking for and be clear about that.
After I left - with nothing else lined up - I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I ended up contracting for about two and a half years, just because the money was decent and I just couldn't tolerate the thought of being somebody's employee. I got over it eventually.
I'm now a CTO at a growing company that's maybe 30% larger than the company where I was originally offered/de-offered a C-level job was at that time, and have been since the beginning of 2020. For political reasons my role in 2019 was an EVP position, but you could squint and say I've been doing this role for getting on three years.
Nonetheless, that episode, and particularly the decision I made not to quit and sue, probably cost me 5 - 7 years in my career. That's time and money I won't get back. And it was, I think, that decision (or perhaps lack of a decision) more than anything else that led to the loss of confidence and disillusionment, because what I was mostly disillusioned with was myself. If I'd acted I think I would have felt quite differently because, even though the situation would still have been deeply unpleasant, showing that agency would have made it easier for me to own the outcome.
All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that if you're not progressing the way you want to with your current company, don't mess around: find a role with a different company where you can progress the way you want to.
After reading the article one thing that struck me was the " internal candidates who were rejected after interviewing with the hiring manager were half as likely to exit as those rejected earlier in the process." Working at a fortune 100 top 10 company I've applied for multiple higher level positions after 5 years and multiple high marks on my reviews and not gotten 1 recruiter call. I did get with one recruiter and…
> one of the positions was actually only posted for someone internally This is extremely common. A company can't allow for nepotism or favoritism, so it requires a public posting for any open position. Qualified external applicants see the posting and apply. The managers hire the internal candidate they wanted to hire anyway. It's all a huge waste of everyone's time. I'd bet that a large percentage of job postings ar…
This just happened with me, applied for a few internal positions I was told I was qualified for, then later found out they had changed their minds. No other opportunity for growth internally otherwise, so my only option is to look outside of the company.
Have a similar story: was working in a very toxic team and wanted to get out of it. They had openings in other teams but for new hires. I've applied anyway on one of those to either get in one or at least talk to somebody (my supervisor and his supervisors didn't want to talk to me at all). We'll I almost got fired. Jumped ship on first opportunity after that and never looked back.
NLRB would be a good place to send a complaint in these situations.
Required reading for every technical leader: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/ > Resignations happen in a moment, and it’s not when you declare, “I’m resigning.” The moment happened a long time ago when you received a random email from a good friend who asked, “I know you’re really happy with your current gig because you’ve been raving about it for a year, but would you like to come visit Our Company?…
Oof, from just reading this I felt my shield start to drop. I wonder how much the present work-from-home situation has insulated people from this, as people can't just be invited to check out a company when the company is remote.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's even more fun in public institutions, e.g. universities, where a higher amount of perfunctory humouring of external candidates is required in order to create a somewhat more convincing appearance of an equitable search.
What's funny is when it backfires. ie, there's an alumni who now works at a top 5 lab in the field and is now looking for an opportunity to move back to his hometown (for whatever reasons). Job description was obviously written with someone within the institution in mind, but then this person shows up.
So, what did they do? Close the search without hiring anyone, then open a new search with the same job description, adding another skill that only the internal applicant has (I think it was fluency in Italian).
The moral of the story, if there is one, is to never underestimate the ability of people to get a desired result by exploiting the system in an unforeseen way (i.e. hacking). :)
After reading the article one thing that struck me was the " internal candidates who were rejected after interviewing with the hiring manager were half as likely to exit as those rejected earlier in the process." Working at a fortune 100 top 10 company I've applied for multiple higher level positions after 5 years and multiple high marks on my reviews and not gotten 1 recruiter call. I did get with one recruiter and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> one of the positions was actually only posted for someone internally This is extremely common. A company can't allow for nepotism or favoritism, so it requires a public posting for any open position. Qualified external applicants see the posting and apply. The managers hire the internal candidate they wanted to hire anyway. It's all a huge waste of everyone's time. I'd bet that a large percentage of job postings ar…
The far more common scenario (At least at the companies I have worked at) is that an external applicant is desired but because US laws require a posting, one is made, even though that posting is there only to comply with the law and the company is basically already in the process of hiring the external candidate.
US law does not generally require a job posting before hiring an employee. There are exceptions, however, including government employers, some government contractors, and employment of foreign nationals (e.g., H1-B visa workers).