u/IAmTheGroove

I was exhausted by the job 9 months in, but bills. I’m glad to have some runway to rest in between my next job but I still have some lingering hurt, as evidenced by this rant. I’m not rich by any means, but I’ve got a year‘s savings and I’m freelancing to make it hopefully stretch further than that.

I understand the job market sucks. In the span of 6 months: 2 of my coworkers in their 40s/50s respectively died of heart attacks. We only found out one of them died bc people noticed he wasn’t completing his deliverables. He had been dead a week. Another coworker, long tenured director with wife and kids, couldn’t take the stress anymore and unalived him self. Another died in a vehicle crash on the way to an early shift. There are worse things than the job market…like dying. To save my coworkers the stress of wondering whether I not I died given all this, that‘s the ONLY reason I wrote a resignation email at all.

Things I Hated

• The pace. I was the sole analyst for multiple departments. The company was ruthless with layoffs which left many on edge (myself included) and working insane hours just to tread water. I’ve never been on so many psych meds in my life just to dull unaliving ideations.
• No manager support: I’m not one to expect things to expect others to care more about my career than I do. I clearly communicated my goals and blockers to my manager in 1:1 meetings that I had to request (a meager monthly cadence to minimize cancellations). One meeting left me feeling discouraged. As a data analyst, I see a lot of my industry peers having job insecurity with offshoring and AI. So I said almost verbatim “I’d like to upskill. whether that looks like becoming a data engineer like “colleague” or even building domain knowledge with another department. I understand we‘re slammed so of course my job takes priority. How do we get there?” And he replied “You‘re fine exactly where you are. I think your job suits you”. As someone who wants to not stagnate as an excel monkey this sucked.
• Continuing education: At various points, I requested to go to different conferences that were directly relevant to the tools I used. The precedent was there as my teammates who were hired a few months before me had been approved to go to several out of state conferences. Every request denied. I had to go to my car to cry when coworkers from another office came to our city‘s office for a conference and would innocuously ask why I wasn’t at the conference. I asked for support in taking continuing education classes, paying certification exams, an annual DataCamp subscription…all denied.
• Failed to build allies/sponsors/advocates in other departments: I asked for skip level meetings…not to bash my boss, but to try to read between the lines to see if there was a future for me at the company. He said “I’m a great value add to the core product“. I developed close relationships with 2 senior leaders in 2 different departments. Both got let go in various rounds of layoffs. The other 2 senior leaders enthusiastically led me on and literally ghosted when I tried to get certain things in writing.
• the aftermath of quitting: To them, it might seem out of the blue to receive a 4am resignation email and automated Workday resignation message. But the email has been drafted since December. If you’re not doing it now, start sleuthing your company’s SharePoint, Slack Channel, etc. Check the outlook and Google calendars of the C-Suite executive assistants. I learned that they were having regular meetings with an AI consultant. I also found a slide deck from a meeting with shareholders communicating the data strategy and roadmap. tl;dr it solidified that the plan was to extract as much out of me and others for as possible until no longer needed. For all of the depression and anxiety attacks this job has given me I said ENOUGH and started saving 15 months ago (at that time I didn’t know if I was next for layoffs). I started researching my next move. I started freelancing side hustles to tide me over. I said FUCK yall. I’m out. My boss texted me asking me if I had an hour to do handover. If he had listened to any of my concerns about documentation, succession planning, resources needed to do my job, he wouldn’t need me. he sent me a meeting invite with VPs, Sr. Directors, and data engineers. Fuck them. For all the conferences they’ve attended and AI bullshit they’ve spouted, i refuse to be exploited. especially unpaid. Especially when I could be making money from my side hustle. I have the leverage. they’re only getting face time with me if they make it worth my while. I’m healing ❤️‍🩹