I know why I got canned. The people who held sway over my destiny didn’t know me. And they didn’t know me because they didn’t see me. And they didn’t see me because I had been receding into the woodwork, basically for years.
See, there’s no shortage of folks around who are shocked, shocked!, that I’m leaving. But they’re not decision makers. And if they’re management, even upper management, they have not even a tenuous, loose connection to the management chain that looked at my name, and my alleged title, and my salary, and at their budget, and then back at my salary, and then squinted at my title, and then back at their budget, and then back at my salary, and then said blip! and turned all my shit upside down.
It’s all about visibility. Truth is, most people can’t keep track of their own shit, let alone what everyone around them is doing. You know it’s true. And they certainly can’t do it if it’s coming by way of word of mouth, second or third hand, or never.
In my job I have to confess, I cared. I went the extra mile. I left vacation on the table, I worked overtime, I did things that made my knuckles turn white, and I’m not proud of confessing a weakness but I did let myself get so overwhelmed by my job at times that I let it affect my mental health to a greatly negative degree.
That’s caring. But nobody really saw it. Nobody who mattered, anyway. How often do you think about your pituitary gland? Probably not that much. What about your left hand? You probably have had a lot of great times with that hand, even in public, and can think of any number of things that hand does, and can, and will, do.
But your pituitary? You mean the pfftuitary, amirite? What has that done for me lately? Well, just regulate every hormone in your body.
I don’t claim to be the pituitary gland of the place I worked. And in truth I am eminently replaceable, as is everyone at every job that exists (unless they’re in the midst of performing it, as I’ve written before). But I did a hell of a lot of little things here and there. You pick up a lot of baggage and make a lot of relationships in fifteen years and there are going to definitely be some head-scratching moments in this organization when my emails start bouncing back to people as undeliverable. Will the company collapse? Nah.
But what I am saying is that conversely there are people here (notably the dunderhead who fired me) who are 100% utterly replaceable by just about anyone off the street with some management savvy. They run nothing directly. They are technically responsible for nothing. But they’re visible. That’s how they got where they are, and why they’ll stay where they are.
So if you like what you’re doing, be visible. Say things. And say things up the chain. Make sure people see you doing stuff. They don’t have to know what you’re doing but if they see you at the center of things that work and make people happy, they’ll think twice before going, blip!
But remember: that’s only if you like what you’re doing. You don’t want to get stuck in a rut like I did.
I’m still not entirely sure this isn’t the best thing that could have happened to me, ever.
Later!