“Whose ass didn’t I kiss?”

He told me. He told me and it struck me so hard I couldn’t even speak. “There’s not gonna be any budget to keep you around next quarter”.
Just like that. I am not human, I am a number, somewhere on the budget.

Several things struck me:
First of all, I see a pattern! A pattern where the ones that are not being let go were the ones who were working the least and adding the least amount of value. I’m not kidding! I looked at each individual colleague, and the ones that were always doing absolutely nothing are all staying on board.

Having watched them add zero value throughout the years made me realize that the energy someone spends in a given organization to make themselves look good in meetings and in front of the budget decision-makers and strategic higher ups, commensurates with how little work they perform and how little value they add! They are just actors ensuring that the strategic people will have their back when budget decisions are made. I don’t know how a given person can have so little integrity, but that’s not the point. The fact is that the opposite personalities, the ones, like me, that were being as silent about how much value they were adding as they were working hard, the ones that believed in their heart that true work can only be recognized and rewarded, are the ones that are being let go.

There I was for months, years: someone who was silent, who didn’t care about status, who didn’t care about attention, someone who didn’t care about kissing ass. I was just someone who prided herself in managing projects, web launches and timelines successfully without feeling the need for validation and without ever bragging. I was someone who didn’t believe in telling the “Director” what she wanted to hear like “your son is cute”, or “don’t listen to this article about how parents who put their kids in front of the TV are bad parents because it is wrong”. It’s funny watching people going as low as this just to keep their jobs or get promoted.
How is that possible? How blind can the higher ups that decide about budget be? How blind can these “VPs” and “GMs” be not to have the ability to decipher who is truly working hard from someone who is adding zero value and kissing the strategic asses?
This is one of these companies where a “Director” is a “Manager”, a “Manager” is an “Associate”, a “VP” is a “Director”, and a “GM” is a “VP”. Nothing cracks me up more than someone who calls themselves “GM of Sales”, or “GM of ecommerce”. What a dush! They don’t get paid at the level corresponding to the title, but they get to tell their friends they are a Director or a VP and that’s worth more than money to them. But that’s not the point either. I digress again.

How blind can these “VPs” and “GMs” be?
Let’s take the example of the short-term impulsive immature shallow micromanager “Director” who interviewed me (calling her a “Director” makes me smile). Well, this is someone who,when she interviewed me, told me “this is for a long term need, the only reason why I don’t guarantee it is because by law, I can’t”. This is someone who doesn’t know how to hire people and build a team responsibly. She is also someone who doesn’t know how to project anything in the long-term. We call them micromanagers. They are the kind of people who hire contractors on a 3-month term promising them that it should get converted to long term. They just don’t have the skills to build a business case to get budget to hire permanent resources (but yet they get promoted to “Director”, and then to “VP” six months later).
So here I am today, in the midst of all these attention craving whores and short-term oriented micromanaging egomaniacs, “There’s not gonna be any budget to keep me around next quarter”, and I’m asking myself, “whose ass didn’t I kiss?”, and ask myself this question over and over again until I realize “The ass that I didn’t kiss is the one of the “Director” who is also keeping on board another cheerleader who didn’t do anything whatsoever for the year that she’s been here, she didn’t do anything besides allocating all her energy in kissing strategic asses. So “there’s gonna be no budget next quarter, why?” “because we are discontinuing this web product”, “oh yeah, we’re closing this entire section of our web site!”. Well “how can we not?” do I think to myself, there is not one competent person in the budget decision markers. How can our web products be successful.

So here I am today, “There’s not gonna be any budget to keep me around next quarter”, but one thing is for sure: I have seen in this company more whores and more incompetency at a high level and ass kissing at a lower level than anywhere else ever before. Another thing is for sure: I didn’t compromise my standards. I wasn’t dishonest and I wasn’t an actor. And someone is going to get some very bad karma. But I digress…