My hierarchical mind

My hierarchical mind

by SouthernFriedInfidel | Published on March 10th, 2008, 2:30 pm | Life

My supervisor that I've been working with over the past year and a half up and quit as of a couple of weeks ago. During his notice period, my team learned that we were being shuffled off to a new department, and split up to work under three different managers.

I find that the transition is very difficult for me, because not only am I reporting to a total stranger, but she has not had time to talk to me in the past two weeks. Not a single word, nor any e-mails.

I find myself worrying that I'm being "frozen out" of the company that I have worked for almost exclusively over the past 25 years. And I find that my self-esteem is severely threatened while I sit at my desk and work on wrapping up the projects that I still have left to complete from my old life.

Objectively, I find my emotional turmoil -- not QUITE at a crisis level so far -- interesting. No one on the management team has done anything to express any opinion of my abilities to carry on with my job (whatever it will turn out to be), but I get a sick feeling when I get to the office in the morning (worse than the usual feeling of not wanting to work), and I feel several magnitudes better when I can walk out of the office and put my worries behind me. I never would have guessed that I put such stock in the approval of those higher up on the org chart. Weird...

Sorry to hear about all of the stress. Situations like you described are a melting pot for stress. My condolences go out to you and I hope/pray that things will indeed improve soon.

You're worrying about things that may or may not happen. Do they have any reason to be less than satisfactory with your performance? Worrying about stuff like that will make your hair fall out. Oops, too late, sorry. :wink:

I'm to the point, I just try to stay away from work, unless of course I have to go.... and even at that, when I get back to the states after vacation, I'll be continuing to pursue employment in the area.

I can tell you this. People's ideals of work ethics are so far off my scale of normal its freaking frightening. No one really cares about their employees around here, they just want to keep their jobs and keep from being fired.

It sure does help to have friends who care. I'll take every caring thought I can get at this stage.

Thanks, BHL and RS.

For what its worth I know she is VERY VERY busy. I barely got 15 minutes with her for a meeting this week, and had to schedule THAT last week.

Oh, and as you probably know there is a ton more going on in my world that I cant post about here for fear of someone recognizing it. But believe me, you aren't the only one in the rocking boat.

One day I'll be able to post my the exploits of my current job but I know my boss is probably reading this right now...
That's okay....

My last boss was worse. In the 9 months I reported to him he found time to have only four personal meetings. Once after flying for four hours and spending a week in Houston to have an important planning meeting, I eventually booked an hour's meeting with him. After 15 minutes he left to go to the bathroom and didn't come back. Shortly after I left the company.

But if it's any consolation, if you can leave the company with a package, do so. Every time I have lost a job through takeover or reorganisation I have taken the package and gone on to a better paying and more rewarding job. Tough at the time, but ultimately very good. After 25 years you should be moving on, unless the job is such a peach you love every second working there.

A Person wrote:But if it's any consolation, if you can leave the company with a package, do so. Every time I have lost a job through takeover or reorganisation I have taken the package and gone on to a better paying and more rewarding job. Tough at the time, but ultimately very good. After 25 years you should be moving on, unless the job is such a peach you love every second working there.

My problem is that my skills are antiquated. It has been years since any company within driving distance wanted a guy with 20+ years of experience with COBOL, DB2 and CICS. I have been working to update my skills for the past decade, but can't get anywhere with it. I took training in Java, but never got a chance to learn the ins and outs of web technology the way I used to learn mainframe stuff. The past 2 years of struggling to stay afloat in a web environment have been nothing short of a nightmare to me. I feel certain that if I ever tried to get another web-based job somewhere else, I would be an instant failure.

And here I was, thinking I was going to be able to afford an early retirement in only 5 more years... :evil:

I think SFI, this is where, if we were overly religious... we'd say something like...

"Don't worry.... God has plans for you... he will guide you..."

But based on the current condition of our beliefs....

"Hang in there, tiger!"

SFI. Without wishing to be preachy or condescending, but you seem to see your skills as just a collection of arcane knowledge. IT & programming knowledge depreciates rapidly. Surely you have skills and abilities other than mere knowledge? Skills that would be transferable and upgradeable. Think about the things you have done in ways that emphasise your genuine skills - problem solving, design, project management, communication and negotiation. Those are things businesses are always looking for. If you manager is that busy she needs people she can delegate to. People who have the confidence and experience to take a project and run with it. Who know how to analyse the problem, break it down and give it to the young whippersnappers who know that Java sh!t, but don't know how to tackle a problem.

SouthernFriedInfidel wrote:
A Person wrote:But if it's any consolation, if you can leave the company with a package, do so. Every time I have lost a job through takeover or reorganisation I have taken the package and gone on to a better paying and more rewarding job. Tough at the time, but ultimately very good. After 25 years you should be moving on, unless the job is such a peach you love every second working there.

My problem is that my skills are antiquated. It has been years since any company within driving distance wanted a guy with 20+ years of experience with COBOL, DB2 and CICS. I have been working to update my skills for the past decade, but can't get anywhere with it. I took training in Java, but never got a chance to learn the ins and outs of web technology the way I used to learn mainframe stuff. The past 2 years of struggling to stay afloat in a web environment have been nothing short of a nightmare to me. I feel certain that if I ever tried to get another web-based job somewhere else, I would be an instant failure.

And here I was, thinking I was going to be able to afford an early retirement in only 5 more years...

This might sound kinda weird but if you could somehow get some SAP experience you could take your COBOL skills and apply it to that because the SAP support language is extremely similar to COBOL. We joke around at work at how similar they are.

Nonetheless, I understand your anquish. I think most IT people stress out wondering if they have enough IT skills to move on if they need to do so. On the other hand you may be stressing over nothing. Hopefully so.

A Person wrote:SFI. Without wishing to be preachy or condescending, but you seem to see your skills as just a collection of arcane knowledge. IT & programming knowledge depreciates rapidly. Surely you have skills and abilities other than mere knowledge? Skills that would be transferable and upgradeable. Think about the things you have done in ways that emphasise your genuine skills - problem solving, design, project management, communication and negotiation. Those are things businesses are always looking for. If you manager is that busy she needs people she can delegate to. People who have the confidence and experience to take a project and run with it. Who know how to analyse the problem, break it down and give it to the young whippersnappers who know that Java sh!t, but don't know how to tackle a problem.

Yeah... I've been wanting to move into a more management-oriented track for years now. But I have failed to kiss the correct booties around here, which seems to be the primary qualification for becoming a "management type."

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming couple of weeks...

SouthernFriedInfidel wrote:Yeah... I've been wanting to move into a more management-oriented track for years now. But I have failed to kiss the correct booties around here, which seems to be the primary qualification for becoming a "management type."

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming couple of weeks...

I'm going to try REAL hard not to take offense to that.

Sorry, mon. I often forget that you're in the "enemy camp." How thing are in your sector of the place, I don't know, but to get ahead in MY area, what you are capable of isn't nearly as important as where your nose is planted.

From reading these posts I could almost swear you guys work at the same place I used to work at in downtown. The beuracracy was over bearing.

BecauseHeLives wrote:From reading these posts I could almost swear you guys work at the same place I used to work at in downtown. The beuracracy was over bearing.

From your description I can tell you that we don't, however I think its very much the same everywhere. Especially the larger the company.

BecauseHeLives wrote:From reading these posts I could almost swear you guys work at the same place I used to work at in downtown. The beuracracy was over bearing.

Sounds like what I've heard about Pilot. I applied there once, but they never bothered to interview me. It's sort of strange: I've lived in Greensboro all my life, but never had an IT job there -- other than a couple of off-shift operator jobs, which hardly count.

I spent a couple years as a contractor in one of the divisions of a state department in Raleigh. Quite an environment with state employees, contractors, and vendors...oh, and politics! And it was clear which directors didn't like contractors or vendors.

SouthernFriedInfidel wrote:
BecauseHeLives wrote:From reading these posts I could almost swear you guys work at the same place I used to work at in downtown. The beuracracy was over bearing.

Sounds like what I've heard about Pilot. I applied there once, but they never bothered to interview me. It's sort of strange: I've lived in Greensboro all my life, but never had an IT job there -- other than a couple of off-shift operator jobs, which hardly count.

LOL. Bingo! I worked at JP for a short while when I first came to Greensboro. The people I worked with were just fine I suppose but the red tape was just crazy. There was a big gulf (in age also) between the mainframe programmers and the windows developers too.