A couple of things happened yesterday that have made it pretty clear that I'm going to have to find a new job in the next couple of years. I know that sounds like a long time, but I still have a couple of skills I'd like to learn, and I need to do some research about what I'm doing next, and I guess I'm kind of hoping that things will change.
The first thing that happened is that I had coffee with a former colleague yesterday. She left as a fairly senior person who'd been with the company for a really long time. Up until yesterday, she and I had been pretty guarded with each other about the company. She was guarded because I still work here, and I was guarded because, well, I still work here.
We were much less guarded yesterday, perhaps because of residual jet lag or overcaffeination. And as we were chatting, I noted a couple of things. The first is that my company can't seem to hold onto senior people who come in from the outside. A lot of people recognize that something needs to change in the way that we do business (our stock has lost 80% of its value over the past few years), but nobody seems to want to actually change anything (I read a comment on Facebook that said, "The only people who truly embrace change are babies with dirty diapers.")
The second is that all of the people I know who have left the company have done so angrily, including the woman that I met with yesterday. When I meet former colleagues for coffee or lunch, there isn't a single one who is sorry to have left or harbors any interest in coming back or would recommend that friend apply for a job here, and that's the first time that I've experienced this -- it wasn't even this bad when I left the law. At first I thought it was because of how frequently you can get beaten on for silly things, but then something else happened that made me realize what it is.
I'm not going to get into the specifics because, after all, this is a public blog. I don't think any strangers are stumbling over here and bookmarking the page or anything, but it's also not like I've got this thing password-protected. I've witnessed some minor intellectual dishonesty where people have massaged things to say and teach what they want those things to say and teach. Some would argue that what I've just described isn't even intellectual dishonesty -- it's all a matter of how you interpret facts and evidence. But I just found out that someone made a decision that does constitute serious intellectual dishonestly, at least in my world view, and I'm disgusted.
I'm a good liar. And what I mean is that I can tell a lie that sounds like the truth -- with very protective parents like mine, it's a survival skill I developed in my teens. But I don't like to do it because at a practical level, it overcomplicates life. Once you tell a lie, you have to keep track of it and everything else you say to make sure it's all consistent with each other so you don't get caught (that's why the best lies are simple and have a grain of truth). And I have way too many friends to catch up with and books to read and tv to watch and food to eat.
Mainly I don't lie, though, because it's wrong. I feel yucky on the inside when I do it, and I can't sleep at night. And I thought that this was normal operating procedure for most of the people I come into contact with -- my family, my friends, my coworkers, my clients.
What I've discovered is that it isn't and that the maxim that people who lie about little things will lie about big things is true. I've also discovered that the number of people who lie about little things is way more than I originally thought. They're everywhere at all levels of every company, including the one I work for. Maybe I'm really naive, but I thought my company was different. I think a lot of my coworkers think that. And I figured out yesterday that the reason that people who have left the company are so angry is because they thought the company was different but found out to what degree that isn't true, and the deception and accompanying disillusionment are breathtaking.
A friend of mine and I were talking about personal boundaries -- what are the lines that you won't cross? I've never had a job where I learned more -- I've learned new skills, honed old ones, and gained a lot of knowledge. I've also never had a job where my personal boundaries have been pressed on more, and that bothers me a lot.
