Hitting your 40s and watching opportunities slip by because you’re not part of the inner circle... that’s a special kind of frustration. It’s never about the work you do anymore, just whether you laugh at the right jokes or pretend to care about your boss’s weekend plans. The slow fade isn’t dramatic, but it is exhausting. I guess loyalty’s measured in coffee chats these days.
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I got a 5 on my last review but then we were reorged and I was asked to move from a team I enjoyed to a team that was awful and had a horrible leadership. I was supposed to be tagged for a leadership position.
Instead I was terminated and they stole 20 years from me when I reported an issue in the data I received for doing my job. No severance, no unemployment no nothing when all I did was my job.
Do NOT be in the inner circle, be a good C student at this place because when the music stops good becomes bad, bad becomes good. What saved me is in 20 years I had enough dirt that they realized that NDA was worth a payout.
But this place should not be a long term stay - even if you ignore everything I write - do not stay, do not expect anything, do not trust these leaders. Keep your resume up to date.
Luckily I found an attorney and it took a year but in the end they would have been better off paying me severance.
oined WF to escape an inner circlej--koff at my last gig—thought it’d be a coast-out spot in my late 50s. Nope. These cliques? They’re scared of change, done learning, just want to control. Tech pushed cloud migration, so I converted apps, scoped hundreds with the “team.” Then it clicked: we were prepping them for India—stinky apps and all. Post-COVID, circle reforms, fifth manager in a decade (a newbie!), and I’m out. Don’t je-k with the circle, you’re toast. Guess I’m not “personable” enough for this game.
The reality is that luck is a major factor. I'm not all that personable. Don't hang out with any coworkers after work or anything. I like to think I'm good at my job. It's been enough so far. If that changes, it is what it is. I'll take my year's worth of severance and go. I'll be in good company, some of the best employees I've met over the years have been downsized. If it happens, it happens.
The word you’re looking for OP is “personable”. While there are, of course, some who go far overboard and turn it into full on brown-nosing, to its core it is a masterful art. Unfortunately many humans are so absolutely jaded they think their limited skills should take them to the head of the pack.
As the old saying goes, don’t hate the player hate the game. If being a yes man or su-k up wasn’t a valid tactic it wouldn’t exist.
Once again, I weighed in to say my retirement package is a Ruger EC9. At the end of the day, they seem to have all the cards and getting angry at the people who are exploited being all that's laughed.It completely misses the mark. They didn't take anything. The only taking is your right to a decent wage by a bunch of kleptocrats. I hope this too shall pass for you and life. Keeps on moving and really I wish that for everybody. But sometimes it is one foot in front of the other.
Its always been that way. Got my first entry level job in 1981 the old fashioned way. Then everything the rest of my career has been about who you know or where you were. I never applied for another job and had many with multiple firms.
Highly likely that’s a coincidence.
He’s most probably looking at your feet repeatedly out of a desire to interact with them with hands or mouth or, well, other things.
I'm the one who couldn't comment earlier because it kept erasing. Let's see if it will let me comment now. Luckily for my teammates and I, our boss doesn't joke. So if we get laid off Tuesday, April 1 we know it's not an April Fools joke. My teammates often sit around and laugh and talk while most of us older teammates are working. I think one of the jokers was looking at my feet coming in earlier this week. Then their eyes switched from my feet to my eyes, then fixated back on my feet. I looked at my phone, and a post popped up on this layoff page how chubby teammates shouldn't stomp walking in, causing the entire floor to shake. I think the administrator of this page took it down before I could respond. So here's my response. Lol.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve aggressively saved for retirement but it isn’t enough.
I’m thinking about cashing out, living like a facking king until the money runs out, and then ki-ling myself.
To your point, in this society, a person with no earning potential is a worthless person indeed.
I bet you were all good with it when you were young and part of the in group, though.
I think it's been like that for a long time. Over 10 years. Now it's just a different group.
You're 100 percent on point. I keep trying to comment, and it keeps erasing and starting me over.