Removed from management
Well, back in March I was moved into management. As of this past Monday I was moved out. It was partially at my request, but the method by which it happened was typical corporate bullshit.
A couple weeks ago I wrote up my self evaluation and pretty much said that I wanted out of management because no one cared what I had to say and that I was being set up to fail.
It really came down to a couple of incidents. My boss, the vice president and head of the internet group, had one of our sites outsourced to a company that was horrible to work with and built an even more horrible site. Well, being the kind of developer that actually cares about good work and is passionate about what I do that didn’t sit well with me. Their coding techniques were dated by about 10 years, didn’t know the first thing about SEO or the simple items that help with SEO — page titles, modern CSS-based menues, CSS-based layouts, and various other small things. I had many talks with my boss about this situation and pleaded to not let this company build another site for us, which they were scheduled to do.
I presented my arguments in a very professional, matter of fact way. I gave examples, explained the technical problems with pretty pictures on the whiteboard, the whole nine yards. I presented solutions, not just problems, but all went unheard. I bit my tongue the whole time, except to a few chosen individuals.
Well, the editors and writers of the print magazine that the site was built from absolutely hated the site. Part of their issues were valid and some were just nitpicking. The end result however was that we looked bad even though we didn’t ultimately build the site; we had allowed it to be launched however.
So on to the next site. I’m sitting in my boss’ office with the publisher of the next magazine who’s site we are going to build, the Chief Marketing Officer of the company, the interim CIO and the editor of the new site. Naturally the faults of the previous site were brought up and the print folks of the new site didn’t want to fall prey to the same things. I sat there as long as I could while the CIO and my boss tried to spin things in a positive light.
Finally the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) looked at me — the Web Tech Manager — and said “I’m not a technical person, can you explain the issues with the previous site?”. It was my opening and I had to speak up. I turned to the whiteboard and drew three things, the framework/CMS, a box representing the code that the outsourcer wrote and another box that represented the design of the site; the look and feel, what is seen in the browser.
I said that the CMS was ok, not great but livable and workable. After all every tool has its quirks right? Then I pointed to the box that represented the design and said this isn’t great, dated even but could be improved by us. I then pointed to the coding area and said this was the problem. The company didn’t know what they were doing and if my developers had written such garbage I would fire them. Uh oh, that is where my problems started. The CIO said that I shouldn’t let emotion get in the way of facts. I quickly responded with the statement that I take quality personally and wouldn’t stand for such low quality work. When she started to rebut that, I stopped her, turned to the publisher and asked if she would publish her magazine — a nice, high quality magazine — on newspaper print. Naturally she looked at me kind of funny and said of course not. I said that was what she would be getting with this company. It would work, but it wouldn’t represent the company, the site or the group in the way we wanted.
Once again my CIO said we had to have facts before we threw away a 6 figure site.
Fast forward a week or so and my boss, the CIO and myself are in my boss’ office after I wrote my eval stating I wanted out. We came to the agreement I would stay, the CIO would quit micromanaging me and would stick to getting another site up and running (another horrible story in the happening). Everything was settled.
So I thought.
The CIO asks if it would be OK if our chief developer, a great app developer and heck of a great guy, would be the dev lead on this other site. No problem I say. Well, she didn’t mean for him to be the lead, but for me to be completely shut out altogether. Started leaving me out of important meetings and having him attend instead. I was furious and when I confronted her about it she said that I said it was OK. What bullshit. What she really wanted was someone who wouldn’t question her, do what she said right or wrong.
A week later or so, this past Sunday to be exact, the whole group gets an email that some restructuring is taking place and that the CIO was now the manager of the IT department and I was on some shit jobs. No mention that I had asked to be removed from my position and no courteous email to me letting me know that this decision had been made and that another email was coming letting everyone else know. I was so mad I immediately took two days off. I come back in to the office and I get written up for my lack of performance, negativity, blah, blah, blah. I let them have it with everything that was wrong. How people who should be fired were being protected and those who had the balls to say something (3 of us) were all being shut out. Naturally they defended their decisions but the HR person present sure took a lot of notes.
In the end it is probably for the best as I was secretly tasked to work on another site that neither my boss nor the CIO was to know about until the president of the company made it known. I can’t give the details of this site just yet, but I was personally requested to work on this site by someone of enough influence to have the ear of the president as well as the CEO. I had a meeting with this person, my wife — who was also personally asked for to sell the advertising on the site –, the CMO and the editor of the site right after my official ‘writing up’.
I was late to their meeting, but my wife filled them in on what was going on and they all told me not to worry I was going to be taken care of. They told me to work up a bigger budget than I asked for, gave me a few more weeks to build the site than I had asked for and said “Do it right, nothing else will do.” I couldn’t believe my ears.
I was also told that my honesty and integrity was what impressed them the most. No BS, right to the point and not afraid to tell the truth. I have never been paid a higher compliment in my career. I was told to trash everything my boss had done towards this site (it had gotten shelved) and start fresh with the plan, timelines, revenue potential, etc. Next week the new site will be presented to the president of the company and if it goes as we all think it will, it will be my salvation AND I will get to build a site that I can be proud of. Normally I’m not too much into building ‘regular’ websites, I’m a software developer more than a web person per se, but this is an opportunity I can’t pass up. To build a very high profile site with a big name backing it and being told to do it right, whatever it takes. I get to pick the software, design it, build it and maintain it.
Oh, and today my boss, the VP, got fired. In some way I feel bad for her. In other ways I’m glad and hope that better leadership will be coming. In the meantime I will be working on a dream project hopefully full time. I can’t wait.
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Congratulations! It’s tough sometimes to stand up for something when your career may be hanging in the balance. It’s not often that a third party will see those qualities and stand up for you as well.