A Jeremiad about the Workplace

I haven't felt much like writing lately. I have been so tremendously miserable at work, and so much of my time is spent on work, that it feels impossible to write anything that anyone would enjoy reading, or that I'd actually enjoy looking back on in two years.

To give a summary:

We have ~14 new clients to 'integrate' and 200+ clients for whom we need to maintain service. In addition, our manpower is low.

One person is leaving the team and another person's role is changing. We are having trouble hiring new people, because the applicants' technical abilities or motivation don't seem high, except in one case, or they don't appear to know what they're really applying for. I can't in all fairness hire people who will suffer and wilt away in the hellhole of my team's work.

We did find one applicant we were enthusiastic about, but I was told immediately after the interview that we were only supposed to hire one new person. I'd thought it had been agreed that we needed two people and I'd been so happy that we could say yes to more than one applicant. I wrote a detailed letter explaining the team's workload to the CEO and manager, and they promptly and kindly agreed to let us hire a second person.

Then we sent the hiring offer to the first applicant. As we were finalizing the salary details, I was told that a colleague (not the CEO or manager) had said that we should only hire this applicant on a freelance basis. Much of our team's work would soon be automated anyway. [Note: I have not been told which task would be automated, nor how the data quality would be kept at a high standard, nor how much time this would save. The team that might do the automation doesn't have available resources. ... And I was told by a fellow team leader just a week or two earlier that I was being paranoid for saying that my team would soon be downsized.] (Fortunately that person was persuaded to change their mind and the person will be hired for a better contract.)

I was so furious at this that, to be honest, I have put off contacting that person about an unrelated topic. I don't want to be nice to them until I've reached the stage of forgiveness where it would be genuine-nice instead of fake-nice.

In the meantime, my team is overworked. For the first time I've started asking the team to self-assess on a scale of 0 to 10 how anxious they are, and there are lots of 5s and 7s.

Today they were touchingly helping each other out with some of their tasks with the last vestiges of their own strength.

In addition to this, I've been appalled by the Mass Exodus in other parts of the company. My direct supervisor is leaving the company, one funny data scientist colleague has left the company this week (abruptly for me, but I think it was expected to those in her team), and a graphic designer who is one of the longest-serving colleagues is also departing.

Then I heard at second hand that the CEO thinks that our team works hard, but has sloppy data quality standards.

In addition to this, I was told that our team needs to be restructured, and that the planning needs to be done by January 1st. This is the peak season and colleagues will be on holiday in December.

***

The news that the team would be restructured came out abruptly on Thursday the 15th.

In the management level, the idea of taking the four teams that specialize in Front End, Quality Assurance, etc. and remixing them into multi-specialized/cross-functional teams had been floating around for months, it seems. It was suggested by another team leader who does work directly with my team, but not that much. Then a colleague in one of the current mono-specialized teams — who has also been hugely overworked — seized on the idea in a conversation with the CEO in the first week of October, and thought it would be the solution to all their team's Black Friday season problems. Another colleague who also leads a group agreed that it might be a good idea.

Two weeks ago, I talked with the colleague who first suggested the idea. I mentioned that people were leaving my team, and the colleague was worried that it would affect their plan to work my team into the new groups. I said drily 'Oh, great. That'll really help with the knowledge-sharing,' and was cautiously pessimistic and sarcastically upbeat, but figured that due to the great reworking of our company, our being split up was inevitable. The person felt it was an idea that might be put forward soon by management and talked over with the team.

But I almost burst into tears afterward. It was so odd that these plans were being discussed without consulting me or my teammates. Did people think I was too incompetent? too stupid? to have valid ideas to offer? Then I did write to the person saying that although I knew that was not his intention by any means, I felt really disrespected at not having been consulted. And I asked if it was fine to let my team know about it at once, so that the team would not feel as I was feeling. The person offered to speak to management to get permission for me to discuss it, which I thought was a very open and principled way of going about it.

For a day I heard nothing. Then I received an email on Friday evening from the CEO saying, à propos of nothing, that I should appoint people from my team to join new teams that would handle all incoming clients. And at that point I knew this would all go to hell.

I sent an email back — @ing everyone in the email chain to let them all know that a massive communication fail was happening because, yes, I was a little mad — saying that I couldn't give a good opinion unless I had a better idea what the teams would be composed of and what their aim would be.

The team leader who loved the idea explained that events had moved too quickly to consult me in time, and they apologized. They also laid out the composition of the teams, to make it a bit clearer what exactly would be happening: the idea was that there would be one person from my team in each new team, 4 people in total, 1 person from QA, 2 people from their team, etc.

This plan clearly showed to me that practical problems hadn't been thought of. We have 14 clients in the team's pipeline now, as I mentioned earlier. A few people in the team have explained that they can only focus on one client at a time and still do a painstaking, accurate job. Which means that if we cut down the number who work with new clients to 4 people, they could only address an average of 2 clients each. What about the 6 clients for whom we wouldn't have time? What if someone goes on holiday or can't work on a client for other reasons?

On Monday, the CEO talked with the team project manager and me to show the new structure he wanted. I had no idea what to say. I didn't know if any opposition would be felt to be disrespectful, and it didn't feel as if our opinion was needed because the plan was happening anyway.

But then I let the other team leaders have it (which was perhaps unfair, because I should have really vented on the CEO if I was that annoyed). I tried to explain how impractical it looked from my team's perspective, how much stress this was putting on me during Black Friday season, and that my team was already in a precarious position.

It had mixed results. The person who originated the idea felt that my worries about the practicability were justified, expressed sympathy, and hoped for the best without being very optimistic. A new Agile coach colleague who was in the call seemed to be wondering what kind of menagerie he'd newly been hired into. And the team leader who loved the restructuring thought that I was completely overblowing things and that I needed to be humored. They'd talked to their team right away, and didn't appear to believe me when I said that the CEO had told the team project manager and me that he wanted himself and the manager to be part of the communication to our teammates.

If one or two technical details need to be ironed out, it wouldn't be so bad if the team leaders who like this plan were really taking the problems seriously and helping. But their 'it'll all work out' attitude baffles me — leaving all of the labour of considering the details to us, who didn't suggest the reconstruction in the first place. It is firstly really unfair and secondly it will likely lead to catastrophe.

Of course I really like the other team leaders. I just don't know why this is happening. They're nice people who surely don't like to rule by diktat. And if they were thinking coolly, they would not want to disrupt the functioning of my team and put timelines in danger by discarding badly-needed resources in a haphazard new hierarchy.

It is so senseless for my team. The team project manager for my team has redistributed the workload to more painlessly and quickly meet the practical and emotional needs of teammates. This workflow is far better than what we had before, and I see how much effort the project manager puts into it maintaining it every day. If we need to take into account 4 new teams, then we will need to destroy this workflow and rebuild it.

Now the team project manager and I are now trying to design a new workflow before January. It is the peak season. The team project manager is also trying to retrain for other work. I am overworked from the regular workload already and also emotionally stressed. It is so unfair and so illogical it makes me want to thump my head against the wall.

Lastly, given our company's professed new adherence to Agile ideals, I do not understand why so many decisions are being taken without input (or 'buy-in') from most of the people directly affected. Even I find this far too undemocratic for my tastes. And I'm not sure why the team leader who is enthusiastic about the restructuring doesn't recognize that it's a bit cruel to make huge decisions on behalf of eleven other people whom they barely work with.

*

The next problem, after talking with management (I owe a life debt to our manager for talking me off the ledge, but still feel that I need to figure out better how to work with the CEO) and admittedly wrangling a bit with the team leaders, was to figure out how to let my team know what was going on. This stressed me out so much that, I woke up in the middle of the night before this Thursday and couldn't get back to sleep for a while.

In the end the team project manager and I anxiously went for this idea: On Thursday we asked the team to participate in an exercise to plot out all of the workflows we currently have. Then we'd inform them about the changes and work out the new team structure in the next meeting.

In practice, it did not work as we'd hoped. A few of the teammates had a hard time getting used to the tool we were using to chart the workflow, the meeting overran the time limit, a few teammates were cranky and one was just exhausted because they had felt ill that day anyway, and they were all in a hurry to get back to their work. At the end of it I tried to explain what was going on and what the purpose of the exercise really was. Silence. I felt really inept.

I still have no idea what the team thinks.

In a leadership training earlier this year, the HR manager who coached other team leaders and me said that when a large change takes place, it's really important to go through all of the stages of resistance and anger. If this is repressed, it will lead to years-long resentments and difficulties. So I think I will need to prod genuine reactions out of my team, only give my opinion when asked (then I think I have to give genuine reactions too, because they will know if I'm not being truthful and would be skeptical of any neutral, evasive thing I say anyway), and still let them know that eventually we'll need to get around to the implementation and that they need to have their say now because in a few months it'll be unprofessional.

*

Even outside of this — and the meetings regarding this change have swallowed up a lot of time — I've been working eleven-hour days for weeks...

My private life is worse, too. I could be doing things I love like cooking and baking and looking at art and learning new music. I could be practicing Greek and Spanish and other languages, making Christmas cards and shopping, tending plants and buying flowers, researching French history or reading new books. I could be writing emails or other messages to friends and relatives. The weather will be grey and cheerless soon enough, and I want to see the yellow trees.

My work problems are creeping into lots of private conversations; admittedly this is my fault.

My siblings and mother have also been comforting me for hours and hours, for weeks now. So has an ex-colleague, who very kindly reassured me that I was a good person who really did try to do right, and that I can't 'save' everyone.

In the meantime...

I feel too exhausted to ask more bluntly what's intended for me, although perhaps I should. But it appears likely that I'll be removed from a middle-management position before the end of next year. 

Likely until November 27th and beyond, I will be working 11 hour days. I will not be taking a holiday except if, for the third time this autumn, I feel so stressed that a half day is needed.

After that, perhaps I can expect a demotion. And I might see the dissolution of a team — either through further restructuring, or through people leaving due to overwork without the sense of unity and autonomy to make it better — where — for 4.5 years — I'd tried so hard to build up trust, humane management, and a feeling of true personal fulfillment in the workplace.

What I just wonder is, how does this serve the company; why do we need to stare common sense in the face but then ignore it; and what did I do to deserve this? Have I not represented my team well enough?  Is it bad if I mention that the team or I are stressed, because people will think I'm fragile and irrational and that the problems I mention lie in me and not in the workload or in poor decisions? Have I let the team down? In the end I know that I tried not to let them down, but it is so hard to know why this is happening and I feel so unhappy.