So I joined this organisation about 6 months ago.
Not to pat my own back, but this is the hardest I have worked for any company in my life. And this is not self-appraisal. Because I was awarded employee of the month the very first month and the CEO personally told me that I have exceeded his expectations.
I was in charge of two departments. Project delivery and recurring revenue. Few months down the line, I started taking heat for not achieving my revenue targets. Here's the thing: project delivery wasn't my job and it was eating up a lot of my time. I took on the responsibility because it was a startup and you are expected to take on multiple roles. I am not saying I didn't deserve some of the heat, but at the end of the day, I felt like I should be judged also for my efforts in project delivery. I repeatedly bought this in my performance discussions. But the management brushed it aside saying “ya, ya, we appreciate your efforts there” and returned to the subject of my inability to generate recurring revenue.
Even though I hold the vaporware of a product to be responsible for the customers not willing to pay again after the initial purchase, I held that judgement to be fair as I was hired to bring revenue for the product irrespective of what shape it was in.
Since I was getting pressured about revenue and getting no tangible appreciation for my efforts in project delivery, I decided to make the latter my second priority. I further solidified this decision when the CEO removed project delivery from my metrics, effectively making it a rewardless, unrecognised part of my job.
Now, here's another problem. The CEO is basically a boomer. He is very ego driven. The sales team dreads his participation in sales calls as he would almost give away the product for pennies if someone massaged his ego by saying he is founder of a great product. A lot of cheap-ass clients figure this out and use it to their advantage and get a free trial of the product from him and leave as soon as the trial is over. I have worked on countless projects like this which are a waste of time for me as I have to delivery the project and watch them leave.
About a week ago, he had a meeting with one such loser and pushed the delivery to me. One look at the project and I knew our product couldn't deliver what the client wanted and he is going to leave. So I lied. I lied that I was working on it. Because I was close to achieving my revenue Target and didn't have time for this nonsense.
But… Unfortunately I got caught. They figured I lied and I am on the verge of being fired. Now I am kind of the asshole here because I lied. But I tried to be honest with them, but they won't listen.
Anyways, there ends my rant. Wish me luck, folks. Job hunting from Monday. 🙂