Hi! I’m venting mostly but this is Reddit so I will also welcoming any and all advice. Sorry this went a bit long.
The backstory is: I’m a US-based technical director and I manage a few teams of people in EMEA. I have been in role for just around 4 years. One of my employees gave notice to me and I accepted it gracefully as always. I never want to make someone feel bad when leaving. My employee cited the reasons they were leaving and none of them had to do with me or how I manage the team. We had a little going away thing virtually and I sent my departing employee a personalized token of my appreciation for the last 2+ years of working together.
I got a new boss about a year ago after suffering a political setback. I was stabbed in the back by an VP on a power grab. Don’t worry gentle reader, it caught up with him hard after blowing $12 000 000 of VC money with no return.
I recently met with my grandboss (my boss’ boss). My grandboss was formerly my direct manager prior to the setback. This is the first time meeting since the new boss got installed between my grandboss and myself. I wanted to review the reasons my employee was leaving since they were not about me but the company. My grandboss and I have known each other for over 10 years and I felt comfortable scheduling this call.
My employee left some extremely negative feedback to our executive team. While my grandboss was addressing the negative feedback, I would ask clarifying questions such as
Does that seem like fair treatment to you? Do you see that there was an opportunity to communicate X to the whole organization? Do you see the Y perspective?
Out of nowhere, he lashed out at me over my employee’s feedback by saying “if you don’t like it, leave! Everyone in this group could find a job tomorrow!! If you don’t like it just LEAVE!.” Now, I think my grandboss probably wasn’t speaking to me but rather to my employee through me. Our call eventually turned somewhat amicable, but it was hard to forget the message.
i love my teams. My teams like me, I think. I give the teams autonomy to choose the order and the way the work gets done for maximum impact. I explain why things are important and the reasoning behind requests I make. I trust them to work. I don’t micromanage. They are adults, not children. I don’t care if they work from home, or from an office, or a beach or a car. I don’t care when they work, as long as stuff gets done. I hired these teams, and they are some of the best people I could ever imagine to work with. I never ask them to do something I won’t or can’t do myself. I never make people feel bad for taking vacations, and make sure everyone takes plenty of breaks. I’ve never denied a vacation or sickday or mental-health day. I take on some of the menial, boring, mind-numbing tasks because I can do those tasks while I’m on one of the many pointless status calls I’m pulled into. My group has the longest average tenure, lowest turnover and highest work output per team member. All of this is just by giving them the power to select their own work. Yes, obviously we have stuff from other groups and teams we have to do that we don’t like but that work gets split to everyone including me.
I’m not unhappy at the job but it isn’t the same as it was when I got joined . I’m not happy but I’m not unhappy. It’s just a job. I don’t really care. It’s just computers.The pay is outrageous, but inflation is eating that up. I definitely still have the gold handcuffs on.
It does seem like I should be packing up my stuff and finding greener pastures. I’ve got my resume out but getting nowhere. Finding a new job where I am able to manage my teams in this manner is almost impossible.
I don’t know what to do. I could get a job as a senior level worker bee, but should I just take a step down and get out of the political quagmire? Is there a place in todays world for a manager who focuses on the team? Just go back to being a coder? Just be another cog in a machine, and just forget trying to be a manager? Stop trying to be the good guy?
Please note: I can’t just quit. I don’t have enough cash despite being paid well as my wife is out of work.
Thanks for reading. I will attempt to respond to any question, too.