Changes in staff and leadership are perfectly normal, but the way it is being handled at the moment makes me feel way more anti-capitalist and gen Z than I usually do, which is saying a lot. This is probably a completely normal situation for many, but I never expected something like this to happen at my current small creative-and-quite-progressive workplace, naive of me, I know.
I work at project management in a creative sphere. My department was always its own separate thing from the larger (relatively speaking, not actually that large) company, the people in my department are genuinely great and have a very similar, progressive outlook on life. The larger company, however, sometimes can have quite the outdated corporate feel. It never used to concern my office, until now.
The company is expanding, and our direct boss has accepted what is essentially a promotion and will be the director of this whole new branch at a different location doing a completely different thing. We, her team, were told of this post factum completely out of the blue.
Instead of her in a few weeks time there will be a new boss, some outsider whose name is not being revealed to us, supposedly before they sign their contract and so that we would “not google them and make wrong assumptions” (?!?). There was no open vacancy, no internal competition for this position and the second most senior worker, the director's deputy in our department seemingly was not even considered. What gets me the most, though, is the attitude.
The current/old boss tried to give an exuse at an informal setting that the deputy is “so great at their position” that it would be “impossible to replace them” and tried to joke that it is easier to find a new director than such a good worker. Which I find tactless and patronizing. And false.
She is literally Gaslight – Gatekeep – Girlbossing us and I feel very cheated. Our old boss is accepting a considerable pay rise (and she was already way richer than everyone else here) and putting someone in her – very executive – position, and we are supposed to keep being good little workers, excited for her, loyal as ever, just also to a whole other person plus our old boss who will be at a more senior position in the company and will no doubt keep getting in everyone's business, including this new person. Nobody else is getting promoted (thankfully, supposedly not fired either), no changes in pay, we're supposed to pretend that nothing has happened, even though this is a creative sphere where the boss's decisions are very important and kind of personal, and influence everything on a daily basis.
Just needed to rant this somewhere, maybe someone can relate.