This post is to more so give insight into what goes on behind federal contracts and working with a company that is filled with older-generation ideals.
Just to give some background, I was initially a chemistry major. I disliked it and switched to Computer Science. The program at my university is notorious for being difficult and would take most students closer to 5-6 years to graduate. I finished the program in 2.5 years after switching majors halfway through. I wasn't the best programmer, but I was more technical than most students in the department. While I was finishing school, I was interning for companies as a software engineer. I've worked while attending school and thought I was pretty decent for a software engineer.
On my first day, I was hired with someone else (We will call them John for anonymity purposes). We managed to get along and we were put on the same project under the same federal contract. The problems with this company start here. I was met with my first boss. Someone who was a software engineer 1 (Level 1 as in they only had 0-3 years of experience). My boss's only experience was managing students or very entry-level positions (Such as interns). I thought it was slightly weird as I was on the same level as my boss (or even more experienced than them), but I was being managed by them. None of the other engineers were managed by someone so new. All of them were managed by very senior-level people who have been with the company and know the ropes beside me. My boss was in charge of tasking me and John with work. Being more technical compared to John, I was tasked with pretty much ridiculous tasks. I was tasked with integrating 3-5 big tools into our software. I was pretty much responsible for developing, testing, and DevOps for each tool. John, on the other hand, was tasked with much easier work. John had to basically click buttons on a screen, write a simple 1-page document on how to sign into the software, and pretty much useless work that wasn't going to be used. Referring to my education and my technical skills, John was eventually forced to learn some of the software instead of doing very high-level work that anyone literally anyone could do. I remember very clearly John asking me what a branch is and how to create a pull request (If anyone is in software, they should know that is pretty much foundational and day-one knowledge). That's like being a physicist and not knowing what basic algebra is… I was so shocked knowing that someone who doesn't even know the basics or foundational skills is considered an engineer. Regardless, I helped them and we kept moving along.
Eventually, I found out that John was being paid $10,000 – $15,000 more than I was making. I was so annoyed with my boss's insane request and John earning more that I reported it to the department. The workload was not even close to fair or balanced and I was doing work that teams would be doing. The department head lied straight to my face and told me I was earning more than most of the team members. They did, however, switch my manager, which is the next problem.
My new manager (We will call them Bob) was someone who basically was almost 100 years old. I was surprised they could even come to the office every day. Bob was extremely nice, but a little outdated with how software or the world works. Another coworker who was managed by Bob pointed out that Bob would pretty much forget anything you send to Bob. I was dragged into pretty much pointless 1-hour meetings every day to discuss something I emailed Bob yesterday. In the most respectful way possible, Bob was senile. Those meetings would make me fall behind on the work that was assigned by a very controlling project manager. But I was content. I no longer had a boss that assigned me crazy amounts of work not knowing the amount of time it would take to finish. While this was happening, John started slowly being buddy-buddy with the department head. It got to the point where it was blatant nepotism or favoritism. John was now in charge of hiring and conducting interviews (Remember John is not technical at all) and was promoted to level 2 (Now being more experienced than me and my previous manager who was there for 1.5 years). I eventually just silently quit. What was the point of working harder? To be assigned more work? While someone who doesn't even know Git or HTML was hiring people that they themselves weren't even qualified for. Eventually, I guess I was a little too careless and my department head started noticing I would leave 30 minutes early (I am salaried if that changes anything). My boss, Bob, and the department head would watch what time I entered the building, the amount of time I would take for lunch, and when I would leave. This wasn't done for any other coworkers, there are some that would even start work at 10:00 am and leave at 5:00 pm (lunch included). Eventually, the department head wrote me up to HR for leaving early.
I won't discuss the details as it would make what I do/where I work identifiable. But the HR head audited every single detail about me. Hell, they even requested to access my personal cell phone and personal email records, because of the circumstances. I was let go a bit back, but I still have the department head's email. It's gonna be a wash anytime I apply for this company but I just want to send them a version of this post just to know let them know how shitty they are and how they themselves shouldn't be leading the department (It won't do any good and they probably won't even read it, but It'll give me some closure) Thoughts on this email?
I guess the biggest things I've learned to be successful in Corporate America are the following:
- Brown nose all the upper heads. The older generation likes to be placed on a pedestal for spending 12 hours a day trying to figure out how to convert a Word document to a PDF.
- Performance doesn't matter. The time you clock in and out every day does. Bosses and managers don't care if you finish your work, they want you to live in the office and manage/see you every second. They want you to work more and earn less.
- Experience. Companies love hiring someone with 30+ years of experience who is most likely going to get outperformed by someone in college. Companies don't care about relevant experience they only care if you have 20+ years of experience. Bob has 40+ of experience but the experience was using switches as a computer. Not relevant to technology today whatsoever.
- Always sell yourself as a star player. Even if you don't do anything important, if you can figure out how to sell yourself as very important, you will be treated as such. Even if you can't tie your shoes, if you can sell that you are more important than the CEO, you'll always have the upper hand.