No One Seems to Understand Why I Left My World-Famous, Prestigious Job. I Had No Choice.

Good Job Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by tuaindeed/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Good Job, A couple of years ago, I left my job at a prestigious company for a job that was better on paper. It pays more, the company has better benefits and a better everyday work culture, and the role, which was created for me, is (again, on paper) my dream role. One downside is that the new company isn’t as prestigious. (The old one is world-famous and people who work there are treated like celebrities.) Another, as I have found since beginning my work there, is that its bureaucracy limits what is really possible for people in my position to achieve. My new peers have asked me questions like: “Why did you come here?” Aside from this on-paper comparison, the actual act of leaving my previous company was devastating to me, the hardest professional decision I’ve ever had to make, and downright humiliating. I never would have done it if I hadn’t felt I had to. My manager had given me one of those horrendous performance reviews that said my work was subpar going back to prior years (when I was getting great reviews) and citing a piece of work as an example of my poor performance for which, at the time, I received positive feedback. Worse, I was not given any metrics or advice on how to cure my deficiencies. If you just looked at that performance review, it was a message that I should find my way out the door. Except that, along with the written review, I was told verbally that I was not actually being managed out. For that whole year, I tried to do praiseworthy and non-controversial work. But I also started talking to other companies about moving, just in case. At the end of the year, I went to management and said: Here’s what I’ve done this year, and I do not want to leave, but I do have this other job offer. I shared the salary offer but said explicitly I wasn’t looking for my current bosses to match it; I only wanted them to know I had the offer and could leave if they felt I hadn’t fixed my problems. I was told I was not being fired, but that the penalties that had been imposed on me as a result of my prior poor performance would continue indefinitely. I was shocked to learn I had been penalized in a measurable way, as no one had told me about that in any explicit terms, but I had noticed throughout the year that whenever I tried to exceed a certain metric in my work, I was blocked. Because of this, I took the job that was offered to me at the other company. I thought everyone knew why I left, as my industry is super gossipy and catty, and others before me were forced to make the same moves. Imagine my surprise when I learned last week that all my colleagues think I abandoned them and that I somehow thought the place itself was bad. This is what my former boss, who had given me the bad performance review, has been saying to everyone. I had reached some level of renown for my work that I guess made it implausible that I’d had to leave because I wasn’t good enough to be there, which is the story I had been telling myself in my head even as I tried to seem excited about my move. It seems I did too good a job of seeming happy. In their eyes, I’m a traitor on top of everything else. I don’t know what to do or how to convince them that’s not at all what happened, and I want to convince them, because I always thought that when the boss who didn’t like me left, I could try to return. That is what is happening now. I want to show my former colleagues how much I miss my old job, but I feel that no one will believe me, since I’ve spent the past two years trying to be good at and positive about my new job—that’s just what I ought to have been doing, isn’t it? I feel devastated and humiliated all over again. Help! —I Want to Turn Right Back Around Dear I Want to Turn Right Back Around, Please do not turn right back around. You escaped a manipulative, devious, abusive boss at a company that smells like a cult. Good for you! Let’s talk about your past workplace first, then your current workplace and any future ones. Prestige is fine, as long as it’s earned and isn’t abused—but in the case of your former employer, it probably isn’t and it definitely is. Their salaries and benefits are below industry standards, and their work culture, performance review systems, and management are arbitrary and cruel. The company can pay employees less and give erratic feedback because the world treats them like celebrities—and because working there has become a central part of their identity (sound familiar?). Your former boss is lying about your departure to enforce an Us-Versus-Them mentality; this loyalty campaign aims to control and isolate the remaining staff. If your former peers believe you’re a traitor, it’s because they’re pickled in the company’s prestige propaganda. To reestablish some basic professional norms, please know that leaving a prestigious organization for a better job is routine and is not abandonment. Quitting a job for any reason does not make you a traitor. Your understanding of what your former peers think about you is imperfect, and if they really do resent you for leaving, that’s not your problem. Other people (like your new colleagues) may believe the hype about your former employer, but you know the reality. Lots of companies or professions look glamorous from the outside but are run by a pit of vipers on the inside. You were right to leave when you did and then to focus on succeeding at your new job. Your former job really did a number on your confidence and sense of self. Take advantage of the good benefits at your new job and find a therapist who can help you work through your feelings of regret, humiliation, and devastation. You deserve instead to feel relief that you escaped an inhumane situation, pride in your new work, and enthusiasm about your future. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Good Job, I saw the recent letter from Tired Teacher and it hit me like a punch in the gut. I’m also a teacher who’s been regularly hit at work. I’m in the same boat and can’t imagine doing another school year like this. I’d love to change jobs, but the job market is terrible, and I have no idea where to look. I’ve never had a “dream job” and only got into teaching because I’m naturally pretty good with kids, but this is my sixth year getting treated badly and facing down empathy-free parents and administrators. But every time I try to polish my resume, I just feel like more of a skill-less potato. Am I cooked because I don’t dream of labor? Where should I be looking? Who even wants to hire a beat-up teacher in this economy? I’m ready to work around grown-ups. —Done Being a Punching Bag Dear Done Being a Punching Bag, I’m so sorry about the abuse you’ve experienced at work. Many of the challenges you’ve experienced are specific to teaching, but wanting to change jobs is not. In this column alone, we’ve heard from nurses, veterans, tech workers, professors, recruiters, and an owner of a pet care business who feel wrung out by their current profession and want to try something new. It can feel lonely to work in a job that makes you miserable, but you are not alone. Since you don’t have a dream job in mind and your main goal is to work with grown-ups, you have a lot of options—and you don’t need to choose one right away. Start by reconnecting with people you knew in college or from hobbies (remember when you had time for those?). Tell your friends to tell their friends you’re looking. Join your alumni network, attend its local events, and sign up for its jobs board. Talk to the career services office at your past college, or sign up for a class or two at your local community college and talk to their career office. Ask for an informational interview with a temp agency (a smart tip from Slate commenters on a recent Good Job column) and see what sorts of placements you would be qualified for already. It’s hard to recognize all the skills you’ve developed when you’re exercising them constantly and are surrounded by people with the same skills. I promise you, people from outside your profession respect teachers and will not think of you as a potato. When you talk to people about jobs, either informally or during an interview, they’ll be impressed with your problem-solving skills, crowd management, planning, ability to deal with bureaucracy, and “flexible leadership style,” which is just a corporatese term for, in your case, dealing with each student according to their needs and challenges. When you tell people you’re ready to work with grown-ups, they’ll laugh in sympathy and probably make a joke about how their grown-up colleagues can be big babies. Laugh at the joke even after you’ve heard it a few dozen times. While you’re still teaching, try advocating for yourself more emphatically. You mention administrators (and parents) with no empathy. They may not care, but they may do something if you insist on it. Ask for additional support wherever it might help—a temporary or permanent classroom aide? A change to your schedule or more time off? If you have a union, do they have resources or support groups for teachers in crisis? I bet a lot of people reading this sympathize with teachers and wish they could help. So, to those readers: If you have kids in school, tell their teachers you appreciate their work and ask how you can support them. Tell your school board to budget for better salaries, staffing, and benefits for teachers. And vote for school board members and other politicians who prioritize honest education rather than sticking the Ten Commandments in classrooms and banning books from school libraries. Sign up now for Slate Plus to read all of our Good Job columns for the week. Dear Good Job, I took a promotion last September to work for a new vice president. He spent the year second-guessing and yelling at me, and then a few weeks ago, he quit. Now I’m the face of his bad decisions after the toughest 12 months of my career. I’ve got my mid-year review next week with his former boss, the senior vice president. He has nothing but negative perceptions of my work, which was, of course, assigned to me and not of my choosing. What can I say to defend myself here without becoming defensive? —Under a New Boss and Over It Dear Under a New Boss and Over It, Oof, what a year. I’m glad you’re finally free of the screamy boss. You say he quit. Do you know if it was for a better opportunity and the senior vice president is still stinging from the loss, or was he encouraged to leave, and the rest of management is relieved? I would guess (and I sure hope) that someone who yells at their direct reports and makes bad decisions was “managed out.” When you meet with the SVP, I suggest you signal that you are aware of your former boss’s failures. You don’t want to be too familiar right away: “Christ, what an asshole, am I right?” But you can acknowledge that it was a tough year and say you’re looking forward to a “reset” or a “refresh” at work. Ask the SVP questions about how he’d like your department to “pivot” now that Mr. Yellsalot has left. As the conversation progresses, be prepared to share what you know about how the bad decisions were made and implemented. Even better, suggest some ways to undo them or learn from them. You won’t sound defensive or disloyal; you’ll sound like someone who is realistic about problems and eager to solve them. If the SVP has negative perceptions of your work, as you say in your question, because your former boss complained about you and the SVP believed and still believes him, that’s a different problem. The SVP probably hired your former boss, and he might indicate that he wants to hire another person just like Mr. Yellsalot to carry out his vision. Plenty of companies make bad hiring decisions. The good ones reverse those decisions as soon as possible and learn from their mistakes. If leadership at your company has learned all the wrong lessons, that’s a message to you to look for a different employer. —Laura More Advice From Slate My husband and I, both in our 40s, are high-earners with a healthy amount of money saved—around $2 million in our retirement funds, and nearly that much in investment and savings accounts as well. We think we might have enough money that we could afford to retire early. But … we just don’t know. Advice Workplace Jobs