Employees don’t quit their jobs, they quit their bosses
I have never quit a job or a boss, I have quit career choices. Unless your career choice is in line with who you are, you will eventually come to loathe it even if you have a great boss. There is just too much nonsense floating around in the name of career advice.
Looking back at why I made some of the career choices
- After I got done with studying engineering, I took up a job with a leading IT services company. Wrong, that choice was made for me since most well-paying jobs on offer in 2003 were IT services jobs.
- I took up a business development role in IT Services post my MBA, this time I had more choices so the choice wasn’t really made for me. However, I still did not have too much clarity on what I wanted to do; I just had some clarity on what I did not want to.
Before you come at me, I wasn’t alone in not being very clear about what I wanted to do; I might be one of the few though who is willing to admit it openly.
Most people sleepwalk through life and lack the agency/will to proactively make changes. Not every change will be on your terms and not many are willing to discount their market value in the process of self-discovery. Very few proactively chose their careers, even if that choice was based on misconceptions.
When I decided to move out of my first role post MBA, it was because I figured out that I was temperamentally not suited to what that career choice called for. I am a thinker who likes to have independent views on most things and I like to express myself through what I do. For this reason, I figured I was better off in career choices where there is scope for individual flair.
There really wasn’t much of a chance of that happening in an engagement manager role in the IT industry, at best one could become a central co-coordinator who manages multiple stakeholders (product team, technical and functional teams, technology delivery team, operations, contracting, finance etc) to keep the customer engagement on track. IT is primarily a process driven and execution heavy industry, I like complexity in thinking but not in execution on a day to day basis.
I still remember the look on my manager’s face when I told him of my reason to call it quits, even before I had lined up a replacement offer. The bloke just could not understand what the hell I was talking about. He wasn’t the best boss I’ve had but even if the guy had been 10 times better, I’d still have quit. I did not quit my boss, I did not quit the organization, I quit the entire damn industry. If I hadn’t seen it this way, I’d most probably have moved to competition and successfully changed my boss but would have continued to hate each day of my life.
If you are a performer in a circus and you hate that way of life, a more pleasant trainer does not make much of a difference.
If you hate working in the assembly line, better air conditioning cannot make things drastically better.
Most professionals reconcile to their situation without trying too much and end up projecting their necessity as a virtue. When we cannot generate other options, we end up rationalizing the situation and the choices that got us there.
That is when we fall into the mold of “let’s make incremental improvements” rather than start with first principles and question the basics. Once you get ego invested into the choices that got you to where you are, it is very difficult to give it all up and walk; even if you don’t like the situation you are in.
Ever wonder why people continue to remain stuck in bad jobs and bad relationships? They wonder if their job would be more tolerable if only their boss were more polite and supportive. They wonder if their relationship would be more tolerable if only their partner changed a few things about themselves. Rather than wonder if the very foundation of the engagement is weak.
Some of the questions that my IT services employer wanted their customer facing teams to think about in 2010 were
- Can you engage your customers in a meaningful discussion about their business?
- Can you provide thought leadership to your customers?
- Can you be a trusted advisor to your customers?
Today my answer to each one of these is a resounding yes, because I had the good sense to ask basic questions rather than blame by boss for why my career wasn’t feeling meaningful enough. I would have been an average performer at best in my IT sales stint, there was no genuine pull I felt to put in the effort to excel at what I was doing. I was temperamentally unsuited for that career choice; getting a better boss or a different employer would not have fixed this problem. You cannot be passionate about something you do not care for. An investing career ticked all the right boxes for me. I run at a frenetic pace because I want to, not because I have to. And I can do this for the next 20 years and not get bored or tired.
Superficial advice like “Work for a good boss” does not fix fundamental problems. What can fix them are honest soul searching and the willingness to try out multiple things before you decide to commit to a particular path.
The willingness to take a few knocks, the courage to take a few steps back every once in a while; these can lead to clarity in the long run.
