A work story, part 1.

Since I'm bored of my own feelings, and I don't have much insightful to say about grief that I haven't already said here, maybe I'll try something new and tell some other stories.  I'd hoped by this point I'd have some stories to tell about subsequent pregnancy, but since apparently life doesn't always give us what we want, I'll tell a little bit about work.  Here's the story of my work life and how it collided, in spectacular fashion, with the rest of my life.

I was at my last company for six years -- an eternity in millennial professional time.  I was 24 years old when I started out in the Boston headquarters, and 30 when I left, almost two months ago, from the still-a-baby San Francisco office.  Long enough to have been promoted multiple times.  Long enough to have worked on several accounts, with clients and coworkers located in Chicago, New York, Dallas, Charlotte, San Jose, LA, and beyond.  Long enough to have gone from plugging data into spreadsheets to working on pet projects with my group's national lead and our CMO.  When I started there, I was living in my Comm Ave bachelorette pad, had just gotten unceremoniously laid off from my first job after college, and D and I had only been dating a few months.  By the time I left, we had cohabited, remodeled a condo together, gotten engaged, gotten married, moved cross-country together, lived in four different apartments together, gotten pregnant, and lost Mila.  So I kind of grew up there.

I had a lot of success in the Boston office, though I had to work really, really, hard before I was finally recognized.  I did good work and took pride in doing it, but was not particularly self-promoting.  Really, I'm an introvert, as it's classically defined.  Hate small talk, like deep conversation, need to be alone to recharge.  I'm not a showperson.  I don't like talking about what I don't know.  I need time and space to think.  For better or for worse, that's my nature.  I know that kind of personality is not popular or even particularly useful in getting to the top of the professional heap as fast as possible, but it's what I got.  I was lucky enough to wind up reporting into S, who was a mother hen and took me under her wing.  She hustled for me, real hard, but her word wasn't enough to get me my first promotion.  I wound up working on special projects for and impressing the hell out of her boss, and then her boss' boss, before I was finally promoted to Manager.  I didn't mind (too much) that it sometimes demanded late nights and working weekends; I liked the feeling of doing my job well, and I liked the recognition.  From there, I kept advancing, getting more responsibility, and getting my own teams.

In early 2012, after nearly four years in the Boston office, a company-wide email landed in my inbox.

I am happy to share the news that we are about to open our newest office, in San Francisco. We will be moving into a cool space right on the Embarcadero and we'll be servicing some new and existing clients in this office. Eventually we see it as a full-service office with its own clients, in the near term we will be moving folks into the office to help service existing clients. If this is something you want to consider, please alert your staffing manager, noted below.

D and I had been talking idly about a move -- maybe Austin, maybe Seattle, maybe San Francisco.  It was a sign!  I raised my hand immediately and it just so happened that someone at my level from my department was needed.  I'd be among the first twenty people there, and only the second in my department, after the SVP who would be my direct manager.  Things moved quickly.  I got that email in March, and by July, D and I had rented out our Beacon Street condo to some returning expats and were rolling across the country in an underpowered Prius packed to the roof, headed for a new home at the top of Telegraph Hill overlooking the Bay Bridge.  Adventure!

I could get to work in about 15 minutes on foot.  It was a beautiful, if sweaty, walk.  I'd take the winding, precarious Greenwich steps down through overflowing flower gardens and secret houses clinging to the hillside.  The steps would pop me out at a Starbucks on Sansome Street, where I'd stop if I had time, and then I'd walk up the Embarcadero in the sunshine, following the water and car traffic.

The SF office had a great view of the bay -- all water, flags flying, bobbing sailboats, booming cruise ships, and Oakland way off in the distance -- but terrible local lunch options.  The first year was a blur.  We were constantly hiring, constantly dousing work fires, constantly in meetings, constantly making up new processes.  There was no time and weren't enough people for formal, or even much informal, training.  My boss joked that with my arrival, I had doubled the size of our department.  We brought in another transplant from the Boston office, and then added a local hire.  Whoever was available whenever something urgent needed to get done, did it.  We all did analyst-level work, VP-level work, and everything in between.  We were flying by the seat of our pants for a while.  It wasn't that great, professionally speaking, but I figured it was part of opening up a new office, and I was assured that I was on track for a next promotion.

In the second year, things started to come apart - slowly, and then faster and faster.  I started to see the writing on the wall as it appeared, gradually, letter by letter.  Here are some of the things that I watched unfold over the course of several months:

1. A new managing director was brought in to supplant the exec who had opened the SF office.  She smiled and put on a brave face as she welcomed him, but left shortly thereafter, recognizing she'd been effectively forced out.
2. The head of my department, my boss, left the company abruptly.  An SVP who I'd worked with back in Boston was designated as my interim supervisor.  I liked him personally, but knew from past experience that he was an absentee manager.
3. People from other offices, drawn by the allure of the West Coast, started transferring in, sometimes showing up virtually unannounced -- even as the amount of client work in the SF office stayed about the same.
4. Even as the open position for head of my department languished, empty, for weeks and then months, other departments started hiring in their senior leads.  Unrealistic things started getting promised to clients on our behalf, forcing us to scramble to make good on bad promises.  We started getting requests to pull forecasts out of thin air, as long as we could make the numbers tell the right "story."  Even as we got good client feedback on our most innovative projects, internally I found myself being asked to explain their value again and again to the same people.  I started to realize that the new leadership didn't actually understand what my group did, nor did they care to understand.  I had the uncomfortable feeling that, as a result, they were sniping about us further up the chain.

While this was happening, I was also starting to have some serious doubts about what it would mean for me to be promoted to the next level in this industry, in this company.  I felt skeptical about what I saw in the highest levels... buzzwords, hot air, confusion, constant travel and a million competing demands across multiple clients.  I was also realizing that I'm not, at the end of the day, motivated by power and prestige.  I wanted to be available for my family and loved ones.  I wondered, did I really want to keep advancing there?  At what price?  For what purpose?

By this time it was late summer of 2013 and I was about halfway through my pregnancy and starting to really show.  I resolved to stick it out through my maternity leave and then look for new opportunities.

(To be continued...)

You can read part 2 of A work story here.