Jun 28, 2016
Faithlife Response
9yI'm sorry you were so unhappy with your experience.
I'm also sorry that you felt you didn't have job security. I still struggle with how to handle repeated requests to 'give warning signs if someone is being let go.' I don't know that any company does that. (Do other companies just send emails to the team saying "Just so you know, we're not so sure about Frank, and will probably fire him next week."?...) You indicate that you worked in Inside Sales; I know that sales is always a tough job, and one where there's always pressure to hit targets. But since people have access to both sales targets and performance metrics, it would seem like that is one of the departments where you'd have more visibility into everyone's job performance than most.
I do agree with your analysis: we're not Apple. :-) We swim in smaller ponds: headquarters in a city of 80,000, selling a product primarily to a market of just a few hundred thousand pastors. In the big picture we're just a tiny fish.
For me, though, every day this is the biggest company I've worked at (since my brief time at Microsoft 25 years ago). The "been part of a launch worth" does seem a bit silly. But I don't think it's silly to take what you do seriously at whatever size your business is. A local coffee shop that may only do $200k / year still wants to hold a Grand Opening; a well run local coffee shop probably wants to exceed Starbucks' customer service, knowledge of coffee, and care for customers. And sometimes they do.
To our customers we are an important tool that many use every day. In our city we're the largest private employer in the downtown. In our technical discipline we deliver a leading, innovative product. To each of us, we're the place where we put our time and energy and passion every workday. While we certainly can be wrong -- and often are, I'm sorry to say -- I don't feel bad about wanting to 'be the Apple' of our little pond, and to be even better than Apple in any small way we can be.
We are doing our best, but I think that many of the expectations (for more formal process, for HR, for scripted career paths, etc.) are reflections of the problem you call out: we aren't Apple. We aren't huge. We are a hands-on culture, and the expectation that there will be a massive internal support structure isn't reasonable. Yes, I do want to provide what we can, and we are recruiting some new executive leadership -- people who have worked in bigger organizations. But I think the 80% issues you cite are often "more training, more career planning, more HR staffing"; these are all overhead, even if they're really important, and they're the trappings of the larger organizations you rightly point out we are not. Still, we are trying, and aiming to get there, even if we're not delivering at the pace we'd all like to see.
Again, I'm sorry it wasn't a great experience for you, but I appreciate your sharing your thoughts.