Navigating Career Low Points: Real Stories and Lessons Learned

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:07.480 | >> You're listening to Let's Talk Jobs,

00:00:09.260 | where we give you practical insights into jobs and careers.

00:00:12.720 | Have you ever felt like you've hit rock bottom in your career?

00:00:16.200 | Maybe you're struggling to advance,

00:00:18.200 | or maybe your manager is putting you down.

00:00:20.880 | Whatever it is, you're struggling to survive.

00:00:23.940 | In this episode, Jesse, Troy,

00:00:26.160 | and I talk about our career low points.

00:00:29.100 | What we did about it,

00:00:30.400 | and then what we learned from it.

00:00:31.860 | All right, let's get started.

00:00:34.040 | >> So timeline-wise, I was at the agency, I got fired.

00:00:38.080 | I had a period of unemployment,

00:00:39.840 | which was soul-searching 101,

00:00:42.840 | and then I finally got a contract job on the client side,

00:00:46.380 | which is Logitech, which turned into a full-time employment.

00:00:51.000 | I'm going to name her here because we've since reconciled,

00:00:55.680 | so I think it's okay. So Regina was my manager at the time.

00:00:58.840 | She and I did not get along.

00:01:02.760 | Prior to her managing me,

00:01:05.360 | I reported directly to the director,

00:01:07.440 | and I was a senior web marketing project manager.

00:01:11.200 | I started my career in project management,

00:01:13.000 | that's actually was my wheelhouse.

00:01:15.240 | When she came in,

00:01:18.280 | she started undermining everything.

00:01:20.800 | I felt like I was thrown on the bus.

00:01:23.120 | As a matter of fact,

00:01:25.040 | I don't know if you guys know this,

00:01:26.920 | but we used to have that cafe,

00:01:28.840 | and it was not a really big cafe.

00:01:30.600 | She would hold our one-on-ones in that cafe,

00:01:34.360 | and she would berate me in front of everybody.

00:01:37.240 | She would call like, "Are you an idiot?"

00:01:39.360 | She would say like, "Are you effing kidding me?

00:01:41.800 | What the eff was that?" Those are the literal words she would use.

00:01:45.800 | Like, "Are you stupid? What were you thinking?"

00:01:49.200 | It killed me, you guys.

00:01:52.160 | Again, this is coming right off the back of the other agency,

00:01:55.360 | another female leader.

00:01:56.800 | And as a matter of fact, the leader of her manager is also female.

00:01:59.440 | And so I was having this horrible, horrible experience.

00:02:03.200 | How I turned it around in this case was,

00:02:07.600 | actually, this is a pivot point in my career,

00:02:09.880 | because I made a decision.

00:02:11.360 | I was like, "I am tired."

00:02:13.400 | First of all, I'm tired of these 10 cassette tape of self-help tapes.

00:02:16.400 | I'm done with them.

00:02:18.320 | And I was like, "I'm tired of someone beating me down."

00:02:22.680 | And I knew the quality of my work.

00:02:24.400 | Like, if I talked to my other peers within the marketing team,

00:02:28.480 | they all said I'm doing good work.

00:02:29.680 | So there's something misaligned, right?

00:02:33.120 | And I tried to have conversations with her to uncover where it's coming from.

00:02:37.480 | She never volunteered any information.

00:02:38.920 | It was very guarded.

00:02:40.760 | I didn't know what conversations were taking place

00:02:42.320 | between her and her manager either.

00:02:44.520 | It was all shielded from me.

00:02:46.760 | I thought I was being managed out.

00:02:48.880 | So I decided I'm just going to focus on just doing good work.

00:02:53.120 | I went up a few gears

00:02:57.320 | and I over-indexed on just working hard,

00:03:00.280 | pushing good work, documentation.

00:03:03.320 | And at the end of the day, if someone's going to let me go,

00:03:05.560 | at least I felt good about what I was able to do.

00:03:09.840 | What ended up happening is there...

00:03:13.440 | Again, I don't know all the conversations that took place above me,

00:03:16.520 | but eventually she got let go.

00:03:19.280 | That thumbs up from Zoom feels a little inappropriate.

00:03:22.320 | Coover is the product manager of Zoom.

00:03:25.720 | I turned it off and it's still happening.

00:03:29.120 | So she was let go.

00:03:30.920 | And I heard some of the reasons were

00:03:35.560 | the things that she was throwing me under the bus about,

00:03:38.240 | it didn't jive with the reality of my output.

00:03:40.960 | And so I think she was exposed in some degrees.

00:03:45.400 | And I started becoming really successful.

00:03:47.280 | And then within Logitech, I ended up turning that around

00:03:50.040 | and I shifted from the consumer to the B2B side of the business.

00:03:53.200 | And that's when I really started to thrive.

00:03:56.280 | So I think it's a lesson on just

00:03:58.880 | staying true to yourself, having confidence in what you can do.

00:04:01.960 | And then just, you know, like in the Bible, there's a saying like,

00:04:04.600 | "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give God what is God's."

00:04:07.320 | And the whole idea is like, hey, if you're going to work,

00:04:10.640 | put everything into that and focus on that.

00:04:13.040 | And if you're something else, put yourself into that.

00:04:15.680 | Don't try to blend the two.

00:04:17.840 | Now what I appreciate about this is,

00:04:21.240 | so Regina, clearly also during her departure,

00:04:24.400 | went through some stuff as well.

00:04:26.400 | She had some difficult conversations with her manager.

00:04:29.120 | And what I didn't know at the time was

00:04:31.520 | some of that was probably being projected down to me.

00:04:34.240 | I just didn't have the maturity or guidance from any mentors

00:04:37.160 | to ask the right questions,

00:04:38.440 | to figure out what was really going on with the manager.

00:04:39.960 | I think one of you guys mentioned before,

00:04:41.800 | like understanding what's going on,

00:04:44.320 | happening a layer above, your immediate layer and having context.

00:04:48.280 | That would have been really helpful.

00:04:50.400 | But she reached out back to me.

00:04:53.200 | I think it was like a year after it happened.

00:04:55.600 | Because I think this, she was like, "Go."

00:04:58.120 | And then she asked me, "Hey, you know, like,

00:05:00.280 | if I ever treated you poorly,

00:05:02.760 | I apologize because that was happening to me as well."

00:05:06.720 | And she was going through her self-realization.

00:05:09.040 | So I emailed her back.

00:05:10.160 | I was like, "Regina, it's all good.

00:05:12.000 | Like, as a matter of fact, your apology

00:05:15.120 | gives me a lot of closure.

00:05:17.080 | So thank you for that."

00:05:19.240 | So like, we're not friends,

00:05:20.440 | but if I met her at a dog park or whatever,

00:05:24.760 | I would gladly say hello and start a conversation.

00:05:27.120 | The other manager, I have no closure over.

00:05:29.120 | So if I saw her, it would be very awkward.

00:05:31.080 | And even to this day,

00:05:32.640 | with the amount of anxiety I built over that,

00:05:35.680 | I don't know if I have the maturity to handle the conversation

00:05:39.440 | without being prepared.

00:05:41.120 | - Yeah. Well, it wouldn't be worth your time to be, right?

00:05:43.360 | That's the... - Yeah.

00:05:44.760 | - But yeah, the point of, you know,

00:05:48.080 | outside of the scope of the work context,

00:05:53.040 | your relationship with people after the facts,

00:05:55.240 | years later, can be totally different, right?

00:05:57.600 | - Yeah.

00:05:58.680 | - In the work environment, it's rarely personal.

00:06:02.080 | That's one thing I've learned, right?

00:06:03.280 | It's rarely personal.

00:06:04.160 | Usually there's a lot of external forces

00:06:07.160 | that are driving people's behavior, I think.

00:06:09.840 | - Mm-hmm.

00:06:11.160 | - Including your own,

00:06:12.520 | and that you may not even be in touch with.

00:06:14.720 | So that's, after 25 years, I can say that,

00:06:20.760 | you know, it's also easier said than done,

00:06:26.800 | but like, it rarely has to do with who you are as a person.

00:06:30.960 | So like, as hard as it is,

00:06:32.880 | try not to let any of these challenges

00:06:36.440 | affect you at your core, 'cause it's not about you.

00:06:39.680 | - Yeah, and it's critical to your self-development

00:06:44.320 | as a human, right?

00:06:45.840 | 'Cause you learn about your weaknesses,

00:06:47.680 | you learn about your strengths,

00:06:48.840 | you learn about resilience.

00:06:51.240 | I think it takes maturity to be able to process it

00:06:54.600 | through some of those lenses,

00:06:55.880 | but if there's anyone listening to this

00:06:58.000 | and you're going through that,

00:06:59.760 | know that, first of all, whether it's,

00:07:02.760 | what is it, imposter syndrome, or whatever it is,

00:07:07.520 | like, you're hired because you're good at your job

00:07:10.280 | and you know what you're doing.

00:07:11.920 | And so don't undermine or underestimate your capability.

00:07:16.320 | However, find out where your opportunity for growth is,

00:07:18.800 | right?

00:07:19.640 | And it's easier to say as, you know,

00:07:22.120 | since we have more user experience,

00:07:23.680 | but for people who are younger in their careers,

00:07:25.360 | where your identity might be tied to your performance,

00:07:28.200 | know that you bring something to the table,

00:07:31.000 | but also know that there is always opportunity for growth.

00:07:34.080 | And I'm kind of curious for you guys,

00:07:35.680 | you know, like that was my absolute career low point,

00:07:38.880 | 'cause it was tied to performance

00:07:40.120 | as well as my sense of self-value.

00:07:43.080 | Like, what was your low points?

00:07:44.360 | And like, were you able to turn that around

00:07:46.800 | or are you still struggling with it?

00:07:48.760 | Like, what's your story?

00:07:51.560 | - You wanna go first, Jesse?

00:07:55.160 | - Yeah, go for it, Troy.

00:07:57.240 | - You want me to go?

00:07:58.360 | - Yeah, go for it.

00:07:59.640 | - Yeah, so I mean,

00:08:03.080 | one of the companies I was hired for in digital marketing,

00:08:06.960 | the first week on the job,

00:08:11.120 | they fired the CEO and the head of engineering.

00:08:13.920 | And I ended up being there for three years,

00:08:17.440 | but it was a incredibly tumultuous three years.

00:08:22.440 | I had issues with my manager.

00:08:25.840 | I had issues with trying to understand

00:08:28.160 | what my responsibility was.

00:08:31.720 | I had that situation where I was reporting directly

00:08:34.640 | to the CEO for a while.

00:08:36.520 | And at one point I reported directly to the head of sales

00:08:41.880 | who didn't really want marketing under his purview.

00:08:44.840 | A really difficult situation.

00:08:51.760 | And simultaneously I had my second child

00:08:56.200 | and we had made the move up to where I live now,

00:09:01.160 | up in Sonoma County, North of San Francisco,

00:09:03.560 | because we wanted to raise our kids in a better place.

00:09:08.880 | And we were trying to buy a house.

00:09:10.600 | I eventually, three years later, was laid off.

00:09:15.800 | And partially looking back,

00:09:19.800 | like I totally understand why I was laid off,

00:09:22.320 | because it wasn't because of my skills.

00:09:23.760 | It was because I was really insecure about it

00:09:27.640 | and saying all the wrong things

00:09:31.000 | and showing my insecurity

00:09:33.680 | rather than just focusing on my work,

00:09:36.240 | because I fit the profile of what they were trying to do,

00:09:39.000 | but I couldn't get out of my head.

00:09:41.400 | And so, I think that the circumstances

00:09:47.160 | of having a young family sort of made that

00:09:51.400 | an unwinnable situation for me.

00:09:54.000 | I couldn't not be in a constant state of unease

00:09:59.000 | and panic at times.

00:10:01.880 | Looking back, I try to give myself,

00:10:07.720 | I'm still disappointed that didn't work out

00:10:10.880 | because on paper, I felt like I was the perfect candidate

00:10:14.200 | and I loved the story of the company

00:10:16.640 | that I was working for.

00:10:17.600 | So it's still, it's been 10 years

00:10:20.520 | since all of this played out.

00:10:21.680 | It's still hard for me to reconcile

00:10:25.360 | how it all spiraled from there,

00:10:27.320 | but there is so much I learned from that trauma.

00:10:32.320 | And you know what?

00:10:35.400 | As a family, we found our way out of that.

00:10:38.120 | I saw the writing on the wall before the layoff

00:10:41.720 | and I ended up back in the workplace

00:10:45.480 | less than a month after I was laid off

00:10:47.600 | because wheels were in motion.

00:10:51.640 | So I credit myself for having the tenacity

00:10:56.640 | despite being devastated at the same time.

00:11:02.320 | And then I try to reflect back.

00:11:05.920 | And again, I feel like a little bit of a broken record,

00:11:09.400 | but when you have a really difficult situation like that,

00:11:12.880 | the more you can lean into it,

00:11:14.160 | the more you're gonna learn

00:11:15.240 | and the more you're gonna benefit from that later on.

00:11:17.360 | I learned a lot about future jobs from there,

00:11:21.520 | what I didn't want.

00:11:22.840 | And I think that's really important,

00:11:24.160 | just as important as learning what you want

00:11:28.200 | is understanding what you don't want,

00:11:30.520 | both in a job situation in terms of what you're doing,

00:11:35.520 | but also in an organizational structure,

00:11:37.920 | how companies are managed, how divisions are managed.

00:11:45.440 | So it was an awful time from a work environment.

00:11:50.840 | It was a great time personally with young kids

00:11:54.120 | and a newborn, and I learned a heck of a lot.

00:11:58.960 | - Thanks, Troy, for sharing that.

00:12:04.880 | I think I can definitely relate to having a newborn

00:12:08.440 | and it really intensifying the level of stress

00:12:14.600 | and everything, lack of sleep and all of that.

00:12:17.680 | And it affects, it affected me.

00:12:20.120 | I know when my daughter was very young,

00:12:23.120 | I had real challenges.

00:12:27.240 | I was at Logitech actually,

00:12:28.640 | but I got through it somehow.

00:12:32.960 | I had an experience later on,

00:12:35.080 | was a low point in terms of the amount of income

00:12:40.040 | I was bringing in.

00:12:40.880 | I had become a freelancer and I was consulting.

00:12:44.240 | And so in 2020, at the beginning of 2020,

00:12:46.840 | before the pandemic shut everything down,

00:12:49.120 | I had seven clients.

00:12:50.920 | I was making a considerable amount more

00:12:53.720 | than I was making when I was a corporate employee,

00:12:56.920 | a agency employee.

00:12:58.280 | And one of my clients,

00:13:01.240 | the pandemic hit, everything shut down,

00:13:07.520 | unemployment went way up,

00:13:08.680 | and I was affected on about half of the business I had.

00:13:12.320 | And it wasn't always an easy process to go through.

00:13:17.800 | And in some cases when you know it's coming

00:13:20.600 | and maybe the client engagement has run its course

00:13:23.640 | and it's time, it's just not working out,

00:13:25.080 | then it's time to move on and you separate amicably.

00:13:30.080 | I had one client who I had been working for

00:13:35.280 | for about a year in a creative lead capacity,

00:13:40.280 | and then hired a new manager.

00:13:43.560 | And this manager was a descendant of William Faulkner.

00:13:48.240 | And just oddly enough.

00:13:50.760 | And so I thought when this person was brought on,

00:13:52.920 | it would be sort of revolutionary for the business,

00:13:55.560 | but also for the writing team,

00:13:56.640 | 'cause we had like a writer's descendant

00:13:58.840 | leading the writing team.

00:14:02.240 | I didn't build a very strong relationship with her,

00:14:04.920 | but maybe a month later, and this was right

00:14:08.920 | during the week after in San Francisco,

00:14:11.120 | the mayor called a shelter in place order

00:14:15.120 | and then we didn't go into the office anymore.

00:14:17.720 | And yeah, I get this call to get on a call with HR

00:14:22.720 | and the manager and a video call,

00:14:25.640 | but she didn't call, she didn't join the video call.

00:14:28.000 | She just called in by phone and said,

00:14:31.440 | you're impacted, changing priorities,

00:14:36.200 | restructuring, blah, blah, blah.

00:14:38.720 | And this is your last day.

00:14:40.320 | And I was sort of expecting it, but not expecting it.

00:14:44.320 | I was blindsided, but also it was the manner

00:14:46.200 | in which it was done.

00:14:47.160 | Like she didn't even want to get on the video call.

00:14:50.000 | And then I sort of started asking questions

00:14:52.240 | 'cause I was a little upset.

00:14:53.280 | I said, well, why?

00:14:54.120 | I don't understand.

00:14:55.520 | And we just said, I thought I was performing

00:14:57.720 | at a good level and meeting my goals, et cetera.

00:15:02.240 | And then she just hung up.

00:15:03.560 | She just hung up on the phone and I was sitting there

00:15:07.960 | looking at the HR person and the HR person was like,

00:15:11.200 | it was awkward, and then that ended.

00:15:16.200 | And then I remember that day, the same company,

00:15:18.920 | which was a staffing agency sent out a mass email

00:15:22.720 | to all the freelancers that worked there saying,

00:15:25.360 | we're there for you.

00:15:26.680 | We got your back.

00:15:27.600 | You're gonna get through the, and I was,

00:15:29.120 | it was very ironic, but also very hurtful.

00:15:31.160 | And that was one of the times I sent a bit

00:15:33.120 | of a nasty gram email to her manager.

00:15:37.040 | And I probably, it wasn't such the greatest move.

00:15:42.040 | And later on, I reached out to the manager,

00:15:45.520 | manager's manager and sort of cleared things up

00:15:49.560 | and she was understanding, thankfully.

00:15:52.000 | So that was a real low point.

00:15:55.520 | I went from, let's say, doing quite well

00:16:00.320 | to barely scraping by in terms of the amount of income

00:16:03.000 | I was bringing in.

00:16:04.160 | So between May and September, I lost like,

00:16:07.360 | you know, many, many, I lost a lot of business

00:16:11.840 | and I just, it took a while.

00:16:15.760 | And oddly enough, the thing that brought me

00:16:19.720 | sort of out of the tailspin was I got a job

00:16:23.360 | as a contractor at Facebook, which I hated.

00:16:26.040 | And I ended up quitting after like six months

00:16:28.000 | 'cause I really didn't enjoy the position

00:16:30.080 | or the group I was working with.

00:16:32.120 | But at that point, I had started picking up more work

00:16:34.800 | and sort of got back to the level I needed

00:16:37.000 | in terms of income.

00:16:37.960 | And so some of these things, I think,

00:16:40.600 | dealing with low points are out of, you know,

00:16:42.680 | the pandemic was certainly not in any of our control

00:16:45.240 | and it affected millions and millions of people.

00:16:49.080 | And, you know, losing a job compared to some of the things

00:16:51.760 | that happened and all the people that lost their life

00:16:55.040 | sort of puts it in perspective.

00:16:56.800 | Those low points I've had, whether it's been

00:17:00.360 | because of, you know, the stress of a child

00:17:02.320 | or a pandemic or the other situation I described

00:17:07.320 | where I was sort of made a stupid mistake

00:17:10.880 | and got pushed out of an agency lead role

00:17:14.000 | were both open doors, but also like,

00:17:17.680 | I think you, Troy, you got at it.

00:17:19.560 | It's, you learn what you really want

00:17:24.560 | and you learn a bit about where you wanna be

00:17:26.640 | and what kind of organization you wanna be in.

00:17:28.080 | And I think most importantly,

00:17:29.520 | it's not just what the organization is selling.

00:17:33.000 | It's about the people you're working with, the culture,

00:17:37.080 | you know, the teams, how teams are motivated

00:17:40.680 | to get their work done and, you know,

00:17:42.760 | what incentives they use.

00:17:43.960 | And a lot of it is intangible.

00:17:46.240 | It's trust, it's support, emotional support

00:17:50.720 | in a lot of ways, you know, it's setting realistic goals

00:17:53.680 | like Tammy was sharing about your experience managing

00:17:57.480 | the search engine person.

00:17:58.720 | And I think these low points hopefully

00:18:02.400 | make us a little more knowledgeable

00:18:03.640 | as we move through our careers and, you know,

00:18:06.720 | we keep going.

00:18:09.920 | I mean, really, what other choice do we have?

00:18:13.400 | I think I'm thankful for the low points

00:18:18.400 | because they helped me appreciate the better points.

00:18:21.680 | And I think that's a bit of, you know,

00:18:24.120 | just growing a little bit more mature

00:18:26.440 | is being able to take, you know, the good and the bad

00:18:29.640 | and really stay in the space where you know who you are.

00:18:33.560 | I know who I am.

00:18:34.400 | I know what my strengths are.

00:18:36.040 | I know my weaknesses are.

00:18:38.040 | And hopefully I'm aware of them most of the time.

00:18:41.080 | And, you know, I can get a harsh critique

00:18:43.760 | or over, you know, hyperbolic praise,

00:18:47.000 | but, you know, in either case,

00:18:48.640 | I still know who I am

00:18:51.440 | and I know what value I bring to the work.

00:18:55.960 | And I think that's an important part,

00:18:57.280 | the maturity part of dealing with those low and high points.

00:19:00.360 | - Thanks again for watching and listening.

00:19:03.000 | Next week, we'll be talking about dealing with unemployment.

00:19:06.080 | So make sure you hit like, subscribe,

00:19:08.240 | and hit that notification bell

00:19:09.480 | so you don't miss the episode.

00:19:10.960 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Navigating Career Low Points: Real Stories and Lessons Learned

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