>> You're listening to Let's Talk Jobs, where we give you practical insights into jobs and careers. Have you ever felt like you've hit rock bottom in your career? Maybe you're struggling to advance, or maybe your manager is putting you down. Whatever it is, you're struggling to survive. In this episode, Jesse, Troy, and I talk about our career low points.

What we did about it, and then what we learned from it. All right, let's get started. >> So timeline-wise, I was at the agency, I got fired. I had a period of unemployment, which was soul-searching 101, and then I finally got a contract job on the client side, which is Logitech, which turned into a full-time employment.

I'm going to name her here because we've since reconciled, so I think it's okay. So Regina was my manager at the time. She and I did not get along. Prior to her managing me, I reported directly to the director, and I was a senior web marketing project manager. I started my career in project management, that's actually was my wheelhouse.

When she came in, she started undermining everything. I felt like I was thrown on the bus. As a matter of fact, I don't know if you guys know this, but we used to have that cafe, and it was not a really big cafe. She would hold our one-on-ones in that cafe, and she would berate me in front of everybody.

She would call like, "Are you an idiot?" She would say like, "Are you effing kidding me? What the eff was that?" Those are the literal words she would use. Like, "Are you stupid? What were you thinking?" It killed me, you guys. Again, this is coming right off the back of the other agency, another female leader.

And as a matter of fact, the leader of her manager is also female. And so I was having this horrible, horrible experience. How I turned it around in this case was, actually, this is a pivot point in my career, because I made a decision. I was like, "I am tired." First of all, I'm tired of these 10 cassette tape of self-help tapes.

I'm done with them. And I was like, "I'm tired of someone beating me down." And I knew the quality of my work. Like, if I talked to my other peers within the marketing team, they all said I'm doing good work. So there's something misaligned, right? And I tried to have conversations with her to uncover where it's coming from.

She never volunteered any information. It was very guarded. I didn't know what conversations were taking place between her and her manager either. It was all shielded from me. I thought I was being managed out. So I decided I'm just going to focus on just doing good work. I went up a few gears and I over-indexed on just working hard, pushing good work, documentation.

And at the end of the day, if someone's going to let me go, at least I felt good about what I was able to do. What ended up happening is there... Again, I don't know all the conversations that took place above me, but eventually she got let go. That thumbs up from Zoom feels a little inappropriate.

Coover is the product manager of Zoom. I turned it off and it's still happening. So she was let go. And I heard some of the reasons were the things that she was throwing me under the bus about, it didn't jive with the reality of my output. And so I think she was exposed in some degrees.

And I started becoming really successful. And then within Logitech, I ended up turning that around and I shifted from the consumer to the B2B side of the business. And that's when I really started to thrive. So I think it's a lesson on just staying true to yourself, having confidence in what you can do.

And then just, you know, like in the Bible, there's a saying like, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give God what is God's." And the whole idea is like, hey, if you're going to work, put everything into that and focus on that. And if you're something else, put yourself into that.

Don't try to blend the two. Now what I appreciate about this is, so Regina, clearly also during her departure, went through some stuff as well. She had some difficult conversations with her manager. And what I didn't know at the time was some of that was probably being projected down to me.

I just didn't have the maturity or guidance from any mentors to ask the right questions, to figure out what was really going on with the manager. I think one of you guys mentioned before, like understanding what's going on, happening a layer above, your immediate layer and having context. That would have been really helpful.

But she reached out back to me. I think it was like a year after it happened. Because I think this, she was like, "Go." And then she asked me, "Hey, you know, like, if I ever treated you poorly, I apologize because that was happening to me as well." And she was going through her self-realization.

So I emailed her back. I was like, "Regina, it's all good. Like, as a matter of fact, your apology gives me a lot of closure. So thank you for that." So like, we're not friends, but if I met her at a dog park or whatever, I would gladly say hello and start a conversation.

The other manager, I have no closure over. So if I saw her, it would be very awkward. And even to this day, with the amount of anxiety I built over that, I don't know if I have the maturity to handle the conversation without being prepared. - Yeah. Well, it wouldn't be worth your time to be, right?

That's the... - Yeah. - But yeah, the point of, you know, outside of the scope of the work context, your relationship with people after the facts, years later, can be totally different, right? - Yeah. - In the work environment, it's rarely personal. That's one thing I've learned, right? It's rarely personal.

Usually there's a lot of external forces that are driving people's behavior, I think. - Mm-hmm. - Including your own, and that you may not even be in touch with. So that's, after 25 years, I can say that, you know, it's also easier said than done, but like, it rarely has to do with who you are as a person.

So like, as hard as it is, try not to let any of these challenges affect you at your core, 'cause it's not about you. - Yeah, and it's critical to your self-development as a human, right? 'Cause you learn about your weaknesses, you learn about your strengths, you learn about resilience.

I think it takes maturity to be able to process it through some of those lenses, but if there's anyone listening to this and you're going through that, know that, first of all, whether it's, what is it, imposter syndrome, or whatever it is, like, you're hired because you're good at your job and you know what you're doing.

And so don't undermine or underestimate your capability. However, find out where your opportunity for growth is, right? And it's easier to say as, you know, since we have more user experience, but for people who are younger in their careers, where your identity might be tied to your performance, know that you bring something to the table, but also know that there is always opportunity for growth.

And I'm kind of curious for you guys, you know, like that was my absolute career low point, 'cause it was tied to performance as well as my sense of self-value. Like, what was your low points? And like, were you able to turn that around or are you still struggling with it?

Like, what's your story? - You wanna go first, Jesse? - Yeah, go for it, Troy. - You want me to go? - Yeah, go for it. - Yeah, so I mean, one of the companies I was hired for in digital marketing, the first week on the job, they fired the CEO and the head of engineering.

And I ended up being there for three years, but it was a incredibly tumultuous three years. I had issues with my manager. I had issues with trying to understand what my responsibility was. I had that situation where I was reporting directly to the CEO for a while. And at one point I reported directly to the head of sales who didn't really want marketing under his purview.

A really difficult situation. And simultaneously I had my second child and we had made the move up to where I live now, up in Sonoma County, North of San Francisco, because we wanted to raise our kids in a better place. And we were trying to buy a house. I eventually, three years later, was laid off.

And partially looking back, like I totally understand why I was laid off, because it wasn't because of my skills. It was because I was really insecure about it and saying all the wrong things and showing my insecurity rather than just focusing on my work, because I fit the profile of what they were trying to do, but I couldn't get out of my head.

And so, I think that the circumstances of having a young family sort of made that an unwinnable situation for me. I couldn't not be in a constant state of unease and panic at times. Looking back, I try to give myself, I'm still disappointed that didn't work out because on paper, I felt like I was the perfect candidate and I loved the story of the company that I was working for.

So it's still, it's been 10 years since all of this played out. It's still hard for me to reconcile how it all spiraled from there, but there is so much I learned from that trauma. And you know what? As a family, we found our way out of that. I saw the writing on the wall before the layoff and I ended up back in the workplace less than a month after I was laid off because wheels were in motion.

So I credit myself for having the tenacity despite being devastated at the same time. And then I try to reflect back. And again, I feel like a little bit of a broken record, but when you have a really difficult situation like that, the more you can lean into it, the more you're gonna learn and the more you're gonna benefit from that later on.

I learned a lot about future jobs from there, what I didn't want. And I think that's really important, just as important as learning what you want is understanding what you don't want, both in a job situation in terms of what you're doing, but also in an organizational structure, how companies are managed, how divisions are managed.

So it was an awful time from a work environment. It was a great time personally with young kids and a newborn, and I learned a heck of a lot. - Thanks, Troy, for sharing that. I think I can definitely relate to having a newborn and it really intensifying the level of stress and everything, lack of sleep and all of that.

And it affects, it affected me. I know when my daughter was very young, I had real challenges. I was at Logitech actually, but I got through it somehow. I had an experience later on, was a low point in terms of the amount of income I was bringing in. I had become a freelancer and I was consulting.

And so in 2020, at the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic shut everything down, I had seven clients. I was making a considerable amount more than I was making when I was a corporate employee, a agency employee. And one of my clients, the pandemic hit, everything shut down, unemployment went way up, and I was affected on about half of the business I had.

And it wasn't always an easy process to go through. And in some cases when you know it's coming and maybe the client engagement has run its course and it's time, it's just not working out, then it's time to move on and you separate amicably. I had one client who I had been working for for about a year in a creative lead capacity, and then hired a new manager.

And this manager was a descendant of William Faulkner. And just oddly enough. And so I thought when this person was brought on, it would be sort of revolutionary for the business, but also for the writing team, 'cause we had like a writer's descendant leading the writing team. I didn't build a very strong relationship with her, but maybe a month later, and this was right during the week after in San Francisco, the mayor called a shelter in place order and then we didn't go into the office anymore.

And yeah, I get this call to get on a call with HR and the manager and a video call, but she didn't call, she didn't join the video call. She just called in by phone and said, you're impacted, changing priorities, restructuring, blah, blah, blah. And this is your last day.

And I was sort of expecting it, but not expecting it. I was blindsided, but also it was the manner in which it was done. Like she didn't even want to get on the video call. And then I sort of started asking questions 'cause I was a little upset. I said, well, why?

I don't understand. And we just said, I thought I was performing at a good level and meeting my goals, et cetera. And then she just hung up. She just hung up on the phone and I was sitting there looking at the HR person and the HR person was like, it was awkward, and then that ended.

And then I remember that day, the same company, which was a staffing agency sent out a mass email to all the freelancers that worked there saying, we're there for you. We got your back. You're gonna get through the, and I was, it was very ironic, but also very hurtful.

And that was one of the times I sent a bit of a nasty gram email to her manager. And I probably, it wasn't such the greatest move. And later on, I reached out to the manager, manager's manager and sort of cleared things up and she was understanding, thankfully. So that was a real low point.

I went from, let's say, doing quite well to barely scraping by in terms of the amount of income I was bringing in. So between May and September, I lost like, you know, many, many, I lost a lot of business and I just, it took a while. And oddly enough, the thing that brought me sort of out of the tailspin was I got a job as a contractor at Facebook, which I hated.

And I ended up quitting after like six months 'cause I really didn't enjoy the position or the group I was working with. But at that point, I had started picking up more work and sort of got back to the level I needed in terms of income. And so some of these things, I think, dealing with low points are out of, you know, the pandemic was certainly not in any of our control and it affected millions and millions of people.

And, you know, losing a job compared to some of the things that happened and all the people that lost their life sort of puts it in perspective. Those low points I've had, whether it's been because of, you know, the stress of a child or a pandemic or the other situation I described where I was sort of made a stupid mistake and got pushed out of an agency lead role were both open doors, but also like, I think you, Troy, you got at it.

It's, you learn what you really want and you learn a bit about where you wanna be and what kind of organization you wanna be in. And I think most importantly, it's not just what the organization is selling. It's about the people you're working with, the culture, you know, the teams, how teams are motivated to get their work done and, you know, what incentives they use.

And a lot of it is intangible. It's trust, it's support, emotional support in a lot of ways, you know, it's setting realistic goals like Tammy was sharing about your experience managing the search engine person. And I think these low points hopefully make us a little more knowledgeable as we move through our careers and, you know, we keep going.

I mean, really, what other choice do we have? I think I'm thankful for the low points because they helped me appreciate the better points. And I think that's a bit of, you know, just growing a little bit more mature is being able to take, you know, the good and the bad and really stay in the space where you know who you are.

I know who I am. I know what my strengths are. I know my weaknesses are. And hopefully I'm aware of them most of the time. And, you know, I can get a harsh critique or over, you know, hyperbolic praise, but, you know, in either case, I still know who I am and I know what value I bring to the work.

And I think that's an important part, the maturity part of dealing with those low and high points. - Thanks again for watching and listening. Next week, we'll be talking about dealing with unemployment. So make sure you hit like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell so you don't miss the episode.