Lets talk about that part of the career curve that makes you lie awake at night and sweat. It is the point where your career progress falters.<\/p>\n
You will know when that happens, because your comments in meetings start being politely ignored. If you persist in being heard, you will be removed from the meeting distribution list and given another assignment. People start avoiding you and no one will go to lunch with you any more.<\/p>\n
You are being perceived as a liability by your coworkers. Whatever you have, they don’t want to be contaminated by it. You walk around with a hunted look, trying to force a confident smile. It is a truly awful time for you, and there is only one way to handle it.<\/p>\n
You must first recognize that it is only a matter of time before
\nthey get rid of you. If it has gotten to this point, there is no way
\nthat you can save yourself. You must transfer to another group
\nimmediately or find work elsewhere.<\/p>\n
In either event, you must take stock of what you have been doing
\nthat has gotten you in such disfavor. To make it simple, let’s assume
\nthat you have actually been doing valuable work.<\/p>\n
You may have been in the wrong group all the time. If you are an
\nethical person, you will make some groups very uncomfortable, even if
\nyou are keeping your mouth shut. All whistleblowers get fired and those
\nwho disagree with what is being done are the first to be let go.<\/p>\n
You may not have had what it took to play on this team. You may have
\nbeen making sure that customer got what they ordered, while everyone
\nelse was safely out of range and remaining politically correct.<\/p>\n
The fastest way to recover is to pull in another job, preferably with someone who has a work ethic more like your own.<\/p>\n
The most important thing you can do is to take a good look at what
\nyou did that got you into this situation, and figure out where you went
\nwrong. It might have been in the original interview, where you missed
\nthe fact that this new group was a bunch of pirahnas!<\/p>\n
You may have signed up for a job that couldn’t be done. In fact, you
\nmay actually have been hired as a handy scapegoat by someone trying to
\ncover up an earlier mistake.<\/p>\n
There can be all sorts of reasons why they don’t like you, but the
\nmost probable reason is that you make someone very uncomfortable, and
\nthey will only feel better when they have gotten rid of you.<\/p>\n
If you have made them uncomfortable enough, they will go to great
\nlengths to give you a bad recommendation. One of my managers at Sun
\nprevented one of my coworkers from transferring elsewhere by secretly
\nputting out negative recommendations for more than a year. It was
\neventually discovered and she was let go herself.<\/p>\n
The best solution is to get recommendations from others in your
\ngroup and tell your new employer that you and your ex-boss didn’t have
\nthe right "chemistry".<\/p>\n
The bottom line is, as always, that you missed a clue somewhere and
\nall of your effort has done little more than embarrass someone above
\nyou. You may learn more tact, or you may join a better group, but you
\nneed to get out and rebuild your confidence, by doing a worthwhile job
\nelsewhere.<\/p>\n
The sooner you do it, the more quickly you will regain your
\nconfidence and continue your upward career trajectory. Read my earlier
\nposts on finding and keeping work to fill in the details of recovering
\nfrom this situation.<\/p>\n
You will survive this. You may even look back and laugh…some day.
Meanwhile, get yourself to a safe place and regroup. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lets talk about that part of the career curve that makes you lie awake at night and sweat. It is the point where your career progress falters.<\/p>\n
You will know when that happens, because your comments in meetings start being politely ignored. If you persist in being heard, you will be removed from the meeting distribution list and given another assignment. People start avoiding you and no one will go to lunch with you any more.<\/p>\n
You are being perceived as a liability by your coworkers. Whatever you have, they don’t want to be contaminated by it. You walk around with a hunted look, trying to force a confident smile. It is a truly awful time for you, and there is only one way to handle it.<\/p>\n