I have a new section on here called “Hire Me” with all the pertinent details. I’m trying a different approach to finding a new job this time… I’m tired of interviews and cover letters and resumes and the whole “game” of hiring. Hiring a new employee should be WYSIWYG. I have nothing to hide, and I’m not apologizing for being an equal-opportunity ass-kicker. If you can’t handle someone who’s driven to shake things up in the name of kicking ass, then you can’t handle me.
On the other hand, if you think you can handle me coming in and taking charge of whatever I can, then read on.
I was flipping through the channels the other night and came across one of my favorite Clint Eastwood films of all time, Heartbreak Ridge. Mumbling, drunk, and in jail, Eastwood’s character (Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway) utters the prophetic line:
You can rob me… you can starve me, you can beat me, and you can kill me… just don’t bore me.
And right now… I’m bored. Bored out of my skull. My 12 years of experience — including all the experience in design, branding, ad concepting, copywriting, brand strategy development, and market positioning — are atrophying while I sit here doing production work. In Illustrator. While being told by my boss the nuts-and-bolts how-to on how to do what I’m doing, talking to me with a mothering tone as if I’m some fresh-faced n00b who never used anything more powerful than Word before. And entire time I’m being schooled I’m trying my best to feign interest and respect, and not to just jump out of my chair, hop in my car, and split.
What the hell.
I’ve developed ad campaigns that blew the most optimistic projections out of the water by a factor of 10. I’ve presented to a board of directors. I’ve sold great ideas to the most critical skeptics. I’ve developed brand books. I’ve done direct mail and magazine ads, print and web and multimedia, collateral and convention. I’ve set up servers, developed backup strategies, written scripts, installed, upgraded, researched, and recommended. I’ve crunched numbers, identified bottlenecks, recommended solutions to problems people didn’t even know they had, and developed procedures & workflows to make things run efficiently.
My experience in this time is that:
- Few managers lead
- The managers who don’t lead still expect the people under them to follow (”Because I’m the boss, damnit!”)
- No one will get out of my way
In short, I’ve been a Marine, even after I got out… Like the saying goes, “You can take the Marine out of the Corps, but you can never take the Corps out of the Marine.” I want to either lead or be led; most places offer neither the opportunity to lead, nor a leader to follow. At every place I’ve worked, I’ve reached a point where underutilization meets glass ceiling. It’s suffocating.
And boring.
And it sucks dick.
And it’s why I’m on the hunt for a new job.
Again.
— geek out
