On changing jobs and when things won't change
(This is part two in a series of posts about figuring out if a new job is a good fit for you. As before, this has been in drafts for a while and is not about my current job! Part 1 in the series is here.)
No company is perfect. No matter if you’re at a tiny new startup or a big organization with decades of practice, there will always be things that could be improved, or things that aren’t a good fit. Part of the challenge when starting a new job is figuring out if your new company is a good fit for you. What makes a good fit will change over time as you and your needs change, and there can be cases where something just isn’t a good match — such as working at a large enterprise when you really prefer early-stage startups — without being objectively bad.
If your new workplace is just a mismatch, but there’s nothing truly wrong with it — such as being a big organization when you prefer small ones, or using Ruby when you prefer PHP, or doing Agile when you hate meetings — then it’s probably not worth trying to change things. And if you find yourself in a place that’s cartoon-villain-level bad, where the product is a puppy-kicking machine and managers drink fresh unicorn tears during meetings, then you should probably just run for the nearest exit. But what if you find yourself at a place that’s a bit dysfunctional, but you think it has the potential for improvement?
One of the big rules of camping is to leave the campsite better than you found it. That means things like “don’t leave your trash behind” and “if you find some trash, take it with you even if it wasn’t yours because that makes it better for the next visitors”. It’s a reminder that we have a collective responsibility to keep things enjoyable and make things better for each other. Most people I’ve met want to see people (and teams, and organizations) be their best selves, to try and improve things both for themselves and for people who are hired in after them. I’ve seen a lot of people try to help their organizations grow and change for the better, and I’ve even seen a fair number of them succeed.
However, I’ve also seen a lot of people burn out doing this.
The challenge here is that some organizations don’t want to change. There can be various reasons why, ranging from the fact that the system works for the people with the authority to change it, to “people agree on the fact that things need to be different but not on the direction or the how”, all the way to “change is hard, even when people want it”. It’s not always easy to overcome the inertia of old habits. So how can you, as a new employee, try to get a feel for whether or not an organization is willing to change?
The biggest indicator I’ve seen of organizations that are unwilling to change is the refusal to admit that anything is a systemic problem. There are various warning signs you can look out for here:
Lack of communication
Problems communicating almost always lead to problems changing, because you can’t change unless you can communicate effectively to figure out what needs to be changed and what direction you want to take things in going forward.
Radio silence. A deadline whooshes by in the night and the only sound heard about it is crickets chirping. Admitting that there is a problem is usually the first step to fixing it, so when there’s visible issues like missed deadlines and failed goals being seen but nobody’s talking about it (at least not publicly), that’s never a good sign.
Taking everything private. This is not to say that every single conversation has to be had in the public eye, but if your company insists that every conversation be taken from public slack channels to DMs, for example, this can be another subtle way of brushing off complaints. With less visibility, it’s easier to pretend that everything is fine and avoid having tough conversations about what’s really going on.
No organizational learning. Not every incident needs a full formal post-mortem, but a consistent lack of discussion around what went poorly (or even what went well) shows a lack of reflection that can also point towards a culture of sweeping things under the rug.
Shooting the messenger
While the above communication issues can be benign — effective communication is a skill that has to be learned like any other, and nobody is born knowing how to do this perfectly — the points in this next section often do point towards an unwillingness to change, starting with an unwillingness to admit that anything needs to change.
Nitpicking communication. An org that is unwilling to change will focus on how you said something and ignore the substance of what you said. This might mean arguing about the definitions of specific words you used, complaining about a choice of emoji, or telling you that you used the wrong channel or process to voice your complaint.
Framing it as “being offended”. If an organization can paint the picture that there are just a few individuals who are “offended” or disgruntled, they can claim that there’s only a problem with a few individuals, not with the company as a whole. This works equally well with claiming that people are “too sensitive” or other such terms that seek to shift the problem entirely onto the individuals doing the complaining, not the substance of what they’re complaining about.
Focusing on intent over impact. An organization that’s avoiding change or accountability will focus solely on the intent of their actions, saying that “he meant well” or “we’re trying to help” while completely ignoring any discussion around real-world impact and harm. Some will go one step further and then turn the conversation around on the person raising the issue, criticizing them for not “assuming good intent” as a way of further shutting down discussion.
Allergies to process
As companies grow, they generally need to have more process in place. What worked for a 5 person startup won’t work at 50 people, and what worked with 50 won’t work with 500. I’ll be the first one to admit that too much process (or process for its own sake) isn’t useful, but consistently refusing to have any process isn’t good either, and can indicate an unwillingness to accept the change that comes with growth.
No formal feedback structures. At any sufficiently large organization, someone will need to collect feedback to know if things are going well or not throughout the org as a whole. How can people give feedback if they have a problem with something on their team, or with their manager, or a concern about how things are going? It can be too easy to say “oh, people would say something if they had a problem, nobody’s said something, ergo no problems” and ignoring the power dynamics that keep that from being realistic.
No HR department. I know that HR departments are not magic bullets — there are plenty of articles out there on how HR is not your friend and exists to serve the company, not the employees. But what it often represents is a structure and a process for resolving issues, at least the promise that “you can raise concerns and we’ll protect you from retaliation” or “here’s the steps you should follow if you have a problem with someone in your reporting chain”. Sometimes orgs want to believe that they would never have those sorts of problems so badly that they refuse to take any steps that would help prevent or resolve them.
Sometimes, leadership within an organization knows that there are problems, but avoids talking about them publicly because they “don’t want to worry people” by drawing attention to them. Let me tell you now, people can tell when there’s issues. Pretending that everything’s fine doesn’t solve anything, and can actually seriously undermine trust within the organization — people will start to wonder if leadership can’t tell that something is wrong, or if they just don’t care. A simple statement of acknowledgement — “yup, we missed that deadline, we’re going to try to get on track by the next one” or “yup, there’s been a lot of turnover, we see it too” — can go a long way towards repairing trust by showing that you acknowledge the same issues that people are seeing in their day-to-day work and that you aren’t just sweeping them under the rug.
A tendency among leadership to focus only on the positives while ignoring problems can end up feeling disorienting to people. For example, seeing a company talk publicly about how inclusive they are while on the inside you see people from underrepresented groups being underpaid and under-leveled can start to feel gaslighty, and again can make people wonder if you don’t see the problems or if you just don’t care. Honest conversations help build trust. Conversations that deny problems and paper over them with corporate-sounding HR-speak can make your employees feel like Picard, screaming “THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS” while HR sends out invites to webinars to talk about how great the fifth light is.
I was reading an article about the pandemic and this quote jumped out at me:
“Droplets and surfaces are very convenient for people in power - all of the responsibility is on the individual,” he said. “On the other hand, if you admit it is airborne, institutions, governments and companies have to do something.”
That idea — of changing the narrative so that the responsibility for the situation lies on individuals instead of institutions — is mirrored in a lot of corporate cultures. It can turn real issues, such as inequitable pay or promotion practices, into individual problems, rather than systemic ones, and puts the onus on individual employees to change their expectations or the words they use, rather than on the organization to acknowledge and address these wide-spread issues.
So when asking yourself if your organization is capable of change, and if you should bother staying and keep trying to help things improve, I think what you really want to ask yourself is, does the organization admit that it is airborne? If people admit that there are problems and at the very least agree that something should be done to fix them, there’s probably still hope. But if they’re pretending that everything is fine and that any problems are just a few disgruntled individuals misinterpreting their good intent? That’s not an organization that wants to change. And the odds of getting an entire organization — or even one team — to change when it doesn’t want to are not good. Trying will only change you — into a burnt-out shell of a person.
If you’ve read through all this and found yourself realizing that the company you joined has issues and seems unwilling to even talk about working on them, you might be feeling a bit disheartened, especially if you took this new job hoping that it would be an improvement over your previous one. You might be feeling discouraged about the idea of moving on again and wondering again if the values in practice at the next place will finally match the ones stated on the company’s website. In Part 3 of this series, I’ll talk about ways to approach your next job search to try and maximize your chances of finding a place that’s a good fit for you.