No One Seems to Understand Why I Left My World-Famous, Prestigious Job. I Had No Choice.
Slate · L · trust 38/100
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A couple of years ago, I left my job at a prestigious company for a job that was better on paper. It pays more, the company has better benefits and a better everyday work culture, and the role, which was created for me, is (again, on paper) my dream role. One downside is that the new company isn’t as prestigious. (The old one is world-famous and people who work there are treated like celebrities.) Another, as I have found since beginning my work there, is that its bureaucracy limits what is really possible for people in my position to achieve. My new peers have asked me questions like: “Why did you come here?”
Aside from this on-paper comparison, the actual act of leaving my previous company was devastating to me, the hardest professional decision I’ve ever had to make, and downright humiliating. I never would have done it if I hadn’t felt I had to. My manager had given me one of those horrendous performance reviews that said my work was subpar going back to prior years (when I was getting great reviews) and citing a piece of work as an example of my poor performance for which, at the time, I received positive feedback. Worse, I was not given any metrics or advice on how to cure my deficiencies. If you just looked at that performance review, it was a message that I should find my way out the door. Except that, along with the written review, I was told verbally that I was not actually being managed out. For that whole year, I tried to do praiseworthy and non-controversial work. But I also started talking to other companies about moving, just in case.
At the end of the year, I went to management and said: Here’s what I’ve done this year, and I do not want to leave, but I do have this other job offer. I shared the salary offer but said explicitly I wasn’t looking for my current bosses to match it; I only wanted them to know I had the offer and could leave if they felt I hadn’t fixed my problems. I was told I was not being fired, but that the penalties that had been imposed on me as a result of my prior poor performance would continue indefinitely. I was shocked to learn I had been penalized in a measurable way, as no one had told me about that in any explicit terms, but I had noticed throughout the year that whenever I tried to exceed a certain metric in my work, I was blocked. Because of this, I took the job that was offered to me at the other company.
I thought everyone knew why I left, as my industry is super gossipy and catty, and others before me were forced to make the same moves. Imagine my surprise when I learned last week that all my colleagues think I abandoned them and that I somehow thought the place itself was bad. This is what my former boss, who had given me the bad performance review, has been saying to everyone. I had reached some level of renown for my work that I guess made it implausible that I’d had to leave because I wasn’t good enough to be there, which is the story I had been telling myself in my head even as I tried to seem excited about my move. It seems I did too good a job of seeming happy. In their eyes, I’m a traitor on top of everything else. I don’t know what to do or how to convince them that’s not at all what happened, and I want to convince them, because I always thought that when the boss who didn’t like me left, I could try to return. That is what is happening now. I want to show my former colleagues how much I miss my old job, but I feel that no one will believe me, since I’ve spent the past two years trying to be good at and positive about my new job—that’s just what I ought to have been doing, isn’t it? I feel devastated and humiliated all over again. Help!
Please do not turn right back around. You escaped a manipulative, devious, abusive boss at a company that smells like a cult. Good for you! Let’s talk about your past workplace first, then your current workplace and any future ones. Prestige is fine, as long as it’s earned and isn’t abused—but in the case of your former employer, it probably isn’t and it definitely is. Their salaries and benefits are below industry standards, and their work culture, performance review systems, and management are arbitrary and cruel. The company can pay employees less and give erratic feedback because the world treats them like celebrities—and because working there has become a central part of their identity (sound familiar?). Your former boss is lying about your departure to enforce an Us-Versus-Them mentality; this loyalty campaign aims to control and isolate the remaining staff. If your former peers believe you’re a traitor, it’s because they’re pickled in the company’s prestige propaganda.
To reestablish some basic professional norms, please know that leaving a prestigious organization for a better job is routine and is not abandonment. Quitting a job for any reason does not make you a traitor. Your understanding of what your former peers think about you is imperfect, and if they really do resent you for leaving, that’s not your problem. Other people (like your new colleagues) may believe the hype about your former employer, but you know the reality. Lots of companies or professions look glamorous from the outside but are run by a pit of vipers on the inside . You were right to leave when you did and then to focus on succeeding at your new job.
Your former job really did a number on your confidence and sense of self. Take advantage of the good benefits at your new job and find a therapist who can help you work through your feelings of regret, humiliation, and devastation. You deserve instead to feel relief that you escaped an inhumane situation, pride in your new work, and enthusiasm about your future.
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