After I finished graduate school at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School at the end of 2013, I moved back up to my home state of Connecticut. I was working a part-time internship/contract role in Maryland while getting my Master’s degree at Hopkins, and it all ended at the same time.
I had lived in Maryland since graduating college in 2011, and after making some awesome friendships I wanted to stick around. But it wasn’t meant to be. Despite a number of strong interviews, I couldn’t find a job in Maryland and I returned back to Connecticut to live with my parents. I lived on my own while living in Maryland so despite getting my Master’s degree, in some ways moving back home felt like a step backwards.
I often joked with some of my friends that right after college, all my friends moved home and I moved into my own apartment. Right as my friends were finally moving out of their parents’ homes, I was moving back in.
It was now early 2014 and while living in Newtown, Connecticut, I was interviewing for jobs in both Connecticut and Maryland. I was running out of money, and I was running out of money fast.
I didn’t have the luxury of choosing the best company. I needed a job – any job – so that I could pay rent to my parents, buy food, and pay down my formidable student loan debt. Things weren’t being handed to me and I had to earn my way in the world; my parents weren’t giving me a free pass.
There was one job in Greenwich, Connecticut working as a “business analyst” for a hedge fund that caught my eye on an online job board. My dream career at that point in my life was marketing, digital marketing, and/or marketing analytics. But when you have to pay the bills and have no gas money, that’s when you know it’s time to take any job you can find.
I reluctantly and embarrassingly borrowed money from my parents so that I could fill my gas tank, and I drove down to Greenwich to interview at this hedge fund. In the interview, I felt like I belonged there. My background, coupled with my Master’s degree in finance, made me a great fit. They mentioned I would be a business analyst and could add value in improving business processes. I got the job.
A Nightmare on Hedge Fund Street
I was working in an area where a lot of hedge funds were based, and what I thought to be a dream job quickly turned into a nightmare. They immediately had me doing SQL, database engineering, and programming visual basic macros. It was beyond insane – people who were in computer science for decades said they had no idea how to do what I was being asked to do. I was programming the back-end of excel.
Also, they put me “underneath” a guy, Greg, who was the same age as me. For the record, age means absolutely nothing in the workplace. The challenge here is that while this guy was talented at SQL and databases, he was a horrible leader. He gave me impossible projects, little help, and unreasonable deadlines.
I went to my boss, Aron – not the guy they put me underneath who was the same age as me, but my real boss who was the actual head of the team I was on – and requested a sit-down. He was a friendly guy, and shortly thereafter we had a chat.
I said, “Aron, I have no idea what I’m doing with SQL and Visual Basic. What makes matters worse is that Greg is very difficult to work with, he isn’t helping me.”
Aron said, “Jeff, we have no expectations of you right now.” He also said, “Greg is a good guy.”
That was what my boss emphasized – that there were no expectations of me in terms of goals I needed to achieve. It was a loving response and he was doing his best to relieve me of the pressure I felt. The challenge with his approach is that he didn’t address the root cause of the situation. I wasn’t necessarily looking for “no expectations”. I was looking to do the job I had signed up for, which was to be a business analyst.
What I could have done differently is be more direct about the fact that I was put into a job that I didn’t sign up for. I was lied to in the interview.
What my boss could have done differently is acknowledge and address the root cause of the situation, instead of providing a well-intentioned but relatively useless surface-level solution.
As a leader, it’s your job to address the reality of the situation.
My boss had his blinders on when he emphasized how Greg is a good guy. Of course, Greg is going to suck-up to him – he’s the boss! I’m not saying my boss Aron should have turned on Greg for no reason to suddenly side with me. What I am saying is that Aron could have gotten rid of or at least reduced his biases to better hear my point-of-view. It’s OK that Aron liked Greg. But Aron didn’t seem to understand that Greg was treating me poorly; Greg was treating me like I was his lackey and Aron didn’t see or fix that.
It Got Worse
After this conversation with my boss Aron, he made it clear to Greg that there were no expectations for my performance. The reality is that I was being paid to learn. What at first seemed like a gift, though, turned into something worse.
I was still doing a job I despised. I was doing 100% computer programming, something that I didn’t study in school or sign-up to do for this job. You might be thinking: why didn’t you speak up more? Good question. First off, yes, I could have spoken up more. But the situation was more nuanced than that. They didn’t have a need for me to do anything else, and there wasn’t another job at the hedge fund that was magically a better fit.
On top of that, teams within this hedge fund were very competitive with one another. The movie The Wolf of Wall Street has a large degree of truth to it. One time I joked with one of my colleagues about moving to another team, and my colleague said in a serious way, “Aron wouldn’t like that.”
It was true. Aron wouldn’t like that. It would be bad for Aron to lose a member of his team to another manager’s team.
With all of that said, when you grow a pair of balls you can choose to not care what people think and act in your own best interests. And I did that in other job situations, as you’ll see. But it also wasn’t as easy as it might seem to switch teams and make the situation better. The company pulled a bait and switch, having me do a job I truly didn’t like and expect to do. And Aron was very protective of his team.
At that point in my life, not yet twenty-five years old, I didn’t have the awareness that I could go over Aron’s head and have the change be put into place by a higher-level manager and company leader.
I wondered if I was doomed to work a job I hated for the rest of my life. I was a twenty-four-year-old kid and legitimately thinking this. While living in Maryland, after college, I had a string of tough jobs to pay the bills – working for Target (a retail company), working the phone lines for a software company, working in collections for a Fortune 500 company, selling oil – jobs that were all brutal.
I get that we all have to pay our dues. And every job, including a dream job, has parts to it that aren’t fun. But I had just spent $80,000 on a Master’s degree from one of the best schools in the world that was supposed to land me a job I actually wanted. At this point, the degree seemed like a piece of paper that didn’t actually do much once I got “in the door”; and a lot of the time, I was inadvertently getting in the wrong door.
These difficult thoughts weren’t coming out of nowhere. I had also been lied to in interviews down in Maryland. In the job where I was a salesman going around to companies and dealerships selling an expensive yet valuable kind of oil, I was supposed to be working the “Baltimore, Maryland” territory. No exaggeration – l ended up driving my own car all around the entire state of Maryland to find the right kind of people to talk to, so that I could sell the oil. Not exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up!
This was a big deal. I was leasing my car and had a certain number of miles I was “allowed” to drive each year. I had to pay twenty-five cents for every mile over that. Driving thousands of miles each month quickly adds up. On top of that, it was a commission-based job. Yes, they reimbursed travel expenses, but only after six to eight weeks. For weeks, I was going into all sorts of debt to fund my own job as I chased prospective buyers all around the state of Maryland.
I thought that once I got my Master’s degree in finance, I’d be able to settle into a business analyst job and leave the nightmare jobs from Maryland in the past. I share this backstory with you to show that I wasn’t some entitled, spoiled brat who expected the real world to be easy and everything to be handed to him. You have to do what you have to do in order to pay the bills. I was punched in the face by life time and time again, and this experience at the hedge fund nearly knocked me out of the boxing ring for good.
I felt like I had just flushed eighty-thousand dollars down the toilet. While going to graduate school, I worked for the Charles County Economic Development Department. I completed a two-year degree program in one-year. I took five classes, nearly twice as many classes as the full-time students were taking, while working. I had a two to three-hour commute one-way from my home in Baltimore to where I worked in Charles County, which was in the state of Maryland but farther south than Washington, D.C. This was while writing my first book, networking, doing public speaking, constantly traveling to Connecticut to visit my family, and doing all sorts of community service work.
I say this not to impress you. I say this to show that I thought for sure all this hard work would pay off. I thought for sure that I had paid my dues, so by the time I moved back up to Connecticut after working so hard to improve my life situation I would be able to get a better job. That’s why this disastrous hedge fund job was so depressing. I know that before I got this job I was broke and desperately needed it, but I was still interviewing for the career I thought I had studied for. If I had known it would be pure computer programming (which is a good job for some, but not for me), I would have not taken the job, even as broke as I was.
You’ll only as free as your willingness to walk away from something.
Finding An Outlet
Before I go into how I solved this disastrous job circumstance, I’d like to share with you how I coped with it. Solutions don’t always come right away, and sometimes we are stuck in undesirable situations for longer periods of time. In addition to sharing how to change your circumstances for the better and break free, this book is a resource for you while you’re in the middle of experiencing dysfunction.
I was a member of Toastmasters in Maryland – one of the best aspects of my time there – and wanted to continue being a part of this organization in Connecticut. My day job drained so much from me that I wasn’t sure I had the energy, but I decided to go to meetings to help give my life purpose again. I went to a Toastmasters club in Stamford, Connecticut that met every Tuesday evening.
I’ll never forget when I joined the club, I had twenty bucks in my wallet, and it was all the money I had to my name. I didn’t know if it would be enough to cover the fees, but it was exactly enough.
I ended up competing in the Toastmasters International Speech Contest, a 5 to 7-minute speech on any topic you choose. I won at the club, area, division, and district levels. At district, I competed against some of the best speakers from Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts and won first place, becoming one of the youngest district champions in Toastmasters history.
Later that year I flew to Kuala, Lumpur, Malaysia to compete in the semifinals of the World Championship of Public Speaking in front of eight-hundred people. I didn’t win, but it was in Kuala Lumpur where I met my current Dutch girlfriend. As I type this, I’m in my apartment in Rotterdam. I’ve been together with my girlfriend for more than three years and we’ve been living together for more than a year. It’s going well.
In a roundabout way, I can look back at this crazy hedge fund job and think how it led me to my girlfriend and a new life in the Netherlands. There’s a hidden opportunity in every setback.
I’m not telling you that you need to join Toastmasters (though you can if you’d like). What I’m saying is to get involved outside of your work. Perhaps it’s stopping by a Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, Kiwanis, Business Network International, or Lions Club meeting. Meetup.com has a plethora of interesting groups based on your interests. If you’re an expat living abroad like me, you can look into CouchSurfing and InterNations meetups. I’ve been to all of these groups at one point or another and got value from all of them.
Perhaps you’re not in the mood to network and meet others. I get it. You can also cultivate your passions, hobbies, and talents in your own time. Perhaps it’s working on a hobby and/or dream of yours for fifteen minutes before work, in a short break during work, or after work. It might mean taking a little time on the weekend for yourself to work on something you truly care about. Maybe you decide to volunteer at a local soup kitchen or homeless shelter.
I took one public speaking course in college as an elective. No one ever expected me to have an interest or be good at speaking in front of others. I was labeled in school as a “numbers guy” based on my studies in math, economics, and finance. But it’s a talent I decided to develop by joining a Toastmasters club in Maryland; the hard work not only eventually paid off but it gave my life meaning and purpose during a difficult time.
Find an outlet, an effective coping mechanism. Express your hobbies, talents, passions, and interests in a way that brings joy, entertainment, and value to yourself and others. Even if you don’t make any money with your hobbies, they still count. Helping others through your talents is a good way to find meaning and purpose while keeping your difficulties in perspective. At the very least, your hobby may only bring benefit to you and that’s perfectly OK. You, and you alone, are responsible for your happiness, even during unfair and challenging times.
Take Focused Action
Just about every motivational and inspirational piece of advice out there will tell you to take action. And that’s great as a general piece of advice but can also feel overwhelming and intimidating when your back is up against the wall and life sucks – I know first-hand.
Here’s my unique twist on it: take focused action in relation to where your interests intersect with the needs of others. This makes the process more practical.
How do you do this? Ask yourself when you were happiest in the jobs and careers you’ve previously had.
You were unhappy in every job you’ve ever had? I understand. Now really dig deep and search for any experience you ever had that brought you joy. This can be a way to transition to something better.
While living and studying abroad in Budapest, Hungary my junior year of college, I worked a full-time job in digital marketing. I went to classes on my lunch break and after work. It was a powerful experience and I genuinely enjoyed it.
Yet I always wrote it off as “just an experience during college”. We tend to write off our good memories and focus on the bad ones.
Although I never studied digital marketing, and I had to lug around this hefty $80,000 Master’s degree in finance, I felt drawn to the field of digital marketing. It seemed to be the best way to combine my experiences and interests in a way that brings value to the needs of companies. It wasn’t my ultimate final dream, but it was something I liked more than finance and was one hell of a step forward from programming visual basic macros.
When I got home from my miserable job, I applied like crazy through job boards like Indeed. I spent time each night putting out applications. I adjusted my resume a bit so that I could more easily catch the attention of hiring managers in digital marketing. When making transitions, it’s important to showcase the aspects of your experience most relevant to the job you’re applying for.
When It’s Time, It’s Time
I ended up finding a job elsewhere in Connecticut that was a fantastic fit. I was hired on as a digital marketing specialist. Better yet, they liked that I had a Master’s degree in finance and thought it would be useful for dealing with the numbers involved in digital marketing. When I got the job offer, on a Friday, I quit my job at the hedge fund on the spot. As I had no idea what I was doing with the programming and sitting at my computer endlessly struggling on a daily basis, I decided there was no point to do a two-week notice.
When companies fire someone, they make them leave on the spot. It’s a two-way street. Employees are also allowed to leave on the spot. You’re not in jail. You’re not being held there against your will. I’m all for being professional, and most of the time I do give a two-week notice. But I was blatantly lied to in the interview. I was paired with a guy who treated me like trash, and my actual boss, while a good guy at heart, didn’t do much to solve the reality of the situation.
I caught Aron in the bathroom to tell him I was quitting. He wasn’t happy to hear the news. I told Aron’s boss, and he was even more dissatisfied than Aron. I found it strange that when I quit, this hedge fund made it seem like I was some valued employee and that I was making a bad decision. They had no idea what they were doing what it came to employee satisfaction.
Don’t wait for an employee to quit to start making them feel valued. Make them feel valued while they actually work there.
Even the woman in Human Resources said to me, “Jeff, you’re killing me,” when I told her I was quitting. I was there for three months, and apparently it looked bad for the company to have someone quit so soon into the job. Well then, they need to stop lying to people in interviews.
I finished the workday and then left. Never be afraid to leave a job that’s not right for you.
Seeing a Blind Person
On the way back to my car, I saw a blind person. Quitting a company is never easy, especially with the negative reaction I got from this hedge fund. I was feeling raw and frustrated – happy to be stepping into a new job and career after taking focused action but feeling down that my life seemed to be a never-ending succession of insanely bad jobs.
As I stepped out of the building for the last time, I’ll never forget seeing a blind person. Seeing this blind person shifted my perspective and thoughts. I stopped feeling bad for myself and realized that I was incredibly blessed to have vision. On the way home, I stayed with that sense of gratitude.
This was more than a chance encounter. This caused me to realize that I had a lot to be grateful for, especially something like vision that I usually took for granted. I wasn’t an ungrateful person, but I also wasn’t taking time each day to count my blessings and to think about how lucky I am.
When you think about how difficult some people have it across this world, it’s easy to feel grateful.
Prevention
To prevent something like this from happening in the future, companies need to be more honest and transparent in the interviews. It’s OK to have the reality of a job only partially match the job description – that happens and is part of the adaptability necessary to thrive in work life. What’s not OK is for a job to completely differ from what the new employee expected.
This comes down to integrity, one of the pillars of authentic leadership. I mean this seriously: do an audit of your current colleagues and employees. Who has integrity and who doesn’t? You can evaluate this by looking at a number of factors:
- Who is not true to their word and fails to do what they promise?
- Who is cutting corners and not properly doing their job?
- Who is gossiping about others?
- Who always seems to have an excuse?
- Who is not keeping the best interests of their colleagues and the company in mind?
Once you’ve identified employees who lack integrity, address the situation with them and give them constructive feedback. If they refuse to change, release them from the company.
If you’re witnessing consistently bad behavior from one of your colleagues and you don’t have the power to remove them from the company, be sure to report them to one of the company leaders.
Address and Solve
Right now, in this exact moment, it’s entirely possible you have colleagues/employees at your company who are sitting in the wrong seat. They are talented, but they may have been lied to in the interview by a snake in your organization; or, they are in the job they signed up for but would be better off in a different kind of job.
While this is an unpleasant situation, there’s good news: as a leader, you have the power to address and solve it. Take the time to get to know your colleagues and employees through lunches, coffee breaks, and other kinds of natural conversations. See where their true interests lie. See if there’s a job opening at your company they can transition into.
There’s nothing more powerful than an employee who comes alive at your company. If you put someone in the right seat, they will look forward to work each day and add an unbelievable amount of value to your organization.
Of course, the transition to the new job within your company has to happen tactfully, so be sure to honor their current responsibilities and help to find a suitable replacement for them in their current role.
To give an employee the possibility to be happy at work is one of the biggest gifts you could ever give anyone. Life is way too short to be stuck doing something you hate every day.
If someone is in the wrong role for them, and there’s no suitable replacement job for them at the company, consider respectfully parting ways with one another. Everyone has the challenge of paying bills, so it’s entirely possible that not everyone will be completely honest with you. But you’d be surprised what people tell you when you really care to get to know them. And most of the time, there are solutions that exist within your company. But if there aren’t, it’s also OK to part ways.
Parting ways is better than being stuck in an undesirable situation.
They may not even need to switch to a whole new job. It may mean doing their current job ten or twenty-percent differently. It may mean getting involved with some other project at the company while they do their current job. When people get involved in more projects, they feel like they have more ownership. Small changes lead to big results.
If you have a colleague who is struggling but you don’t have the power to make a change within your organization, encourage them to speak up and do something about it. While it’s not your responsibility to solve their situation for them, you can always offer them good advice by inspiring them to have important conversations and find solutions.
Actions
- Has your company lied to you? Are you not doing the job you were promised? If so, speak up. Your company isn’t entitled to a double-standard because they pay you. It’s a two-way street.
- As you deal with your miserable situation, what’s one way you can find an outlet? Joining a civic group? Going to a meetup? Working on your hidden hobby, talent, or passion in your spare time? Take at least fifteen minutes today to do something that makes you happy or gives you purpose.
- Take focused action. Think about how your experiences, interests, and skills meet the needs of organizations. There are more jobs and careers out there than meets the eye. Apply to jobs and careers that are just outside your comfort zone, but enough within reach to be a practical possibility. Just because a job sucks doesn’t mean you necessarily need or want to bail right away (especially depending on the responsibilities of your particular situation), but you can definitely choose to actively explore new options and possibilities.
- If you feel completely trapped and stuck, which happens to the best of us, spend a few minutes answering the question “What are a few things I can be grateful for?”
Jeff Davis is an award-winning author, most recently publishing The Power of Authentic Leadership: Activating the 13 Keys to Achieving Prosperity Through Authenticity. He’s also an authentic leadership keynote speaker and Executive Coach to leaders and CEOs, offering individualized coaching. Follow him on Twitter.
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