A Minor Rant About Changing Jobs

I'm changing jobs soon. Not just moving within my current employment, but heading off to another job for a different employer at a substantial increase in pay for doing a job that's a lot of what I'm doing now, but with a much better focus, a chance to learn the ropes and possibly even get training, and without twenty-something years worth of accreted other-duties-as-assigned. 

This is being framed as a situation where I received an offer that was "just too good to pass up". That is the kind of bullshit that management comes up with when they don't want to admit that they fucked up and failed to prevent an entirely preventable situation. It's not that I got an exceptionally good offer; it's just that someone was willing to pay me what I'm worth. It's not that I'm moving to an amazingly good work environment, it's just that after years of being largely ignored, trying to find ways around weird and unnecessary roadblocks, and being vastly better-appreciated by every other department that I worked with than I was by the so-called leadership of my own, it'll be really nice to work with people who clearly want me there. 

Six months ago I suggested that they -- our IT management -- really ought to get me a minion, someone I could introduce to all the things that I do and who could work on projects that I simply didn't have time to get to. Four weeks later, management came back with the suggestion that I should cross-train with at least one of my co-workers. Leave aside how insulting that is; when something comes up with one of "my" systems that A) needs troubleshooting, and B) would therefore be a valuable learning opportunity, I need that particular co-worker to take care of issues coming in from another system so I can focus long enough to fix the problem. End result: no management experience for me, no training for my co-worker (who frankly already has enough to keep up with), and nobody in the department has a clear idea of what all I actually do.

Even so, I asked my soon-to-be employer for a full three weeks before I started with them, because I knew it was going to take that long to pull together my documentation for whatever poor bastard(s) my current job responsibilities got dumped on. As it happens, the hiring cycle for my new employer stretched that out to nearly a full four weeks. 

Turns out I'm going to need all of that -- possibly more, but that's not my problem. I have two significant projects that I'm trying to finish before I go, if I can block out the time now that word has gotten around and everybody is suddenly panicking about the fact that I'm leaving. 

And then, last week, my former boss -- now our deputy CIO -- started trying to get re-acquainted with my website-related duties, because he'd tried to add a new editor and suddenly learned that it isn't as easy as just putting them in the right group in Active Directory. That particular internal site is running on ridiculously old Content Management software, and desperately needs to be moved to something new. To add a new user, you need to go into the goddamned SQL, open a particular table, and add the new user there.

This was the point where our Deputy CIO suddenly remembered that he'd had An Idea to move that whole Intranet site over to Sharepoint. That was the point where I sent him a link to the site that I'd finished setting up for that purpose between Christmas and New Year's of 2021, and reminded him that I'd informed both him and our actual CIO that this was done and ready to go, multiple times. What I'd gotten in response was basically, "This'll need to be run past the other department heads," and then radio silence. 

But here we are, looking at this now, with our Deputy CIO suddenly realizing that this was about to become his problem, and he says to me, "I know you're busy pulling documentation together, but could you go through this site and get it up to date? It'd be a nice feather in your cap before you leave."

What I told him at the time -- on the phone, unprepared for this bullshit -- was that I had two solid projects that I was trying to finish before I leave, and I couldn't make any promises. What I actually think, after taking several hours to process the fucking audacity of it, is: NO. This thing was not a priority for management/"leadership" for two and half years. I am not the reason we are not already using it, and thus not -- by extension -- the reason it's out of date. Should we switch over to it? Absolutely. Is that my problem in any way? Not at fucking all. 

And this bullshit, years of this bullshit, is exactly why I'm not going to miss this job one bit. It's not that it's a horrible place to work, exactly; but if I were recommending it to someone in good conscience I'd have to advise that they come, work here for a year or two to get some experience, and then start looking elsewhere.