The Lure of a Glamoroous Job

By Tim Snaith

It's easy to be tempted by famous companies when looking for a new job. Two years ago, when looking for somewhere to move to after becoming bored in a job, I gave in to this temptation. The company I left had made great claims about being one of the big players in the industry, how it would make its employees rich, how we were all at the 'bleeding edge' of technology. Well, I for one wasn't convinced. The one or two people who resigned from the firm each week seemed to agree (although they were replaced soon after leaving). No, I wanted a job with a really high profile company, and all the exposure to the mass media, truly cutting edge technology and global significance that would bring. Surely, this would be the great job I thought I was looking for?

The planet, let alone the firm, wasn't big enough for some of the egos I encountered

My experience over the next nine months, the time it took from conceiving that I was in the wrong job to actually walking out, was mixed. I worked with some great teams on some truly world-beating projects, the facilities were excellent, there was a great canteen and those I met outside work seemed genuinely impressed with what I was doing. However, I came across people and practices that stunned me. The planet, let alone the firm, wasn't big enough for some of the egos I encountered and this seemed directly related to the impersonality of the inner workings of the firm. To cap it all, there was a curious lack of togetherness, at least in my department. Perhaps this was because my department was on the losing side in a long-running battle, something I had picked up on in my interviews.

I knew something was up when I arrived on my first day. The firm is based in an impressively high-tech estate on the edge of London. Security was tight. I was asked to wait in the gatehouse with another new employee until someone from our department came to collect us. This was 9am; we had both arrived on time. The clock ticked. Gatehouse staff made repeated calls to our department, which repeatedly promised to send somebody around to pick us up. Of course, nobody turned up until over an hour a later. 'Well, I least now we can get started' I thought. Two weeks later, my PC had still not arrived. It wasn't until the third week until a desk became available. I was not happy; in fact I was disgusted at the lack of professional responsibility accepted by my bosses. They were hopeless.

What this did mean of course was that I had a lot of days off in that first month. Nobody seemed to notice and I was earning more than ever before. The sun was out and life was not too bad. I learnt from some of my new mates that I had happened to join in the week of the summer barbecue. Now, this is where large organisations excel. The summer barbecue turned out to be a full-blown party for nearly 4,000 people, with free booze, food, huge marquees, sound systems and taxis home. There was a fairground with half a dozen rides and it all took place on one of the warmest evenings of the summer. I met some people who ended up being friends for the rest of my time with the company. The Christmas party was also excellent - it must have cost the company hundreds of thousands of pounds. Again, food, booze, rides, bands, DJs all under canvas in the middle of winter, all free.

It was almost as if nobody had the initiative to think about socialising with their fellow workers

However, these events highlighted something else, how unwilling most employees were to socialise with one another outside work under normal circumstances. It was almost as if nobody had the initiative to think about socialising with their fellow workers. I'd never worked anywhere like it, in this respect. There was no spontaneous getting-together, everything had to be authorised and organised weeks in advance.. This was in marked contrast to my previous job where most of the hard work was done in a pub, over a few beers. I couldn't understand this lack of sociability, and it stumped me right up until the time I left.

Maybe it was something to do with the internal politics, which had similarities with those of the Nazi State. Not in an overtly sinister way, of course. I just got the impression that a few lessons had been learnt from that particular regime. Hitler created forces and institutions in Nazi Germany that had deliberately overlapping responsibilities. From Hitler's point of view, there were two good reasons for this - it was a means of selection, and a guarantee of protection. For example, the source of state violence, the apparatus of threat, was divided between two bodies, the SA (brown shirts) and the SS. The former was significantly more brutal, often resorting to clubs, boots and fists to make a point. SA members behaved like gangsters, living off extortion rackets that funded their expensive tastes. Meanwhile, the SS at this time used more insidious methods, preferring to ruin reputations, isolate and eventually eliminate opposition or dissent. Their political aims were similar, both organisations wanted to be Hitler's number one security service. By July 1934, the SA had been disbanded and its leaders slaughtered in a murderous SS action later called 'The Night of the Long Knives'. In the twisted, pseudo-evolutionary philosophy of the Nazis, the SS had become the natural winners, thanks to their superior strength and guile. This policy of setting institutions off against one another, so that the strongest and fittest would emerge, recurred throughout the Nazi state, to nobody's benefit except the highest levels in the party (who themselves were locked in personal feuds).

We can see an echo of it today in the internal market policies in place in our hospitals and public services, though without the same bloodthirsty methods. Departments fight for territory and flows of money by cutting costs rather than throats. And so it was at my old employer, where two almost identical departments fought pitched battles over the same grand projects, dividing the workload between them by grabbing jobs and refusing to do others. It seemed to me that our bosses were quite happy to let this go on if it meant the best, or at least more forceful department won all the glory eventually; they were also willing to let certain egos to inflate themselves unchecked, at least for a while. Of course, this meant that all effort was concentrated on battling with the immediate opponent, the other department and individuals within it, rather than questioning how the whole scenario was being managed.

From the point of view of those who just wanted to get the best job done, all this superfluous action and conflict was distracting. I remember sitting in meetings, tedious, interminable meetings, where the head of one department would refuse to speak to members of the other. He would make offhand and dismissive remarks, smirk, roll his eyes, walk out without warning, hold long conversations on his mobile phone and just generally disrupt and derail proceedings. The sole aim was to discredit and demoralise other departments, which he did with some success, while taking credit for those successes in which he had only partially been involved.

Nobody wants to work for a bumbling messiah

Then there was a management shake-up at a higher level, and within weeks, our immediate bosses began to stampede for the exits in a very unseemly fashion. I know that some of them were regular visitors to I-resign.com at the time, and several used our template letters when handing in their notice. What did it for me was the new boss giving a major presentation where he enthused about 'owning' customers minds by controlling what they saw on television, browsed on the web, read in newspapers, and, if all went to plan, WAPped on their mobile phones. This approach to customer services was perhaps a little megalomaniacal, especially as the guy didn't seem to know what he was talking about at a fundamentally technical level. Nobody wants to work for a bumbling messiah. So, I quit and joined I-resign.com myself.

I don't think I'll rush into a new job with a big, glamorous media empire again. Yes, there are obvious perks - every material need is attended to, lavish parties are thrown, people want to hear what it's like working on such futuristic projects.. Unfortunately, a feeling of indifference and complacency spoilt it all and I didn't want to have to turn into someone indifferent and complacent to get ahead in my career.