But It's Your Job!

There was a time I was working for a large nationwide company. One the three largest in the industry. Facilities all over the place and thousands of employees. You get the picture. I started in one department in the company and quickly excelled. I had years of experience already working for a smaller competitor. This was noticed by management who asked if I would be interested in going to a different department that was going to be created. They wanted me to help stand this new department up.

The work itself was interesting and the opportunity to build a brand new group the way I wanted was exactly what I wanted. I love working with teams and seeing each member grow. I thought this would be a great way for me to get ahead and move up the ladder in a big corporation. So I said yes.

Things were humming along nicely. The team had grown to a very large size and was doing very well with the training program I had put in place. With all this growth there was an opportunity for advancement that opened up. I applied and gave the best interview I had ever given. I crushed it out of the park. The interviewer said the same. Told me I would be getting an offer letter in a couple of days.

A couple of days go by and I had heard nothing so I reached back out and was told that the position had been placed on hold for the time being. I was young and naive and thought nothing of it, figured once the position was taken off hold I would get the offer.

Weeks later there is a major issue with our work. A seemingly random collection of clients all begin to experience a catastrophic issue. Executives are knocking on my door telling me to help in any way I can. I dig in and realize the problem is coming from an optional subsystem. This subsystem is handled by a different department so I call up my contacts in that group.

They tell me they are aware of the major issue but that it can not possibly be an issue with their subsystem. I explain how their subsystem is optional any only clients using the subsystem are having the major issue. They tell me they will look into it and get back to me.

Days turn into weeks and I can never get any information from this other team that makes me believe they are actually looking into this issue. Since I have never been directly responsible for this subsystem I never made it a priority to learn how it actually works. Well I start digging in now. I look into what this subsystem is built on and learn it runs on third party software as it’s foundation. Then I start looking into this third party software. Lo and behold I find a bug report describing the exact major issue we are experiencing. My heart soars as I see they have fixed the major issue by issuing a patch to their software. Then my heart sinks. The patch was released over eight years ago! Our subsystem had not been updated in over eight years, how could that be?

I talk to the other department again and I let them know what I found. They’re quiet for a few moments and then said “We aren’t going to patch the subsystem.” My jaw dropped to the floor. I begged, pleaded, explained how we’re getting crushed by this. Bribery! I tried bribery! Anything to possibly get them onboard to help. The conversation ended with them saying “We are not going to help with this problem.”

Eventually the other department updated the software for the subsystem and the major issue immediately went away. Everyone had been stressed to the gills for the past few weeks and the relief of having this major issue resolved was a huge win for the clients and for everyone at the company. I felt great as I called clients to let them know the major issue was resolved and to confirm with their testing.

The next day I received an email from a senior executive asking me for a detailed report on the major issue from my perspective. I did as I was asked. I was so burnt out from all the stress I did not temper my detailed report at all. I included the two quotes from the other department as the answer to the executives question of why it took so long to resolve the major issue.

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