I had a boss, an editor, who expected the archaic pyramid structure from "feature" and "people" stories. This was not a top editor, but she was my direct boss. She was the one my management thought I deserved to work under. I disagreed, made that known, and it appeared her bosses were powerless to change things in any way. Pathetic.
It took less than three months of her "leadership" for me to leave. I found, desperate, another job with an even worse company that didn't last. Yet, she was gone in a year, maybe less (I lost track), as well. What a waste of my career she was.
I had gotten on rather well for six months, putting out fires and dealing with issues, and each week putting out two weekly sections with a fellow assistant editor. We were not the most compatible of personalities, but we got along, and we learned from and taught each other a variety of things. We did well.
Our initial editor/boss had bailed out the week after I was hired (not due to me, she got another job). The new editor, who joined us after six months of fending for ourselves, ruined the pace and tone of the operation. She was the classic manager who got in the way of progress. Among other things, she could not handle free-willed humans -- she was more suited to sheep, or turtles; something less sentient. I was not sheepish enough to absorb her crude, autocratic and low-tech management and operational approach, and she overreacted to my offering ideas in substantially the wrong manner.
The end, for me, came when she debated my taking a second job. I took the job literally to pay basic bills (in an unrelated industry, no less) since I was paid so little by the large media company. Her views on my needing a second job were so selfish to her interests, despite the wages I was earning, I found it hard to tolerate conversations about it. But she couldn't even leave it between us. She tried to apologize for it afterward, but she set the HR Vee Pee on my trail (no broad-thinking soul, either, this VP) for taking the second job. It was clear that she was not in control, and was desperate to be protected by other managers at the same time she put on a face of composure in front of them. (She had been divorced after a very brief marriage, and perhaps she was taking some rage about her loser husband out on the only guy in the room. I really didn't know why she was out of control, and I couldn't care: she was not reasonable to be around.) What an awful job experience.
What joy I felt when I got away from that boss. What great sadness I felt to leave that job, though. I had endured months of unemployment in pursuit of a door into a media company, in a job as a writer and editor. It was totally bizarre to take that job, perhaps, but there are a method to my madness; unfortunately, I had not considered how to handle working for an insecure, jilted, edgy, control-freak editor.
Before the nightmare job
Not to beat it to death, but I took that job after having launched a publication in a large southern city. At the new daily, I was in print and production, doing page design, planning the issues, and designing and writing ads. I worked myself to cold sweats at it; turns out, some people resented that. I was laid off in an ownership and management shuffle. Namely, the new owners hardly ever talked to me, and the new management was appointed for lack of a better idea by the new owners. It was a very sad time for me.
I was married only six weeks when I got canned from that new newspaper job, so I was not exactly feeling like I was blessed to have been shown the door by these new guys. My wife didn't work since she was not a citizen thus and not allowed to work (she's Australian, if you're wondering). The layoff caught me quite painfully in a variety of ways. Obviously, I was played like a fish, for my broad talents and skills, worked to the bone, and then ejected. In hindsight, perhaps I should have been more selfish about the whole process. Oh well, not really my style to be a spoiled brat (oops, wrong country, d'ya think!?). That whole time, I missed the journalism side of the business, keeping myself to the one aspect of it.
I wanted to remain in media, and I missed being able to write, interview people, and edit -- I missed journalism while I was creating that new publication. I was not some one-trick pony, so I forced myself to focus on jobs that would allow me to do what I wanted -- to write. So that's what I tried to find when I was given a meager severance and shown the door.
I took a "starter" editor job with Large-Name media company (I won't name them here, as I assume they are not so poorly managed today), with ideas for movin' on up. It was in a city 900 miles away. Big move! (Little gain for me, as I now explain.) That was where I suffered three months under a newly married-divorced, combative, and sniveling editor.
I had my second worst experience in media while there (I won't even go into the #1 worst). I had the misfortune several years back of working for this behemoth, and while the place I worked was not bleeding money, the company was. Why? It was not for overpaying the majority of the editorial staff, I can personally attest to that.
I needed to earn more, so I got a part-time job. I was mistaken to believe that this was my right as a private citizen: The company thinly informed me that I was its bee-a-itch. I got 20 questions first from my editor, then from the lead HR demon, multiple times, for taking that part-time job.
Why? It threatened my being unable to put in OT at night. I should note that I was not even being paid for OT but informed I was supposed to do it. In fact, I put in long hours when we lacked an editor, and never got any OT, every week, if it was needed. When the mistake was discovered, it was handled so poorly that I would have been an idiot for not feeling cheated. Especially with the tawdry pay I received. I guess some people just didn't have bosses that twisted up all over the place when they got a second job and resisted OT. Not mine, and not her friend, the HR VP.
So I left after nine months. Probably would have been three months, or a month, if the editor was "running" things when I arrived. Likely, I would not have even moved at all if I were aware I would have worked with her!
To me, back then, Large-Name was the king of the rampant employee OT rip-off. Not a story was written about it, either. There's honesty in journalism for you. I wonder how much has changed since that long period of insult of every low-wage salaried editor?
The lack of good salary, OT and expensing oversight meant, to me, that those at the top either walked into the roles from other companies, unaware of the mess, or they made their way up by ignoring horrible management practices, and the cycle might still repeat itself.
Epilogue:
This year I noticed the former CEO of that Large-Name subsidiary media company I worked at is running things alongside Big Wig Owner in the Headquarters Large-City. Yeesh. I hope that blatant error was an innocent policy of partial indenture of the little people. I hope they don't let it happen again!
- Jon O
Wikipedia chief Jimmy Wales announced the company was moving headquarters to San Francisco in the fall of 2007.