Dealing with anger

Dealing with anger

For years I've been dealing with a growing anger against the world and especially work.

All my life has been surrounded by "The Crisis", a weird thing with no shape, a pretty excuse to give us shitty work conditions, sadistic management and poor pay while making bigger and bigger margins every year. Which made me quite unable to really grasp exactly what was this Crisis about in the end if not a way to fuck us up happily.

I had my share of toxic managers, micro-managing my ass every single day, increasing my workload more and more while never giving me any crumble of appreciation. Triple the work, triple the blame, keep the team solo. Managers quick to pass down any stress or any office gossips without doing any single thing to protect their team or think for one moment. Managers too happy to disappear every time someone in their team might really need them.

The worst thing I heard (some weeks before my first burn out) while I was complaining about my workload and the fact that I shouldn't be the only one in my position was to "be happy to have a job in our times". Fuck this. Fuck them. Profits have been steadily increasing every years with millions going to the shareholders. Meanwhile almost every friend I have got refused any raise.

Companies evolved to focus only on the shareholders happiness by building only on short-term values. Most CEO aren't captain of a ship anymore but puppets moving with any whim of the stakeholders providing no stable vision to the company. Each new management changes brings its "reorg", everything changes but everything stays the same.

More and more I had to deal with bullshit time creepers blocking my agenda to give more and more manager a "better understanding of my work". A better understanding can be easily gained by looking at what I'm producing every week and what we ship. Duplicating tickets into 10 tools so you're able to create ten pages reports that no-one will ever read isn't giving you a better understanding, it's moving air around and telling everyone it's work.

And I love my work. And that's the worst part. Things could be easier if I hated it, if I had a burning passion for bread baking or anything, but no, I love to work as a designer. But working as a designer (or an engineer) has become more and more unnerving and filled with bullshit. For all the talk on Agility across the years, the only thing companies accomplished was to give even more room for stakeholders to change their mind and refrain for any clear or stable vision you can build up.

I'm tired also to receive proposals for position with salary levels that makes me laugh. Compared to our engineering or project manager salaries, most designers are way too under-payed for the value they bring to a product and a team while also often being stretched way too thin for one designer alone.

I'm tired of having to explain the importance of design and user experience to stakeholders. Tired to see them act on their whims, justifying something they want to be done by truncating datas, playing office politics or pushing blatantly stupid decisions that nobody seem to fight.

I'm reaching 36 years old and I'm supposed to work for around 30 more years and I honestly don't know how I'll be able to do it without burning a fuse.