Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career

by Kristi Coulter

For the first time in our relationship, the feeling of my work life is already fundamentally unknowable to John. I hope it won’t always be this way. Or if it is, I hope he won’t notice.

I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that the kinds of people who openly admit to needing food or pee breaks are also the kinds of people who get hurled off lifeboats around here.

Seattleite at this point.” Fritz shrugs as if to say, Well, Seattle. Who knows what kind of strange customs are accepted in this diurnal Scandinavian hamlet?

Every day I don’t drink is a day with a big win in it, and I’ve had five big wins in a row. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve felt this successful.

sometimes I think bare-bones ugliness has become a fetish for us, a complement to the CrossFit boxes and Spartan races that have become trendy in Seattle. Maybe

some employees like the contrast with the custom granite countertops and wine fridges and kids’ playrooms in their five-bedroom Eastside houses.

I don’t mind this sleepy life, but I know my destiny is to be back out there doing things that feel impossible even once they’re done.

There is nothing I can do to make these men any smarter or less blind, because they’re the norm and I’m a deviation. Or a deviant, a kidless mom, an outlier. A shock of energy runs through my body, but there’s no place for it here.

As I present initial concepts to the senior leadership team, I realize I’ve lucked into a rare trifecta: 1. My job is a perfect match for my talents. 2. My talents are critical to the success of the business. 3. The powers that be know my talents are critical to the success of the business.

Leadership and my design peers may grasp that I’m doing real work, but most of the product managers treat me like a just-in-time service provider, someone who kind of slaps together copy for an audience of millions while they stand over me and watch. My desk is on an aisle, and four, six, even ten times an hour I hear the fateful words “Do you have thirty seconds?” to do something that will take at least thirty quiet minutes.

I’m blindsided in a meeting, or when some random L5 web dev tells me I should change a line Jeff has personally signed off on because he “doesn’t like it.”

“It says right up front that the bar for being a Level 8 is ‘nearly superhuman talent and stamina.’” I passed the doc back to him. “Nearly superhuman? Really?”

Every single person in this room will go from being top talent to getting managed out.” (Glum silence ensued.)