heya jeff...been meaning to comment....sorry it took so long.
As someone who was around one of your previous jobs, I can confirm there was a bit of "jeff doesnt' want/care about management". Honestly, that never felt totally right to me but also...it didn't feel totally wrong. I think it might have been more accurate to say "Jeff is more interested in being an IC than a manager and more interested in create his own way of doing things than working with what's already there". Neither of those are bad and probably in fact good, but also, it did mean you were frequently a voice of criticism. Now, as another one of those voices, I really valued your input and think the fact that you got somewhat mischaracterized was at least as much the fault of the org as it was your's
I think the time period in question you're referring to here was an earlier era as well. During that time I had a lot of difference in opinion about how to run the org, but I was trying to respect that there's more than one way to do it. A leader deserves to have people on their team that will be all in on their vision. I knew I couldn't get there so I decided to try and zip my lip and do what I could as more of an IC, rather than constantly try to pull towards my idea of how the org should work. I really didn't enjoy it much, but I think it's better for the org to execute on a mediocre plan than just go in circles. Definitely a time period before I figured that out that I ended up all-time opposition party.
heya jeff...been meaning to comment....sorry it took so long.
As someone who was around one of your previous jobs, I can confirm there was a bit of "jeff doesnt' want/care about management". Honestly, that never felt totally right to me but also...it didn't feel totally wrong. I think it might have been more accurate to say "Jeff is more interested in being an IC than a manager and more interested in create his own way of doing things than working with what's already there". Neither of those are bad and probably in fact good, but also, it did mean you were frequently a voice of criticism. Now, as another one of those voices, I really valued your input and think the fact that you got somewhat mischaracterized was at least as much the fault of the org as it was your's
Hah, appreciate it. Fun to get perspectives.
I think the time period in question you're referring to here was an earlier era as well. During that time I had a lot of difference in opinion about how to run the org, but I was trying to respect that there's more than one way to do it. A leader deserves to have people on their team that will be all in on their vision. I knew I couldn't get there so I decided to try and zip my lip and do what I could as more of an IC, rather than constantly try to pull towards my idea of how the org should work. I really didn't enjoy it much, but I think it's better for the org to execute on a mediocre plan than just go in circles. Definitely a time period before I figured that out that I ended up all-time opposition party.