A lot has happened in the past six months. The department I’m in, while fairly small, has completely turned over, with the exception of myself. In other words, some people were fired and others left on their own accord. Either way, I’m the last one left and I’ve only been there a couple of years.
When I first started with the company, we had a lot of very smart and fairly hard-working employees. They were also fairly close to me in age and it was fun working in a fast-paced environment with knowledgeable people. It was the strongest department I had ever worked in. However, in recent months we have replaced this group of over-achievers with a very lackluster set of individuals.
The average intelligence of the group has probably dropped a couple of standard deviations. I often find myself wondering how these people ever achieved their current salary level—we’re talking six figures here. A couple of them even make more than me, which is very hard for me to accept at times. We could easily replace these individuals with college grads for half the salary and never lose a step. This is not an exaggeration, it is simply a fact.
I think it’s truly a travesty that Corporate America rewards individuals who have been in the workplace longer as opposed to paying for performance. My own responsibilities have been increased to help make up for the lack of strategy that my coworkers bring to the table. They tend to be fixated on executing tasks. They believe value resides in crossing things off lists instead of actually developing the list. They are also incredibly fixated on their own image and are more concerned about the kind of car they are driving than the actual performance of our department.
I know this sounds like another blogger who’s just complaining (sometimes I think that’s all bloggers do anyway). The fact that we’ve turned so many people over points to a deeper problem. I just can’t stand working with these underachievers at times. They tend to be so full of themselves and I barely manage to stifle myself from laughing out loud at some of their comments and behaviors. But like everyone else in the rat race during this economic downturn, I bite my tongue, smile, and say, “What a wonderful idea.” Sometimes I make myself sick.