I Came Back

I did something yesterday that honestly surprised me. I started looking at job openings.

Not because I'm planning on leaving tomorrow. Hell, my plan has always been to retire from this job. I came back to this organization because I genuinely believed it was where I wanted to finish my career.

That's what bothered me.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped looking forward to coming to work.

Years ago, I left the Maintenance organization because I couldn't stomach the culture anymore. From where I was sitting, it had become a good old boys club. Cronyism mattered more than competence. Favoritism mattered more than merit. If you weren't part of the inner circle, you weren't getting a seat at the table.

As a transgender woman, I didn't exactly see a bright future there. So I left.

I spent the next fifteen years building a career in enterprise IT. I learned enterprise architecture. I led technical teams. I implemented enterprise systems. I learned how technology, maintenance, operations, analytics, and business processes all fit together. Every job I took built on the last one, and eventually I found myself with a skill set that was strangely unique: I understood both the operational side of the laboratory and the enterprise technology that supports it.

Then something changed.

The leadership I had associated with that old culture was gone. New people were in place. People I respected encouraged me to come back. They talked about a different culture. A healthier organization.

I believed them.

Honestly, I wanted to believe them.

This role felt like the perfect way to finish my career. Deputy Group Leader. A chance to combine everything I'd spent thirty years learning into one job. Operations. Maintenance. Enterprise IT. Leadership.

It felt like everything had been leading to this.

Then I got here.

The team I inherited was hurting. Really hurting. Morale was low. Processes were broken. People were frustrated. Oddly enough, that excited me. Broken teams don't scare me. I've rebuilt them before. That's something I know how to do.

So I got to work.

And we made progress.

The team is stronger today than it was when I arrived. Relationships are better. People are talking to one another. We have direction. We have purpose.

For a while, I honestly thought I'd found exactly what I'd been looking for.

Then little things started happening.

Not one big thing. Little things.

Ideas I'd bring forward about predictive maintenance would get polite nods before quietly disappearing.

Conversations about enterprise architecture would happen somewhere else.

Decisions affecting systems I know inside and out would be made without the people who actually understand those systems sitting in the room.

At first, I chalked it up to organizational growing pains.

Then I started noticing other patterns.

Women getting interrupted. Women being questioned about working from home. Women explaining themselves in ways the men never seemed expected to.

Again, none of these things, by themselves, prove anything.

I'm an analyst. I don't jump to conclusions because of one data point.

But eventually the data points start drawing a picture. And that's where I've found myself lately. Wondering whether the culture actually changed...

...or whether it simply changed clothes.

That's a painful question to ask because I don't want the answer.

I wanted this to be the place where I finished my career. I wanted this to be the job that brought everything together.

Instead, I find myself feeling increasingly marginalized.

I was hired as a Deputy Group Leader.

More and more, I feel like I'm functioning as a technical advisor.

I explain the technology. I explain the architecture. I explain the operational impact. I explain the risks.

Then someone else walks into the meeting and makes the decisions.

That's not what I thought I was signing up for.

What frustrates me isn't that people disagree with me. Hell, reasonable people should disagree. Good decisions come from healthy debate. What frustrates me is not being part of the debate in the first place.

I'm tired of fighting for credibility in conversations where my credibility should already exist. I'm tired of watching people confidently make decisions about technologies they don't understand while the people who do understand them sit quietly outside the room. I'm tired of watching ego carry more weight than expertise.

And maybe that's the hardest realization of all.

I don't think I'm angry. I think I'm disappointed. Because I came back believing things had changed.

Yesterday, for the first time, I caught myself wondering if maybe I was wrong.

That's a thought I never expected to have.

And honestly... I hate that I had it at all.