Getting it thru my head, I simply can’t deal with Corporate America
By Tuesday morning they asked, “If we pay you thru Friday, would you mind leaving today?” Yeah, that really took some thought on my part. Here’s a bit of my sorted history:
In November of 2000 I was hired at Hachette Filipacchi Media to produce the websites for Woman’s Day and Travel Holiday magazines. It was a pretty sweet gig, though the pay was kinda low. Still we had fun, drank beer in the afternoons and got to create websites for a living. Plus we got every other Friday off in the summer, a crap load of holidays and vacation time and the benefits were pretty decent. For someone who had been struggling as I was at that time, this was not too shabby.
So, you may ask … why quit? I simply got tired of having to fight for every bit of recognition, money and resources while those less qualified than me got promoted. No, this is not coming from bitterness. I actually do have documented proof.
Over the course of my five years and four months, I was given the task of producing successful sites from several other magazines including Home, Sound and Vision, Met Home, Elle Decor and For Me with Woman’s Day always the flagship.
Not to brag (ok maybe a little) but no one had the track record of building traffic and developing audience loyalty that I did. Here are just a few examples:
WomansDay.com:
Up 6000% from Nov 2000 to Nov 2003
– Started at 200k per month, ended up at 12 million.
– Up 8% from 2004 to 2005HomeMag.com:
– Up 125% from 2004 to 2005
– Up 228% from 2003 to 2004ForMeMagazine.com:
– Up 1900% from April 2005 – July 2005 and continues to growSoundandVisionMag.com
– In just three months was over a million page views per month
In the area of newsletter subscriptions, Woman’s Day has one of the cleanest all opt-in lists in the industry. What that means is those on the list chose to be there. They were not added using the more dubious methods so common in the industry. So I was able to get the list to over 320,000 in less than two years with an open rate of 50%, a click rate of 25% and a bounce rate of only 6%. That, my friends, is what’s known as a successful newsletter list.
Oh and let’s not forget e-commerce. Thanks to me the Woman’s Day site now generates over $300,000 a year in gross sales.
In other words folks … I know what the fuck I’m doing when it comes to this shit. And still I was forced to watch several key positions be filled by people that simply bullshitted their way in. And there in lies my own supposed fault. I cannot play the political games and so I will never be an effective suit and tie type.
Still I feel it is a poor philosophy to give prizes to those who spin better tales rather than those who get the job done. All I wanted was to see those (including myself) who did good work get paid fairly. I didn’t think it was too much to ask and when I continued to hit that political brick wall I simply had enough.
About a week prior to my actually resigning I was stricken with the flu. This strange twist of fate was a blessing in disguise. It gave me the chance to sit at home and do nothing for a week but think about how I’d been treated by Hachette.
First at hand was the issue of my raise. Hachette is known in the industry as paying very little. Over the years I’ve had to fight for every raise no matter how meager. So now, in order for me to come even remotely close to a fair rate of pay, back in September of 2005 I requested an astronomical 50% raise. Unbeknown to them, I was prepared to accept no less than 25%. To be honest I never really felt they would even agree to that amount. So from that point I began to plan my endgame.
In December, much to my surprise, they agreed to 25%. I was shocked to say the least. Unfortunately, much time would go by and I still found myself fighting to actually have the raise enacted. All the while I watched a coworker who had a questionable skill level get promoted past me. He did this by taking credit for work he had no part in that resulted in a meer 35% traffic increase on his sites. Compare that to what I listed out above.
Then another person was hired to work side by side with me in developing new advertising initiatives for my group of sites who I never got to interview. Soon after this person started it was clear that whatever proof there was of past experience in this field had been exaggerated to say the least.
By mid-January I was reaching a point of frustration that was bound to force me to quit. At this time I was in charge of five magazines with seven web properties and only two other people working under me. Still with no raise as I was promised. The stress was unbearable. Then, Hachette came to me with an offer I could not refuse.
They had been teasing us with the notion of launching what should be a very cutting edge new magazine called Shock. It is an American version of our French counterpart’s Choc. Basically the idea is to create a photo-journalistic media set that will push the envelope and shock the audience into wanting more. A brilliant idea that I was growing more and more eager to work on. Until some of the usual mismanagement methods that Hachette is well known for began to surface.
Suddenly, all of the programs that I had been fighting for, that were once so important, were given low priority and, despite my over five years of proven experience, my suggestions went completely ignored. In doing so, Hachette was screwing the people already there and the traffic began to plummet.
Just weeks before the launch of the Shock website, I tried to bring to their attention that we had no domain, no servers, no tech support, no hosting and no plan … ya know … minor shit like that. I was told by management to not worry so much about what could go wrong with the Shock website, rather to concern myself more with what I want the site to be. Does anyone else see a problem with that? Is it just me?
They also wanted to send me to Paris to meet the Choc staff and to train on their systems since we were supposed to clone their site for the initial launch. Not bad right? Except that they expected me to pay up front. We’re talking over $4,000 for the whole thing. Sorry, but a company this large should have a way to pay for business trips.
The final straw came on Friday night of last week. I had put in a bid for a freelance gig. Hachette has a policy set up that allows employees to freelance for properties other than the ones they work on. The decision should be at the discretion of whomever needed the work done. However, when my name came up, management nixed the idea. No reason was given. They simply decided to give the job to someone who was going to charge more and, get this, I had to train her!
So this made my mind up for me and I seethed until Monday. It took all day to get my boss to meet with me. I think she knew what was coming. I let it spill and told her that I was quitting. She was just pissed that I refused to go to Paris, learn the system and train my replacement. I was lucky in a sense because I also got to share what I felt with the head of human resources, the company’s chief operations officer (second in command) and one of the company’s general managers.
So they all got to hear my reasons. No bullshit, not bogus story of an offer to try and get more money. Just a need for a change. The most insulting part was that when I told them I quit, they all said, “If it’s about the money, we can have your raise to you by the end of the week.” My reply was, “Sorry, that is more reason to quit because I should not have had to go thru all of this in order to get my raise. If you have the money now, you had it four months ago.”
So now I’m taking some time to decide what my next move will be. I haven’t really made my mind up about whether or not to stay in publishing. One thing for sure is that I felt the massive weight of stress lift off of my shoulders. No matter what else comes, this was something I needed to do and I’m happier for it.
Oh and by the way, this was my horoscope from the Optimum Online website today. Though I don’t believe in these things, it’s pretty cool:
“It’s time to be bold if you want to make a fresh start, especially when it comes to your personal life. Playing it safe won’t protect you — in fact, it might do just the opposite. Strike out on your own. Take a chance.
