So we left off with me overspending. Let’s say I was given $100 to spend for the year, and I am now spending $150. Now, if you have properly planned, you knew about how much you would spend for the year, and that is what I proposed and got approved. I was also working with another team to hire people with my specialized skill set to get them people who knew what they were doing. We were going to “share” resources, both people and money to get things done because no one ever seems to have enough money or people to do anything in the first place.
Well, I held no less than 4 meetings in-person with the head of the organization (Director and senior VP) for the people who I was hiring. I was told REPEATEDLY to go ahead and hire them that we would have funding for the 4 people I hired and that we would work together….
Cut to the end of January where they announce a lead for the project. I bring this guy up to speed on who we hired and why, and that I need him to authorize the charge numbers so they can start work. He said that he wasn’t there when all this went down and he wasn’t going to authorize anything. So immediately, I am already overbudget while I get these people their charge number from the other group. They need paid so I have them charge my bucket of money and do work for me in the mean time, but I don’t need 4 people doing that. So I reach out to the director and senior VP that I originally talked to and asked why their new lead won’t accept my people. They make some lame excuse about him still planning and then figuring out how many people they need and what skills. To which I remind them of the absolutely massive amount of planning and hiring that went into this work already. I also mention that the new team members should be part of the planning efforts, and not be told what to do after the fact. The director says “I’ll talk to [REDACTED] and get him to send you the charge codes.”
Well, it gets even fucking better! Because of the insane Trump administration and all the cuts they made to the department of defense, our CEO calls for a pause on a significant amount of spending. Now I will say that when he made this announcement he mentioned that this was temporary and we would be holding reserves to minimize the damage from the Trump administration, otherwise we would end up letting a lot of people go. This turned out to be the case and we were able to minimize the damage from everything that has gone down since February.
Turns out the organization I was supposed to be working with and helping, that I have no oversight or authority over, decided that all the work that was supposed to go towards my area was “a nice to have” and they paused all spending. They ramped down all the work and sent me back all the people I had hired. I immediately tell my own leadership and document absolutely everything that went down. At the same time as this is going down, my boss gets sucked into an emergency rapid response team to deal with the pentagon and all the insanity from the new Secretary of Defense. And if you are wondering, it is as bad as you think it is.
So in order to buffer the majority of the company from the constant chaos of the administration, Trump, and Hegseth, the big bosses at the company get to be the punching bags. Again, our CEO made the right call and it worked, but it still sucks. Because the team I’m working with completely dumps all their work on me with 1/4 of their budget. And remember I hired people FOR THEM!
Then, Rachel happens….