My friend Tracy quit yesterday. He started at eBay a month before I did, over five years ago. We both started in Community Watch, where we spent the better part of a year booting off the creeps who listed freak-show porn, Faces of Death videos and crime scene photos. Later, I moved on to the Quality team and then into Recognition and Communications – he became a Supervisor and then a Trainer for New Hires, China and Outsourcing. Oddly enough, the work still kept us in shared circles.
The same is true for many of the friends I know from the beginning. Sadly, month by month, there are fewer and fewer of us. We seem to be dying off, all completely unable or unwilling to let this place plow over us one more time.
eBay is a great place. It’s done a lot for me, personally and professionally. And the benefits aren’t half bad at all. eBay’s a great concept, model and opportunity. By and large, the people who use it and work for it, completely buy into its ideals and possibilities.
In Customer Support, we live for those fleeting moments when we see it work the way it’s meant to – when it brings people together in meaningful ways. Because as cheesy as it sounds, we feel like we were a tiny part of those moments, and that makes all our work worth it. Those moments pick us up off the ground and give us the strength to do it again.
Because working at eBay grinds you into the fucking ground. It asks for everything you have and more than you can ever give. It never stops. And we just don’t get to see very many of those moments.
When you’ve spent five years running non-stop, juggling the workload of 3 people and banging your head against the inter-office political blockade, those moments aren’t enough anymore. Instead, they just make you sad because there’s not one speck of strength left to be found in your heart. You’re so fricking tired. Dead tired.
And as much as eBay takes care of their people, it doesn’t matter a damn if you’ve managed to survive the swells crammed into the last 5 years that most companies navigate in the course of twenty. They don’t care that these ‘long term’ employees are dropping like flies.
eBay is so much bigger than a single person. We start and stay most of our careers as part of an internal community that kicks ass. As a group, there’s almost nothing we can’t accomplish. Nothing we’re not willing to pitch in and work for. But when an individual gets ground down, that’s a different story. They’ve gotta pull themselves back up on their own or get left in the dust.
Which is wierd. Because if you’ve got a problem with productivity or hotkeys, if you need to learn how a tool works or get some answers for a project, people will help you at the drop of a hat. It’s work-related. So they can deal with that. But when someone gets burnt out or emotionally nuked – it’s like they’re a ghost. No one knows how to fix that, and no one has time to figure it out because it’s not on the list of nine million ‘business critical’ tasks we’ve got to deal with RIGHT NOW.
Our ‘walking wounded’ become singular people caught up in a megalithic machine that adapts beyond every limitation, including experience. It bothers me that these people I have known, who have so much knowledge and talent, get worn down and none of our brave mid-level leaders care. As a Recognition Specialist, I thought it was my job to care. I cared A LOT. My boss? Not so much. And when I got really passionate about it – she nuked me.
So I think this is why the ‘older’ folks are dying, why we’re leaving. There are all these people here, all this community, and so few emotional touchstones. There’s little room for talent. No toleration for independent thought. Instead, we’re tiny motes of energy to be pushed around wherever and however is needed. And it’s my observation that talented, independent people tend to have very little tolerance for that kind of control. In the end, it’s about our dreams, our integrity, and the fact that we just won’t be bought.
I have no idea if Tracy felt like this. I hope not. We haven’t talked since I was demoted to my data entry punishment. But that day, he saw how pissed I was as I tossed the entire contents of my desk into boxes and sat in my chair with tears of rage in my eyes, looking blankly at my screen and trying to come up with any reason not to get up and walk the hell out. (The only reason I could think of was Travis.) Tracy came over to ask me what had happened – he lent his ear and showed me he cared, even though we were never close friends. It meant so much.
Maybe he didn’t have any of these issues. Maybe he just found something else he wanted to do. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the fact they’re reorganizing his group and moving the work to our Vancouver office. The point is, I don’t know. I never asked. And given what he did for me, I should have.
Tracy didn’t say goodbye. He left at 5pm and sent an email to his cubemates.
He left no contact information at all.
© 2005, jules.maas. All rights reserved.
