Enemies everywhere

I talked with Son 2 today, for something like an hour and a half. You remember that he just got his Master's degree. And now he's got a job, working for a Big Employer. So we started talking about practical stuff, like which health plan should he sign up for? Then I asked him about his work, and he told me a lot about what he does. Finally I asked him about a concern that I've been brooding on for a couple of months now, more or less ever since I visited in December. Turns out he's been worried about it too.

A little background will help. Back after Son 2 got his bachelor's degree—he graduated in May 2020, right smack into the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic—he couldn't find a regular job because everything had shut down. But he finally got an internship in his field of specialty, working for a woman I'll call the Professora. They got along really well; and while they never did anything flagrantly unprofessional (by which I mean they didn't fuck, or at least not as far as I know), nonetheless they soon became friends. The Professora invited Son 2 to have dinner at her house, where he met her two sons. (She's a single mom, as well as a professional.) Occasionally they sat up drinking whiskey together. It went on like that.

But not for long, because soon the Professora left that job. She landed at a big university, instead. Fast-forward two years, and she had a graduate student leave her in the lurch even though she had a fully-funded research project. So she called Son 2, and asked him if he wanted to go to graduate school. You've heard this story before.

Son 2 enrolled in graduate school, and the Professora was his advisor. Which was fine for a few months until she got fired from the University. I should emphasize that her firing had nothing to do with her competence. Everyone agreed that she knows her subject deeply, and that she is passionately committed to it. Her ability and her commitment were never in question. And yet, she was fired—probably because of some squalid departmental intrigue. 

In the kerfluffle that followed, Son 2 kept his grants and fellowships and program because nobody thought it was his fault. He was reassigned to another professor who was friendly but really didn't understand his research. He continued to meet once a week with the Professora, who continued to guide his research. Meanwhile she got a job with Big Employer. (Maybe you can tell where this story is going.)

When I visited Son 2 back in December, I finally met the Professora. She was still working for Big Employer, but she happened to mention casually that there were some people in her department who had problems with her. She wanted to bring on Son 2 as an employee as soon as he graduated, but there were people making that difficult.

Wait, what? Did she really say this was the third job in four years where it was hard for her to fit in? Sorry, but once might be happenstance. Twice might be a coincidence. Three times is a pattern. What kind of pattern? Well, as near as I can tell the only thing those three jobs had in common was … her. The Professora herself.

And I've seen this pattern before. Back when I first met Wife, she was a teacher. She was incredibly competent as a teacher. She was passionately committed to education. (Early on, I talked briefly about some of these strengths.) And she made enemies everywhere. Seriously, the longest she ever taught at a single school was three years. When she went back to graduate school and her health flared up, she got no leeway from the school because she had already burned all her bridges.  

To listen to Wife tell it, there were always "reasons" that she was expelled from one workplace after another, and they were always Somebody Else's fault. But "three times is enemy action," and in this case she was her own worst enemy. Job by job, she sabotaged her own position, alienating her bosses and even her friends until they had to let her go and nobody would speak up to defend her. Watching this happen over and over convinced me that The Ability to Get Along in an Organization is a whole skill all by itself. It's not something you can just assume someone has, if they also have the substantive or technical skills needed for a job. In the classroom, Wife was a terrific teacher; even students who suffered in her classes came back after a year or two to thank her for teaching them so much and so well. The Professora knows her field—which is also Son 2's field—like the back of her hand. Neither one can function in an organization. They both find enemies everywhere, because they generate those enemies by their behavior.

I told Son 2 about my concerns, and that he should arrange to disentangle himself from the Professora—still keeping her as a friend, of course, if possible—so that her enemies don't hold him back. Turns out he had already seen the exact same problem, and had already hit on the exact same solution. He said yes, he had heard the Professora talk about all the reasons people didn't like her in one job or another, and he recognized that they sounded like the reason Wife used to give for people not liking her. But then Son 2 went on to say that he remembered watching how things invariably worked out for Wife—or rather, more to the point, how they invariably did not work out for her!—and he came to understand that she was causing most of her own problems.

Is he at risk at Big Employer, that people might think of him as the Professora's protégé? Maybe not so much. It turns out that the Professora was fired from Big Employer back on December 21. Son 2 wasn't hired until January. So maybe some people will remember that there was a connection between them, but it won't be obvious because it won't be in everyone's face. And yes, his plan now is to keep the Professora in his network, always to be grateful to her, but nonetheless gently to "unhitch his wagon from her."

That sounds about right, and I'm glad.