No one is coming to save you.

How a brutal truth set me free

It was 2019 and I was thriving at Netflix. In many ways it was the perfect company for me – it had an iconic culture that gave us freedom and autonomy, they paid us really well and we worked on the world’s most relevant and impactful brands. When they made me the offer, it was incredibly validating, and I felt like I’d graduated to the big leagues.

 

It should have been the dream job.

For long time, it was. Two and half years in, by all measures, my team was crushing it.  We were producing industry-shifting work, memorable campaigns, and growing our side of the business.  My team was 70% internal transfers.  People wanted to work with us because we were healthy, really happy and operating in our zone of genius.  I was a strong and influential leader in the company.  Since I walked in the building in 2017, everybody kept telling me how great I was, how I was poised and primed to be promoted and get to the most senior levels of the company.  This happened without me asking for it — there was  lot of room to grow in my role as our team expanded. But it was, I suppose, only natural that when my own leadership and leadership several layers above me proactively expressed plans to elevate me further, I started to want that for myself. 

And yet. Years continued to go by with more promises and no action.  When I would ask what’s going on, I was met with some version of these three things:

1. With everything going on, It’s just not the right time. 

2. We’re working on a plan for you, sit tight.

3. We need to see more from you. 

I became increasingly frustrated.  I was seeing people around me get promoted despite not coming close to the impact I had both internally and externally. And I didn’t like feeling that way — I’d never been one to be jealous of others’ professional success. The frustration and anger were turning me into a worse version of myself, and eventually they began to turn inward and morph into self-doubt and lower self-esteem.  As time went on, I started to believe that maybe it was me. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. Maybe there was more for me to prove. After all, these were the leaders of the company I had loved and trusted and respected so much, so why wouldn’t they be right? 

One day, when my self esteem was at a particularly low point, I ran into one of my mentors at lunch. He was a VP in the company and had been there for a while.  He was revered and respected by almost everyone. He was always a safe space for me to talk about how I was feeling and what was going on.

He must have seen that I was down and frustrated and asked if I was ok. I replied, “no, I’m not ok.”  I explained how tired I was of trying to prove myself. “When are they going to finally see how great I am? When am I going to get tapped to go to the next level? What more do I need to show?  How much longer do I have to wait?”

He chuckled and looked me dead in my eye and said…

“I have more than 200 people in my organization. It’s not statistically possible for me to think about their development or roadmap for their life and career.  You have to take matters into your own hands or you’ll be waiting forever.”

He continued, “Maya, no one is coming to save you. They don’t care about your growth. They don’t have time to think about it. Do you know how much everyone has on their plate every day? Not just here at work, but in their life? Nobody goes home thinking about how they can help you grow. They want you to produce. And as long as you continue to produce at the level you are, there’s no reason for them to focus on it. They’re getting what they want.”

I remember standing there with a blank stare. Stunned, actually, quite literally speechless.  He was absolutely right and I couldn’t believe I never saw it that way until that moment. 

Of course they’re not thinking of me. Why would they?  I started to reflect on how much time I had spent agonizing over not being seen.  How much time I had spent expressing my frustration to my friends, to nights when my despair would suck the air out of the room when I spent time with my family. How much time I spent — time I wasted — waiting to be discovered. 

My mentor’s blunt words made me wonder: Why did I have that expectation in the first place?  I was learning the hard way that actions speak louder than words. Although they had told me they were going to help me, there were no actions that supported them.  You could call it good intentions or a form of gaslighting, but the why doesn’t really matter. They were unwilling, unable, or unequipped to support me.

Even the most caring leadership exists within a system of work culture. And that system was never designed to support growth.  It was designed to limit your individual expression.  The modern workplace still mirrors that of the Industrial revolution, to homogenize us and to conform us so that it can maximize efficiency for maximum production.  It’s not efficient to spend time understand us as individuals.  It’s not efficient to spend time figuring out how to help you grow. And for most leaders, it goes beyond being inefficient into being literally impossible.

Leaders are not equipped to help you. Most managers are promoted based on their ability to perform work, not manage people.  According to HBR, only 10% of the $200 billion annual outlay for corporate training and development in the United States delivers concrete results. That’s a staggering amount of waste.  People don’t leave jobs or disengage because of the work, they leave because they don’t feel seen by their leaders.

I’m so grateful for that moment with my mentor.  I have always believed that frustration comes from a gap between expectations and reality — but I didn’t realize I was living proof of that axiom until that moment, standing up on the sprawling, luxurious 14th floor of the Netflix headquarters, looking out at a stunning view, yet feeling like I was stuck in a basement dungeon. He allowed me to close the gap between my expectations and my reality by adjusting my expectations, instead of waiting around for reality to meet it.  And that, more than anything any superior could have given me, set me free. 

As we move into this next era of work, it’s imperative that we take our lives and our work into our own hands.  As he so eloquently and bluntly said to me, I will say it to you… 

No one is coming to save you.

And I will add… these companies don’t love you. They are not loyal to you. They don’t really care about you. They want more from you and more of you but they will not give more to you. The system won’t change until we change. 

We have to lead ourselves. 

We have to learn who we are, how we operate, what drives us and what obstacles we put up for ourselves.  We have to develop a notion of why, of what were placed on this earth to do. We have to become masters of ourselves and understand our unique and specific conditions for success.  We have to be able to articulate and advocate for our needs and become unapologetic about being in our unique expression.  We have to evaluate opportunities, workplaces and leaders differently and move with more intention than ever before.  

It occurs to me that some people might read this as a version of the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality, as advocacy for rugged individualism. That is the opposite of what I am saying. My reckoning with my own lack of agency does not excuse the leaders who didn’t support me or the system that was created to crush me. It made me realize that I wanted to burn that system down, and that in order to do so, I needed to get in touch with a sense of self and an inner determination that would give me the energy to create a better kind of community. 

I can say that for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m back in the driver seat of my life.  The workplace still hasn’t changed, but I have. I feel empowered, fulfilled and clear about who I am and what I’m here to do.  I’m no longer jumping from place to place hoping to be seen and understood.  Instead, I’m walking boldly into my destiny on my terms and it feels so damn good. 

The best work of your life is in you, it’s not in a place. 

I hope this story woke something up in you. We spend 70% of our life at work.  If you don’t love your work, it’s impossible to love your life. And you deserve to love it all. 

Sending you so much love wherever you are,

m