Im no whiner , but my Pep story is so ridiculous Im curious what others think..
Came in off a strong referral from the outside, was hired by and reported to a respected B2 to develop and build a team within a trans function.Being an external hire into a leadership role required a lot of adapting to existing culture and certain processes that my lateral peers in TX had already established since my team was to be an extension of theirs..naturally I had questions around what some of the norms were. Everyone was helpful initially especially one of them. Im going to call this person "the snake".The snake called me , sent me suggestions, looped me in on emails, and gained my trust. After the initial few months i saw fewer and fewer messages, calls, IM's from everyone but the snake kept reaching out checking in, asking how my business was and giving me insight to things that I otherwise would not know. The snake ended up being my "go to" and the rest of the group was there if the snake wasn't. The snake was a level above me but reported to a lower banded manager than I did. My boss was the snakes boss's boss. I knew the snake had a strong relationship with my boss though. The snake knew my schedule down to when i had 1-1's with my leader. He would call me sometimes beforehand to give me "advice" on a few things he thought my leader would like to hear. I heeded the advice since everyone knew they were close and my leader was somewhat socially awkward especially during short calls a few times a month. Through Q3 that year I noticed some people on the snakes team getting pushy in cross managing my team. At one point it was blatant disrespect ignoring my role as a leader and I brought it up..The snake played it as his lead was "coaching" and "making our teams better" and we all need to do that. Regardless of who reports to who. I blew it off but kept noticing more and more people on his team poking around my business. I began finding things out second hand from my leader which was odd but Fast fwd to the end of the year...I ended up with a handpicked team that i hired, trained, and that delivered every AOP goal I had. At the very end of the year I traveled to my boss and the snakes office for a key meeting. My boss pulled me aside and told me that he needed me to take another role within his BU, he was promoting the snake, and that I would no longer report directly to him...I would report to the snake as the snake was going to take over the team that I was brought on to develop and lead. From there my leader said he would support me if I decided to look for other roles within Pep and even mentioned a role that he knew of , but I wasn't interested in....SO..I find out that the snake was systematically painting the picture of me to my boss that he needed to in order to leapfrog me. All the help was actually sabotage and manipulating conversations. The snake is my old leaders golden boy and i realized that very quickly from this point out. I was effectively cut out of any and everything important to ones career and it ended in getting let go yesterday. To this minute neither my original boss nor the snake has given me the courtesy of saying "hey , you ok" thats the kind of people you have to deal with at pepsi.