Why I quit Splunk (the long version)

When you join a visionary company the expectation is that you also subscribe to that vision, embrace the culture and you all drive into the colourful sunset together. In reality there is always some optimal timeframe when you can hop onto the wave and surf it. Until the inevitable internal chaos or external circumstances disrupt that picture of the bright future, and instead of surfing you get wiped out and crushed by the wave. Inhuman relentless force of nature blind both to your brilliance and your darkness.

This is not a story of corporate malice or injustice. It is of course a part of every modern enterprise. Simply because the archaic structure itself is not suited for modern workstyle. I have a whole separate article about corporate feudalism and the inevitable downfall of it. Already the brightest modern techno-preachers are experimenting with DAOs that generate wealth using individual skills without the evil hierarchical overhead. You can read about that separately too. This is not the point of this story - this is the story of my personal failure.

I joined Splunk with a concrete plan in mind. Joined a support team after finishing as a consultant at the previous company, because everyone knows that support org is a jump ramp. A path to overcome the labour market misconception that your immediate value is defined primarily by your past experience. The market assumes, that if you’ve never been, for example, an IT professional specialised in a set of particular technologies, you are automatically destined to lose in a competition to any other specialist who has the required experience. For some reason IT is extremely bull-headed in this particular aspect unlike some other professions.?

Everyone who knows me would agree that technology requirements generally don’t apply to me. I learn extremely fast and excel at zero experience apprehension challenges. But the cards are stacked against me, so I need to play the game too - get exposure to the required skills, tick the boxes and get formally recognised. Therefore the plan was to dive into Splunk, quickly get all the product certs and more, outgrow the role and move into the desired SRE / DevOps roles internally.

I was well on my track, finishing one certification after the other and getting adjusted to the intricacies of internal team interactions within the behemoth of Cloud infrastructure. But then the Chaos gods struck humanity with COVID lockdowns and my plans got ruined by the ruinous powers. I adjusted to working from home well enough (or so I thought), but the absence of human interaction (sometimes I would have days without a single zoom meeting) and reliance on slack shifted my work perception. I got stuck in the mud of endless problem solving and customer complaints. And lost track of my path.

To add to that, we suddenly lost a manager who initially sold me the vision and supported my initiative and my creativity. Our team was left practically unsupervised for nearly a year, and yes we were self-sufficient and flexible, but without a leader and any new blood we spent a long time in stagnation. This was the beginning of the end for me.

I still remember those couple of months when the increased workload and attrition left me with 30+ cases to work on every day (compared to typical 10). Yes, this load was eventually offset and the effort recognised. But all we got was a “thank you” and a 100% bonus, which was awarded to every employee that quarter despite individual performance. I guess it was a smart step to encourage those of us who had difficulties coping with lockdowns, but it also erased the heroic effort of the top performers. My contribution in particular was swept under the rug and completely forgotten (more on this later).?

My day-to-day mood at this point was of complete disillusion, because most of my attempts at improving the company met the brick wall. All I did was complain in chat and tirelessly help other people in the internal how-to Cloud support channel. I became bitter and started casually wearing the black hat (the role which is not typical for me). Several situations where I overreacted to other teams incompetence created tension with my new manager. Who branded me as a troublemaker and refused to help promote me in any way, advising instead to step away from taking things personally and therapy.

These developments were exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Even though it didn’t affect me directly, it affected my relatives and my friends, it affected me to the point where I got depressed and started drinking. I don’t want to go into the details here, but I must say that Splunk did not discriminate against me but also didn’t help.

The ray of hope finally came when I saw an internal SRE opportunity, applied to it, went through all the rounds of interviews and was told that I definitely fit, but… this whole process was actually initiated to move another experienced engineer from a different technical team back to the SRE team. I was also told that there will be no more internal promotions to the SRE - all new hires will be contractors.

I was devastated, I reached out to various levels of management. All I was offered as an option was a plan to do some day-1 SRE training courses (didn’t need them) and wait for an opportunity if one of the senior SREs decide to resign. I agreed and waited, and waited some more, until I had to set a cut off date and stay true to my promise.

What more could I have done? I raised awareness of the issue. When the company declared focus on employee retention programs due to poor internal survey results and significant attrition, I explained wherever I could that Support needs lateral ladders more than any other org: not everyone wants to become a middle manager, it’s natural for technical people to want to branch out. The “contractor only” rule still stayed - I guess technical knowledge and culture loss cannot be expressed in numbers good enough for a data company. I never saw any tangible results of employee retention programs, too slow and too late for me at this point.

Half a year went by. Several people were hired. I got a new manager. I was just doing my job at this point - a husk of my former self. But I was still doing it very well (one of the top performers). So when people finally started getting senior promotions, I went back to ask for what was long overdue and was offered a plan to prove myself and maybe get a promotion some time in the future. None of my achievements during the three year tenure with 3 other managers were remembered. Instead the focus was on my shortcomings (that Splunk helped to develop). I thought to myself “No, thank you. If I have to prove myself once again, I can do it in a different company.”

So was I destined to fail or was this all just a long chain of unfortunate coincidences? Could this have been a story with a happy ending? You can decide for yourself. All I want to say in conclusion is that, because I was put on gardening leave on the same day I submitted my resignation, I didn’t even get an opportunity to say goodbye. (Guess I got no valuable knowledge to transfer after all.) So this is my official goodbye.

Thank you everyone I have worked with throughout these years. Splunk the company may be bad, but the people are awesome. I’ll be happy to meet some of you in the future. As for those who didn’t enjoy working with me - go touch some grass and be better - I have no enemies.