I completely agree about paying dues in certain lines of work.
There were a couple of us competent and capable types that knew how to do most jobs there. However, none were in any of the ruling cliques therefore nothing mattered.
Only when there was a disaster or someone responsible was required were C&C’s acknowledged at all. At most after whatever was over, an atta-person email was the most that could be expected. That was rare except for one executive PD. He was a great guy to work for and the most organized person there was.
For several years, I had the most perfect situation it is possible to imagine. Since I’d received the project directly from the Director of Research, he had zip interest in managing me. So I stayed with my previous manager who had control of my body, but not of my project. As long as I performed whenever the Director wanted something - which meant staying through the night and delivering at 8am - no one looked over my shoulder at all. If I wanted something, I asked and usually got it. I mentioned to someone that I had to deliver one item at the very last minute and the Director had told me fine, he trusted me. The person was amazed because apparently the director never trusted anyone. But I was cheap by nature with my costs and the Director heard that he was getting my work at 10 percent of what it would have cost him if he’d had it done outside, so he was thrilled, too.
Then the project gradually got bigger. I needed a musician and an animator, and the multimedia part of the magazine needed more research support to design the language (not invented here) and implement the magazine on it. We had some type of engineering support until my husband moved over and built the video studio for me. Then he was the engineer.
But some of the people brought in were not of the pleasantest sort and after a few years it wasn’t as nice as it had been. Husband got out into a new digital video project that had a new computer that some production companies were using. I moved into the user interface institute and proselytized for some really quick, dirty and sexy uses of video in computer projects, so I basically became an inhouse consultant. The studio I left was disbanded.
Then we heard about the most amazing early retirement offer just when I heard that the person husband was least fond of was moving over to his digital project and I instantly knew I could get him out of IBM after 25 years. We commuted 180 miles each way every week. We left on the last day of the last good offer and did wonderfully, so no regrets, and I still have fond memories of the whole experience.