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I used to have meetings with ECDs and CCO constantly, and now I've been taken out of those, and I'm blindsided to what is happening at the job anymore. And they keep complaining to me how they can't access me anymore without going around a shitload of process.
The guy seems to like me and keep making good comments about my work, but it all sounds very patronizing and insulting tbh. "you are growing up fast, you learned a lot in the past few months" I haven't learned shit from him. I have about the same level of experience and much more technical knowledge.
He also can't manage to do anything without AI. To make any decision, he asks GPT what to do first. I know because he not only does not hide it from me, he also encourages me to do the same.
He constantly takes my WIP concepts and runs through Midjourney to get it to look polished faster, but turns into bland versions of it instead.
Another thing he does is to say he will personally work on something, so I shouldn't worry, just to ask me to jump on it when it gets close to the deadline, because he couldn't do it because he got swamped with something else. And the something else is always a cool project that he hides from everyone else.
Fucking disaster.
Is there an ECD you trust that you can bring this up to? Similar shit happened to me once. Someone who could barely design or use any Adobe software stepped in to “manage me” but did only harm no good. My juniors suffered. Luckily my CD (non design) had my back and agreed the new folk sucks. Though I didn’t manage to actually get rid of the new folk I got to still work my the CDs I liked directly bc they actually requested me not the new designer on all their fancy projects. I still left in less than 3 months after that though bc it was unbearable, and brought it up (in a polite way oc) during my exit interview.
Why’d they report you
They reported TO him, like they were the boss of two employees
Have you had any convos with CCO as you mentioned you had constant meetings with? It sucks to have suddenly someone come in like that, but the first thing to figure is why the leadership saw the need to have someone at that position, especially if the team is so small.
The other offices have more designers. The team, in total, is 10, including the new head.
Like many other agencies are now doing, they want to sell design capabilities, so the only way they could do is to get all the designers from multiple offices together.
This already was an stupid plan. The office in SF for instance is mostly digital so the few designers there are doing sites. Not campaign/brand.
The other office handles retail and the designers there aren't that great. They mostly handle adaptation. So for visual identities / campaign dev is mostly my team doing anyways.
Now, part of this is my own fault. I didn't step up to try to get this role because I didn't think I was up to lead the whole US team, and I thought it was more of a problem than a blessing.
And I also thought I could benefit from having someone really senior to have my back, to help dealing with the bullshit while me and my team could focus on the craft.
But the agency hired a professional bullshiter instead of an actual design leader.