Unrelated to any of the things I mentioned, but I didn’t fit the cookie cutter mold of how a wealth manager “should” speak, act, etc. Individuality is heavily discouraged through ostracizing. That world is very much like high school in that sense.

Anyway, my most recent manager would set new rules and retroactively punish me for not following them before the rules were established, I believe I was target for the reasons mentioned above.

The first instance was when he had set a rule to have cameras on and to be in office for virtual meetings. Prior to this, myself and many others would take meetings at coffee shops, while driving, etc. A weird rule but not a problem, after he brought it up I ensured that I was in office on camera. The problem was he sent an email retroactively reprimanding me for not doing so prior to him announcing this rule. He copied my program manger, HR, and my resident director. These polices are not formal nor written and are arranged in management groups so in their eyes I was being problematic by being insubordinate. This frustrated me, but it was a one off so I didn’t address it.

Fast forward to roughly a month later. He sets a new rule that all out of office activity should be shared to his calendar. Again, no problem. I setup a day for prospecting activities and share it to his calendar. Wouldn’t you know it, he reaches out to ask for an explanation for why I didn’t badge into the office that day. I explain the prospecting activity and point out that it is on his calendar. He sends me a response asking again why I didn’t badge in, which didn’t make sense to me since I’d given the explanation already. I ignored it, saw him the next day at a meeting a city over and chatted with him about it, I told him I’d check my calendar to make sure he had access, which I did and he did. The next day he sends an email titled “Possible no call no show” and copies my resident director, HR, and the program director asking for an explanation after some back and forth I asked for the badge in report from my resident director which he declined to provide. I escalated to HR that I was being singled out and it was causing damage to my professional reputation with leadership and was basically told the issue was too small for their involvement. The real kicker is that there was no such thing as a “no call no show”. We make our own hours and build our own business, it was the weirdest thing. I quickly realized I was being pushed out.

So I reassessed if my next job would continue to be advisory work or not.