You may remember last year I posted about a peer of mine who got hired after getting laid off, who just needed a job. Then, once he was here, he got another job that he supposedly wasn’t looking for, one that paid twice as much. You also may remember that I was pissed off about it. 

Well, that guy is coming back. Not as a peer, but as the director of software development. 

On the bright side, I won’t have to deal directly with him often, if at all; I sometimes work directly with software developers, but not their managers. On the down side, his annoying laugh and propensity for mispronouncing names will return in full force. 

I wonder if his previous job that he wasn’t looking for didn’t work out and he started looking elsewhere. Or maybe he liked my company (for all my complaining, it is a really good company to work for) and has been looking for a way back in at the level he “should” be at (he’s in his 50s). Or it could be that he was headhunted, although I don’t think we use headhunters so I really doubt that’s it. 

I think what annoys me the most is that he seems to have fallen upward. Twice. Meanwhile, I’m fewer than ten years younger than him and I’m stuck in a job that should go to people in their early 30s. At my age I should be at the very least a department manager, if not a senior manager or director. Getting laid off really put a crimp in my plans. But what’s worse is that I’ve applied for over 2500 jobs since I was laid off and I’ve gotten exactly one offer, about twenty recruiter calls, two or three advancements to the next round, and one “sorry, we went with someone else” when I was in the final consideration. 

I did finally — finally — get my first non-third-party recruiter request this year, from a direct competitor to my current company. So we’ll see how that goes. But even then I won’t really be at the right level. If I get the job I’ll be a project manager, which is more of what I want to be doing, but honestly at this point I should be managing mid-career people like I was at my last job, not being an individual contributor or leader of early-career people (most of my employees are on their first or second jobs, and all of them are under 30).

I’m sure when I bump into mister “I wasn’t looking” I’ll be pleasant and polite, but I won’t be happy about it. He starts next month; maybe by then I’ll have some good news of my own.