There was a moment, when I was at Entertainment Weekly, that I asked for a promotion I didn't get. I saw colleagues get promoted past me and I wanted mine. My then-boss turned me down, adding "Plenty of people at Time Inc. retire as senior editors." My response: Nah. Not me.

And right then and there I started building an exit strategy. I was gonna write my ass off. Comics. TV pilots. Screenplays. All of it. I thought I was going to spend my entire career there, but that harsh reality check shook my complacency away.

Also, I looked at why I didn't get that promotion. And some of the criticisms were correct. So I worked on getting better so that wouldn't be anyone's excuse ever again.

When EW eliminated my job and laid me off after 13 years, it was a blow, to be sure, but it reaffirmed my belief that no company cares about you as much as you care about it. And it also underscored the need to have done all of that extracurricular work.

By the time my severance ended, I'd gotten staffed on Alphas.

All of which is to say: If you’re not good enough to be promoted, you need to face that and pivot. If you’re GREAT, but the system is stacked against you and you’re never gonna advance, then you leave. And if you stay for 20 YEARS, in either scenario, that shit is on you.

Am I subtweeting? Yeah. I guess. But I have little patience for people who are catastrophically bad at their jobs doing interviews in which they're presenting themselves as victims.