So much for that

I just had the talk with my boss. She came back with basically my worst case scenario--thought not the worst imaginable one. She laid out a review after 6 months with the possibility of a promotion (to where I should be now) and a raise (of significantly lower than I would consider reasonable). Also, I thought I had the option of moving to Hyderabad now, but it turns out that's a longer-term thing (again, maybe in 6 months) and conditional on someone else wanting to go. She doesn't want "a rogue operator" out there with no management supervision.

She could tell I wasn't happy and I told her explicitly that it was basically my worst case scenario -- no point in being coy, I figure. I also told her that I felt a lot of mistrust on the part of the company -- this whole "prove to me your good before I'll recognize your value or trust you to work independently". I also reiterated that the risk is heavily weighted on me. Her response: they have risks associated with bringing in someone new, investing time in training/orientation (ummm ... haven't seen much of that in the first month), transferring responsibilities, etc. I pointed out that those "risks" are faced by any company, while this one is asking me to take on much more risk than is asked of most hires. She couldn't help but agree. God, I love it when I say just the right thing in the moment rather than thinking it 10 minutes later!

Too bad that's about all we agreed on. Apparently, this management philosophy comes down from the CEO himself and the policies are very rigid, so there no reason to expect any meaningful change.

Long, rambling story short: I won't stick around long-term, that much is sure. It's just a question of how long I stay and where I go next. I'd really like to stay in India, but we'll see. I feel relieved. I have some regrets because there are some truly excellent aspects of the job, there are some people I really like, and the job has the potential to be incredible (perhaps only in some alternate universe), but I don't work well under these conditions.

Big sigh. Big question mark.