When You Know You're Getting Whacked [Throwback]
A recent discussion elsenet about bosses who expect you to work after firing you reminded me of a situation I faced several years ago. This was sort of the reverse of that, though. Teammates and I enjoyed a semi-vacation because we knew we were getting laid off weeks before it was official.
I was working at a major company, a name brand absolutely everyone would recognize. I won't name it here. Though the company has had many successful years in its history, the time when I was there was... not the best. Our market share was dwindling as we delivered new products that were only incremental improvements in an otherwise competitive market.
We had some revolutionary products... well, revolutionary product ideas... in development but couldn't deliver them due to a combination of technical complexity and weak leadership. Weak leaders were fearful of investing the money necessary to bring them the products in development to fruition. One of those products was a game-changer that had been been promised for so long without being finished that it had become something of a joke, both internally and externally.
With market share dwindling, profits dwindling, and stock price dwindling, the company decided on a layoff. A big layoff. 30% of the workforce.
Six Weeks?
The company announced this huge layoff well in advance of the details of who would be laid off. Final determination of which employees were being whacked would take 6 weeks. At the time that delay seemed crazy to me, though as I've gained experience with the business world I've seen it's par for the course.
Standard or not, the delay was demoralizing. The impending huge layoff cast a pall over much of the company. Teams were wondering, "Are we going to be hit? How badly?"
Not my team, though. Our boss found out early in the cycle that our project was being canceled, and told us. She told us that one portion of the team would definitely be laid off and the other portion was TBD. I was in the TBD half. Either we'd get laid off, too, or reassigned to another department- under managers we thought were doofuses. 😨 So all of us took the mindset of "We're out of here in 5 weeks," and we acted accordingly.
Continued in Part 2: It was like an in-office vacation!
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/23445.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
I was working at a major company, a name brand absolutely everyone would recognize. I won't name it here. Though the company has had many successful years in its history, the time when I was there was... not the best. Our market share was dwindling as we delivered new products that were only incremental improvements in an otherwise competitive market.
We had some revolutionary products... well, revolutionary product ideas... in development but couldn't deliver them due to a combination of technical complexity and weak leadership. Weak leaders were fearful of investing the money necessary to bring them the products in development to fruition. One of those products was a game-changer that had been been promised for so long without being finished that it had become something of a joke, both internally and externally.
With market share dwindling, profits dwindling, and stock price dwindling, the company decided on a layoff. A big layoff. 30% of the workforce.
Six Weeks?
The company announced this huge layoff well in advance of the details of who would be laid off. Final determination of which employees were being whacked would take 6 weeks. At the time that delay seemed crazy to me, though as I've gained experience with the business world I've seen it's par for the course.
Standard or not, the delay was demoralizing. The impending huge layoff cast a pall over much of the company. Teams were wondering, "Are we going to be hit? How badly?"
Not my team, though. Our boss found out early in the cycle that our project was being canceled, and told us. She told us that one portion of the team would definitely be laid off and the other portion was TBD. I was in the TBD half. Either we'd get laid off, too, or reassigned to another department- under managers we thought were doofuses. 😨 So all of us took the mindset of "We're out of here in 5 weeks," and we acted accordingly.
Continued in Part 2: It was like an in-office vacation!
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/23445.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]