Stacking the Tea Leaves: When You Know You're Getting Whacked-- Maybe!
Recently I've been writing about a situation years ago when my work teammates and I slacked for 5 weeks knowing a layoff was coming. As I noted, though, not all of us knew we'd be laid off. I was one of the people for whom it could go either way.
During the weeks my team slacked waiting for the ax to fall, other teams were abuzz with speculation and worry about who'd be whacked. "Watch for where there's a big conference room booked solid all month and the windows are taped over," was a common item of rumor around the company. "If you see that in your building, it means there'll be a lot of layoffs there."
While others were busy trying to read the tea leaves, I was in the unusual situation of being able to arrange the tea leaves... at least for myself. My department had a combination of hardware and software engineers. The hardware project was being canceled and, with it, everyone who was a hardware engineer was being laid off. Software people would likely be reassigned. I was actually a software person- but one with strong (if high level) understanding of hardware design. That left managers above the two on my team uncertain about what my skillset actually was. So they asked me.
Now, when they asked me, "Are you more hardware or software?" I knew the reality of that question was, "Should we lay you off or reassign you?" I had already considered which side of the falling ax I wanted to be on. I had been excited to join the company for the particular project and the particular team I worked on. With that project and at least half the team getting whacked the prospect of continued employment there was frankly uninspiring. I opted for getting laid off. That didn't mean I misrepresented my work, though. I explained to Management I was a software engineer but had worked exclusively on improving the hardware architecture and developing software drivers for it.
"Hmm," they collectively responded. My answer wasn't the strict is-you-is-or-is-you-ain't answer they were looking for. That meant they didn't know whether to lay me off or retain me. And it meant for all I behaved as though I were being laid off I didn't know for sure, either, until the Day of Truth.
Next: The Day of Truth....
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/24379.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
During the weeks my team slacked waiting for the ax to fall, other teams were abuzz with speculation and worry about who'd be whacked. "Watch for where there's a big conference room booked solid all month and the windows are taped over," was a common item of rumor around the company. "If you see that in your building, it means there'll be a lot of layoffs there."
While others were busy trying to read the tea leaves, I was in the unusual situation of being able to arrange the tea leaves... at least for myself. My department had a combination of hardware and software engineers. The hardware project was being canceled and, with it, everyone who was a hardware engineer was being laid off. Software people would likely be reassigned. I was actually a software person- but one with strong (if high level) understanding of hardware design. That left managers above the two on my team uncertain about what my skillset actually was. So they asked me.
Now, when they asked me, "Are you more hardware or software?" I knew the reality of that question was, "Should we lay you off or reassign you?" I had already considered which side of the falling ax I wanted to be on. I had been excited to join the company for the particular project and the particular team I worked on. With that project and at least half the team getting whacked the prospect of continued employment there was frankly uninspiring. I opted for getting laid off. That didn't mean I misrepresented my work, though. I explained to Management I was a software engineer but had worked exclusively on improving the hardware architecture and developing software drivers for it.
"Hmm," they collectively responded. My answer wasn't the strict is-you-is-or-is-you-ain't answer they were looking for. That meant they didn't know whether to lay me off or retain me. And it meant for all I behaved as though I were being laid off I didn't know for sure, either, until the Day of Truth.
Next: The Day of Truth....
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/24379.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]