Freed by 50

Earlier this month I was notified of changes to my team, my department, and our priorities going forward. In short, we were reorganizing. If you’ve worked in corporate America long enough, you’re bound to be caught up in a “reorg” sooner or later.

Although we had been told for weeks that there was going to be a reorg, the details were held tightly by our senior management. On August 1st, my manager called me, and with a grim face he told me the news. For weeks I had been told that my team was safe. That we were one of the most productive teams in the department, and therefore would actually be getting more people, not losing anyone. Yet the news on the day of the reorg was quite the opposite.

The team that I had been building for years was broken up. I lost two thirds of my people and most of the projects I had been working on for years. This came with the news that none of this was personal, and that I had always done a great job. I was left confused by mixed messaging and wondering just how close I had come to not being employed.

This was the third worst reorg of my career.

The second worst reorg I’ve ever experienced was when my company hired a bean counter as a VP to reshape our Professional Services department. In his very first address to our department, he announced that we would be reorganizing into specializations by product (fine), and that we were getting out of the technical consulting business (not fine). I was a Technical Consultant.

The panic that ensued after that meeting was wild. I watched a number of colleagues quit and go to other companies. I scrambled to find a new role. Our managers tried in vain to keep the peace, but it was an all out race for the exits.

Six months later, safe in my new role, I learned that the company fired that VP. The person who took his place was heard saying it would take years to recover from the damage he’d done in just half a year.

Yet, this all pales in comparison to the single most painful reorg of my career.

I was working at a company that was an absolute cash cow for their parent company. This company owned many networks producing shows you’ve probably watched. They owned sports teams and venues you’ve heard of. Their parent was our regional cable company, which was privately owned mostly by one family.

While there had been rumors that the owners wanted to sell my subsidiary, it always seemed like a ghost story that employees told around the watercooler. How could they?

One week, I took my first ever vacation on that job. I flew down south to visit a girl I’d been seeing and all said, I had a pretty good trip. Since I was a lowly entry level employee, I didn’t have a Blackberry or a company phone. The thought of going to a computer to check my email never even occurred to me. Even company instant messaging platforms weren’t really much of a thing then, so I couldn’t see any chatter even if I’d looked. My boss never called.

Monday morning I got ready like every other day. I battled traffic to work, found a spot in the massive parking lot, and waved to coworkers on my way in. I put my lunch in the fridge like always, I made a coffee, and then I ran into my manager. He looked puzzled.

“What are you doing here?” He asked.

“Uh, my job I guess, unless they finally sold the place.” I said with confusion building.

“Didn’t you read your email?” He said.

“No, why was I fired?” I asked, now in a bit of a panic.

“No, you’re lucky, Mike was, but you don’t work here anymore.” He said.

As I came to find out, while I was on vacation they actually did sell my company. And my team was disbanded effective immediately. And my management felt a short email would suffice.

What’s more, I was told that I now worked on a new team, in a different building, at the parent company, in a different town.

My shitty commute got fifteen minutes shittier. My mediocre job as a Systems Administrator had become a shitty job as a Data Center Tech. My boss went from being someone clearly inept at being a people manager to one of the worst human beings I’ve ever had to work with. That one reorg and the changes to my life and my job sent me into a three year long downward spiral.

So why do I share all of this? Well aside from the fact that looking back it’s kind of amusing to think that I once got reorged across a county, there are a lot of lessons to be learned. Lessons I’m starting to realize I may have forgotten over the years.

• Your company owes you nothing – This is true for about 99% of people. Unless you helped found the company and own a major part of it, they don’t have to care about you or your wellbeing at all. In fact, I’ve found that many companies who preach about wellbeing still don’t care.
• However safe you may think you are, you aren’t – I got complacent in my current role and let myself think that I’d built something strong and important enough to withstand organizational changes. Nothing is safe from the ambitions of leaders or the bottom line when it comes to finances.
• You need a safety net – In past reorgs, I really needed the job and wouldn’t last more than a few weeks without it. I had little to no savings and easily 75% of my income went to bills. I now have a six month emergency fund and enough income producing assets that I can weather the storm if I have to. Should I find myself out of a job, or in a place I don’t like, I can afford to live my life while I find something new.
• You need to be educated about your field and your options – In my early career, I thought working in corporate IT meant I worked in tech, when in reality I had a technical job in Telcom. I didn’t know that I could work for companies that weren’t in the NYC metro area without relocating. I didn’t recognize my transferrable skills for years. I had no mentors or guidance in my field.
• Leaders and Managers need to do right by their people – As a manager of multiple teams, I feel a great responsibility to take care of my people and my peers. I share openly whenever possible, and when it’s not possible, I drop heavy handed hints. Managers owe it to their team to make sure they’re informed via proper channels, even if they don’t like someone on the team. Senior leaders need to take better care to be aware of the long term damage a major change can make to their department, and the psychological state of their workers.

Reorgs tend to suck, and they’re a major reason why I’m trying to get out of corporate America on my own terms as soon as possible. At the same time, they’re a great reminder that as long as you depend on someone else to earn money, you aren’t truly free.