Watching a Team Get Let Go in Real Time

I suppose sometimes it doesn’t matter how much value you provide, as someone high up can just decide to let entire segment of an organization go.

A good friend over another department pulled me aside and said, “We’re being let go.”

This is out of nowhere - for him, his team, and for me. We knew our company was adjusting to some market forces, but this had nothing to do with those. As a matter of fact, because of said market forces, our company has very specific things to get done and my friend’s team is an important cog.

But the folks in charge didn’t see that connection, and boom - they are gone.

I talked with one other friend impacted, and he doesn’t even have time to think or get sad. He’s got family with special medical needs, and now he has to navigate COBRA. He’s just desperate to find employment so that he doesn’t go broke.

So here I am, feeling a little bit of survivor’s guilt, and concern for my friends… and relief that it isn’t me (yet?).

I noticed in my last post I talked about doing something great. In his case, it didn’t matter if my friend or his team did something great at all… they are just gone.

It’s built into people to do good work, so it’s not like those people are just going to phone it in through life going forward. Same here. I can control my work ethic. The odds still show that I still will be evaluated on my performance, so I should perform accordingly.

But luck and random lightning strikes - I’m not special enough to be immune. This lightning strike was close enough for me to feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

You better believe I’ve been playing heavily with the mortgage payoff calculator, though.