Friday, April 29, 2016

Things I would have done this week if I'd been laid off

We had layoffs and a reorg where I work on Tuesday.

We'd known this day was coming (and in fact the rumor mill had offered up several, earlier days this might happen) so it wasn't exactly a surprise. The scope across the company was a little shocking although not totally unexpected.

Earlier in the year, I'd rated my chance of being laid off at greater than 60%. As we moved into spring, I dropped that estimate to about 40%, then 30%. No one is truly untouchable when reorgs happen, so that chance will never drop to zero. In this case, I didn't lose my job. Within my organization (at the VP level), we lost three in total. Across the company, the press release says we eliminated 13%. And although layoffs aren't personal, they feel that way.

So all of this happened on Tuesday (that's the magic day at my company, the Tuesday before a  payday, which makes things easier from an accounting perspective). Monday night I told Kent that if I got let go the next day, I was going to start weeding the back yard, and I would be cutting out a dress I've wanted to make for months (and have had the fabric for it now for no joke a couple of years)--I had a long list.

But I didn't get let go. Once the layoffs were over, I talked with all my direct reports to reassure them, tell them that our team was intact and that the layoffs were over. Now we are all trying to move forward because there's still so much work to be done. I expect next week will be a little better for us all.

1 comment:

Jen Shear said...

Hope things are a little less stressful now :)