It's Sunday morning, I'm waking up with coffee in bed, with light, intermittent rain falling outside. From my bed I can see blossoms starting to emerge on the plum trees across the street. Spring is coming, and I feel a deep quiet joy that winter is receding.
Last year in January I felt very different. Stress at work carried over into my evenings and weekends, diminishing my awareness of life around me. The massive project my team had worked on through the fall was found 'unsatisfactory' after its completion, requiring us to submit over 100 individual programs for review in an intensely short time frame. We passed that hurdle, yet nothing returned to normal. In fact, as my boss put it, "the whole world changed."
She said more, as well. She gave me the first unsatisfactory performance review in my 20 year career, then told Human Resources via email that the way I received the review seemed to indicate a lack of comprehension of the severity of the situation.
The situation unfolded through the rest of the spring. In the beginning of June she told me the department was reorganizing, my job had been eliminated and that I would be laid off at the beginning of July. I read the severance contract very carefully, to make certain I understood what I must do, and avoid doing, to make certain I received the full severance payout described in the contract.
That contract provides a detailed witness to the ethics that have become the foundation of Corporate America, and the company I worked for. There is a component of "social justice" or fairness in the treatment of me (the employee), as long as I adhere to the terms of the contract. In fact the terms were quite generous in comparison to those for some of my former colleagues. The restrictions provide the illumination:
The contract (an generous severance package including severance pay for six months) becomes void if I work for a competing company, or in a closely related industry that might be competitive, or if I say or do anything that might reveal trade secrets, or malign my former employer, or otherwise break the terms of the agreement.
The company is owned by a venture capital firm, which expected to get a return on its investment by selling us. The economic downturn messed up that schedule. Still needing to profit from its purchase, the VC made plans for us to "go public." Either situation required the asset to demonstrate an increase in value. Senior executives stood to make or lose large bonuses depending on how the asset performed at the time of sale or IPO. My division could not directly impact sales, and we had cut production costs year over year to the point where there was little improvement possible in that area. Therefore we needed to increase its value another way, through restructuring.
What hurt me at the time was that I recognized and appreciated the need to restructure to improve production, and would have happily worked with my boss to make the logical changes, including eliminating my position.
Reviewing the situation I can't see how the boss or company could do otherwise. Treating employees with respect for their humanity ultimately conflicts directly with making a profit. When sales are flush allowances can be made for personal lives. But when the financial situation worsens, priorities get sorted, and making a profit is a higher priority than any one employee's thoughts, feelings or personal life. If the bottom line needs to be improved, cutting a salary and the accompanying benefits will make a bigger difference than anything that individual could contribute.
Making such decisions is easy at a high level. The people to cut off are just names and numbers on the balance sheet. For the manager who has handle the termination, such decisions mean looking someone in the eye and giving them the news. Managers who rise up in the organization will have to take that action many times. A successful manager will have minimal empathy, who puts their own welfare ahead of anyone below them.
The VP who laid me off had our group merged into hers two years before I left, giving her twelve direct reports, all managers. She said at the time it couldn't last, and we all thought it meant adding a few executive managers between us and her. I think she was actually looking us over even then for places to streamline, as later incidents seemed to indicate.
The specific events and actions that occurred over those two years can be interpreted two ways, depending on whether one is inside or outside the corporate bubble. From one perspective, as my boss said, "The world changed." The rapid creation and delivery of electronic education materials became, overnight, the most important means for company to respond to customer needs, and our success depended on our ability to produce these materials to meet customer expectations for quality and functionality, without our having the necessary specifications beforehand. In other words, we had to create new or transform existing products into to electronic formats without knowing in advance what the new format was, or what customer response to it would be.
Living the experience of the next two years felt very much as if we had all been cast in the TV show "Survivor." With perhaps interludes from another surreal show, "Lost." At the end of the series, I got the final cut.
My 20 year career provided my husband and three girls with food, clothing, a home, and medical care. My choices were always driven by the need to provide that support. By the time I was cut off, circumstances had changed. My husband was a teacher, with benefits and income. It took me no time to realize I did not need to find another position to replace the one I'd lost. I quickly realized I could afford to, and wanted very much to, abandon Corporate America and everything that goes along with pursuing a career in the for-profit sector.
