Last time in this series I shared some of my career history and left off where I had just accepted my dream job. Today I want to continue this series by giving details on the next position I held.
The dream job was everything I had hoped it would be — lots of great projects, interesting people to work with, a growing company with lots of energy, a bigger title, more money, and on and on. I was performing well too and my career was headed up, up, up. The only real downside was that my hours were pretty long — 55 or so per week — but I accepted that as part of the “break-in phase” that’s required of almost any new job (though after a while I expected things to settle down and they never did.)
Work sailed along well for the first year or two. Then there were rumblings about the future of the company. The short story is that there were three equal divisions of our company — all in the same business and working cooperatively, though still each having its own president. Rumor had it that the company would soon be merging all three of these into one, single company with no independent divisions and that’s where the rub was — who would actually lead the new company?
Then it all came down very quickly. Out of the blue, the head of one of the divisions was bought out of his contract and allowed to “pursue other opportunities.” His division was rolled into one of the other divisions. Then, one day my boss (the head of our division), didn’t show up for work. We wondered where he was, but no one was saying anything. The next day, he didn’t show up either. We called him at home with no response. On the third day we got him and he said he couldn’t talk. On the fourth day, we found out that our division was being assimilated into the Borg. 馃檪 We were now all one big company, my boss was no longer employed by the firm (he left with a very handsome severance package), and our staff was left in limbo.
The next day, I was called into the office of the new president. He told me that I was promoted immediately as the new VP of Marketing for the single company (FYI, he wanted to promote me with no increase in salary, but I made the case for making more and he ultimately approved an 11% increase. In addition, I was also to work with him, our CFO, our lawyer, and a couple other executives in “right-sizing” the company. Translation: we were going to have to fire 15% of our workforce and many of the people were in my group. After all, why did we need three of some divisional positions when we now were one company?
There’s no way I can describe the next couple of months. I could not sleep (I averaged four hours of sleep during this time). I worked from 7 am to 9 pm most weekdays as well as much of Saturday. Every day was spent discussing what positions we needed, which ones we didn’t, and so on. And then, once we made the decisions, I had to execute the plan (which meant firing people.) It was brutal. In the end, the company emerged to be even more profitable than it had been before (the goal of our parent company), but getting there was quite painful.
Once things settled down, I made two massive mistakes:
1. I became over-confident in my new-found authority
2. I under-estimated the politics that go along with being at the higher levels of a company (I knew the game at the lower levels, but who knew it could be even more tough at the top?)
It all came to a head in a board meeting where I expressed my frustration, got reprimanded publicly, and lost my cool. The next day, the president took me to lunch and told me I was being moved a notch down the rung and an executive from the sales department was replacing me. It was a bitter pill to swallow on many fronts, and I must admit I was devastated. But my family needed the job/income (which was still a high-paying job BTW — my income didn’t go down) so I decided to bide my time.
Over the two years that I was biding my time, I had some of the greatest successes of my career. I was given an industry-wide award that had previously only been given to a handful of people. I led my department to a different industry-wide award, the first time this had ever been accomplished by a company like ours (we actually won it two years in a row.) I made my bonus goals both years and thus added to my annual income in a big way (which played a major part in us paying off our mortgage). But despite the fact that I was doing so well, I wasn’t really being challenged and I wanted out. It took me two years, but I eventually found a new position — with an Internet start-up about a year before the bubble burst. You can guess what happened in that position, but I’ll save the details for later. 馃檪
For now, here’s what I learned from this job:
- Arrogance can kill. I got a bit caught up in my new role and was way too into myself. Soon thereafter, I was humbled. It was a tough lesson to learn, and one I grappled with later from time-to-time. In the end it was a valuable experience for me and made me a better executive. And now that some time has passed, I can look back on the experience and appreciate it.
- Watch your back as you progress. As I was shooting myself in the foot, a key executive at my level was shooting me in the back. He was a long-time friend of the president and I found out later that he’d been undermining my efforts since day one (telling the president I was doing this or that that wasn’t acceptable.) In many cases, what he said was true. But he often twisted the facts to serve his purpose — which was getting rid of me and putting his man into my position.
- Don’t let pride be your paycheck. Part of me was simply happy with the major promotion and didn’t want/need a pay increase. But the other part pushed me on and I eventually got a pay raise — one that moved my salary up a significant amount. If I had let it go, who knows how long it would have taken for me to earn that 11% back?
- There’s nothing worse than firing people. This was the first time I had to let people go (unfortunately, it wasn’t the last) and it’s gut-wrenching. If you’ve ever had to fire someone — even if they deserved it — you know how tough it can be. And if you never have, there’s no way to describe it. At least in this case many of the people knew that lay-offs were coming. Even more brutal are the surprise firings. Ugh.
- You can bloom despite tough times. Those two years after my demotion were very tough in a number of ways, but somehow I kept going and made a success out of it. Sure, I could have sat back, sulked, and wallowed in self-pity, but what good would that do? Instead, I delivered some major results for my company which allowed me to climb the next rung of the career ladder (though at another company.)
That’s it for this time, but the roller coaster ride isn’t over.
For the next post in this series, see My Jobs, The Dot Com Bubble Bursts.
If you want to read this series from the beginning, start with My Jobs, Pre-College.
Cody @ Dollar Habits says
I’m glad you were able to turn the experience into a positive by continuing to perform well and the lessons learned are invaluable. Thank you for sharing.
Having now been on both sides of the table, firing and being laid off, I can attest that neither are fun. Experiencing getting laid off and the wide range of emotions it encompasses has definitely made me more empathetic now that I am back on the other side of the table.
ESI says
Yes. They are both terrible.
Jenzer says
I’ve been laid off twice in my lifetime. No matter how many times people told me not to take it personally, it was difficult NOT to take it personally.
Cody @ Dollar Habits says
I found that to be the case as well. As with most things in life, I think if someone has not experienced it firsthand, they cannot fully understand the range of emotions brought about by it. With that being said, it was a tremendous learning experience on many levels.
Indio says
I’ve always thought that it takes a certain kind of person to be in mgt, especially upper mgmt. never thought it was because they were particularly smart, just that they knew how to play the politics game. At least you learned some important lessons from the experience and can pass them on. I’d love to read more about the decision process that went into each of those key events, i.e. Merging subsidiaries, layoffs, etc. im sure hey achieved economies of scale with the merger of the 3 subsidiaries but did they lose revenue. My guess is that they did because competition is always good and now there are probably new companies that have moved into that market segment. Startups are always more nimble and customers like options.
Looking forward to hearing about the next job. I thought the dot com bubble burst in 2001/2…? Did I miss another bubble?
ESI says
No, you are right on the timing of the dot com bubble bursting.
Max Your Freedom says
What always fascinates me with these types of stories, especially when told from the inside out, is how a lot of companies reach a place of balance and the closest thing one can describe to happiness (happy employees, customers, and content shareholders), and then somebody or something comes along and throws the balance into chaos. Either by internal restructuring, external acquisition, shareholder pressure, and all of course driven by greed.
I can relate to what you described, since I’m currently living a similar nightmare. Kudos to you for being able to step away from the prestige, and prioritizing what you value. That’s a much more difficult thing to do than most people can imagine. Thanks as always for sharing!
Erik @ The Mastermind Within says
Thank you ESI for the career coaching. You were very successful back when you were working and your suggestions and tips are always beneficial for me to think about.
The two that I want to apply in my work are the first two: watching my arrogance and watching my back. Right now, I’m at the lower levels, but as I go up the chain, I will have to watch my back. Being only 24, I probably don’t have to worry too much about people coming at my back, but after repeated successes, I will get there.
Looking forward to the next part of the series!
Joe says
Thank you for sharing your interesting story. It’s really great that you were able to push through and accomplished so much. I’d probably implode with that kind of pressure. I hate company politic… Looking forward to the internet bubble story. Sound like another stressful story.
FullTimeFinance says
It’s so common for companies, especially large ones, to change just for the sake of changing. Your also right the politics get worse the higher you go. I watch so many stupid decisions get made in the name of company politics and as some one one rung below it becomes obvious that politics drives it. I have no desire to ever go above middle management for that reason. In fact right now I’m taking time out from management in a as high as you can go individual contributor role.
Survived an almost firing says
I’ve never been laid off from a job but I came close to it once. I had a feeling that a manager was trying to set me up as a low performer because he was always finding something trivial to complain about in our monthly mtgs. It was silly stuff like the time he made it out to be a huge offense that I was 2 days late submitting an expense report. It was my money after all that wasn’t being paid back to me with interest. He also complained that he couldn’t reach me on instant messenger when he wanted to, even though we were in time zones 5 hours apart. My response was that I can never reach him when I need to because he has always concluded his work day by 1:00pm in my time zone. If you are going to manage a global team, shouldn’t you be available for your direct reports? All of those cues made me suspicious.
It is a very metrics driven company so it is easy for me to see how I compare to my colleagues at the same level, on our team, using legacy apps that we had moved off of but weren’t shut down. The newer apps didn’t give details into peer performance. It turned out that my 7 peers looked as if they were working part time jobs compared to my workload. On the quality side, customers consistently ranked my knowledge and interactions with them very highly. I documented all of this in an email and updated it monthly. Then when the fiscal year ended, during my regular monthly mtg with my mgr, an HR rep was also on the call. The mgr started down a path that made me realize what was about to transpire so I opened up my email, that I had updated the day before to reflect year end performance, added the current HR person to the address line, the CEO, CFO, head of HR and, of course, my manager. Two minutes into the call, when he told me I was being fired, I hit send. I responded that I didn’t accept the firing, and referred them to the email that I just sent. After the stunned silence was over, HR rep announced that instead of firing, I was being given two weeks paid vacation while she reviewed my email and interviewed me later that afternoon. After all was said and done and thanks to several free calls with employment attorneys, who advised me how to negotiate, I was given 5 weeks unplanned vacation time and went back to the job. I made it a requirement of returning to work that I have a different mgr to report and a pay raise to be on parity with all of those low performing colleagues who were earning more than me. Also, I wanted my performance review to be an accurate reflection of my work contribution, not the tainted view mgr had, and wanted my full bonus, all of which I got. It helps to be prepared when your intuition tells you something is afoot.
It was one of the most anxiety inducing situations I have ever been in, but I learned a lot about employment law, discrimination and how companies that are ranked in top 50 best places to work on glass door don’t want their image tarnished. Best part was that I used my forced vacation time to organize my basement.
ESI says
Good for you! GREAT example of how to manage your career!!!!!!
Arrgo says
I’ve seen this similar situation also with other people. No matter how good things appear, you always should be prepared and CYA. I’ve seen some minor issues blow up and go up the chain on both your side and the clients. I’ve always tried to keep documentation, client email approvals etc.
Coopersmith says
Office Politics= what I hate most.
Enough said.
I just want to be the best I can be.
Freedom 40 plan says
Thanks for sharing. Sounds like you were able to make good progress despite some challenges. I’m going through some big changes and challenges at work myself right now. Not sure how things are going to work out and even if I’ll be able to stay much longer.