No, it won’t!
Efficiencies
The official note for our dismissal came January 8, 2024. In our department alone, 15 people were to be terminated by the end of the month. Across the company, certainly several hundred. All in the name of efficiency.
We’re talking architects, delivery managers, engineers, program & project managers, scrum masters, all of them very talented and skilled at what they do, all of them with a keen eye for identifying an ineffective process and improving it. I remember having improved on so many processes, even if it meant additional manual overhead for me, but as long as my customers had the information they needed at the time they needed it, it was well worth it, but I also remember that, for a given situation, there was no viable way of doing it unless we created additional workflows in our delivery management tool. My boss didn’t agree with me, obviously, because the processes we had in place were designed by him. It took me considerable time to show him, not that he was wrong, but that there were areas for improvement. It took him months to get it in front of the leadership team. Sure enough, I was not allowed to join him at the presentation, so I can only imagine how poorly it was presented. Fact is, it never came info fruition, and as result, us scrum masters were stuck with an inefficient process and plenty of overhead.
If my memory serves me right, in the weeks that preceded it, tech giants were laying off tens of thousands of workers. The CEO of one of those companies sent an open letter to all, saying “we made a mistake.” If he was a true leader, he would have offered his own resignation and of all his senior leadership without a golden parachute. Instead, he just terminated so many people who blindly followed his direction and were therefore punished for that.
Back to my former house, while we were busy training others to continue our journey after we were gone, just to ensure their business wouldn’t crumble post transition, the company was hiring new highly paid directors. Is bringing in new talkers while laying off doers an example of efficiency?
Human capital is too expensive
That’s how they got rid of us. Instead of considering us human capital, they simply reduced us to numbers.
Insignificant.
Discardable.
Over the next several months they lost plenty of talented professionals. I wonder how much their efficiency has improved? What I do know is that, after so many displacements, they could not function the way the market demanded. To solve that, they reopened a number of new positions, but offering a fraction of what the previous incumbents were making.
In parallel, they hired a number of famous actors who were paid top dollar to advertise for them on TV. As much as I love those actors, they’re not going to convince to give that bank my hard earned money.
As for me, I have closed all my accounts at that bank. If I wasn’t good enough for them, then they’re not good enough for me either.
In full honesty, I should say they’re not the only ones. I’ve known of so many other companies that laid off their hard working people just for their leadership to keep their jobs. If you’re a someone for such a company and reduced your headcount just so you could keep your job, you can hate me all you want. I don’t care. I hate you more. I despise you. Your money is meaningless. You are a sad excuse of a human being.
An employer’s market
Corporations know they are the top dogs du jour. They know that people are desperate to land a job. Because they have no concern for human capital and consider people a commodity (or liability) instead of an asset, they’re reducing pay for new hires and rates for consultants. They believe they’ll get what they want for pennies on the dollar. Do I have bad news for them! If their new person accepts such a miserly pay, it’s either because they’re incompetent or because they’re smart and starving. These people will only work with one eye; the other one will be looking for a better opportunity elsewhere, leaving their employers empty handed at the worst possible moment.
But that’s okay. Last time I checked, the world was still spinning. Some days you’re the dog; some days you’re the hydrant. Eventually things will turn around and you will come to me. I’ll remember everything!
Things I can’t forget
Getting a new job gives me some relief because I know that my basic needs are being tended to, but the events that took place since January 2024 will forever be emblazoned in my mind.
- I’m nothing but a number. My knowledge, skills, talent, and experience are of no relevance. I’m just a body who can follow orders, no matter how stupid or senseless they are. My former boss can attest to that. After all, my colleagues and I were brought in just to do what he used to do and to be constantly reminded that once upon a time he “was in the trenches” but got his promotion.
- Ergo, I deserve to be ignored.
- I’m overqualified. I’m underqualified. I have too much experience. I don’t have enough experience. I’m too old. I refuse to spend long hours each day stuck in traffic. I have an accent. They can’t afford to pay me.
- How can they know they can’t afford to pay me if they don’t ask me my salary expectations? Can’t they at least make an offer and let me decide whether it’s worth it or not? Or is it just an euphemism?
- As a former software engineer and hobbyist application developer, I’ve learned 20 or so different programming languages and am actually proficient in most of them. I never learned node.js, though, so as a project manager I’m not qualified to oversee such projects.
- For the record: I have sufficient knowledge and experience in other programming languages and frameworks to lead teams to successful implementations.
- As a delivery manager, I’ve overseen deliveries to Salesforce, AWS, Azure, and internal clouds. As I was learning, I practiced a little on GCP, but it doesn’t count, therefore I don’t qualify to a GCP project manager position.
- For the record: I have sufficient knowledge and experience in other platforms to lead teams to successful implementations.
- Whenever my beloved wife needed to go somewhere, she would hug me as if it were the last time because she didn’t know if I was going to do something stupid during her absence.
- Upon her return, after seeing that I’m well and that nothing was broken, that’s when she would relax.
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My poor beloved wife had to endure countless days of my anger and frustration for knowing that, even though I’m very competent and experienced, most recruiters and HR persons don’t care.
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More than once we had to go to a food pantry to get food because we couldn’t afford to buy it.
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I had to beg my utilities to give me a discount because that was the only way I could at least pay a portion of my bills.
- I withdrew funds from my retirement accounts. Maybe my immediate needs are being addressed, but I don’t have enough time to replenish them. In 10 years or less I’ll need money and will have nowhere to get it from.
- Each withdrawal carries a tax burden. I’ll have to withdraw even more just to pay my taxes.
- If we had competent politicians who cared about the population, they’d pass a law giving tax breaks to whose who are not retired but had to draw from their retirement accounts just so they could survive.
- Or, at the least, give them extended time (beyond 60 days) to replenish their funds.
- When an infamous congresswoman spends more than twice the unemployment pension at a restaurant, it gives me little hope.
This, too, shall pass? No, it won’t! Getting a job solves part of the problem, but the damage is done and will never be undone.
Things I wish I could have said earlier
Dear recruiter, whenever I ask you for a status update, I expect a prompt response, even if it takes a few days. You may not have any updates. You may have bad updates. You may have good updates. You may have neutral updates. That’s okay. There’s only so much you can control. When you respond, you’re acknowledging my request and are satisfying my needs. When you ignore me, you’re also giving me the right to ignore you. Be aware that I have a long worksheet detailing all our past interactions and, whenever you reach out, I’ll remember in full detail what you did to me and will act accordingly.
Dear HR person, good luck finding the perfect candidate. You may have done what was asked of you, but you will not have fulfilled your obligation, which is to serve the organization you represent. One of you interviewed 30 candidates and couldn’t extend a single job offer. You’re the problem. Your organization is the problem. Get yourself a mirror.
Dear hiring person, if you believe your first line of defense in selecting a candidate is a stupid computer that scans resumes in search of keywords, then all you’re getting are creative writers who might not perform well at the job. Even worse, the candidate’s AI may be better than yours. When it was my turn to screen candidates, I myself took the time to read hundreds of resumes one by one and choose talented candidates, unicorns, and unexperienced but curious and fast learning individuals for interviews. At the end, we brought in several fantastic professionals who added a lot of value to our organization. That’s something your idiotic robotic ATS will never do.
Dear all of the above, the role of the program/project/delivery manager is not to write code, neither test nor deploy it, but they can help with that. Our responsibility is to ensure that the requirements are clear enough, the design is effective enough, there is enough coverage on the test cases, the code is efficient and did pass the test cases at the specified quality level, regression bugs are properly identified, documented, and prioritized, the selected users have confirmed the code performs according to their expectations, change controls and backout procedures are in place and formally approved, DevOps and Platform Engineering are aligned for deployment, selected users have confirmed the new release adheres to the specification, and much much more. If, as a program/project/delivery manager I don’t know the specific programming language, framework, or platform, I'm still fully capable of orchestrating all this without any obstacles.
Dear former boss and coworker who can’t see me on LinkedIn because I have blocked you, I remember what you said, what you did, and how you made me feel.
Dear narcissistic boss, I refuse to refer to you as a leader. Your fancy house and your luxury car were bought with the money of all the people you terminated. Nothing screams ‘despicable’ louder than the bonuses you got that were supposed to purchase food, medications, or shelter for your ex-employees. Your day of reckoning is coming. When it happens, I’ll be in the splash zone watching you. In case you don’t recognize me, I’ll be the one cheering against you, eating popcorn, and laughing profusely.
Things I still can’t say
- All recruiters who ghosted me.
- All recruiters who wanted to bargain my value.
- All recruiters who called me offering jobs that were totally unrelated to my knowledge, skills, abilities, work location, etc. If they had read my resume or checked my profile on job boards they wouldn’t have wasted my time.
One reason why I can’t say it is because their names and email addresses made their way into my spam folder, which I clean daily.
This I can say any time
Go to my LinkedIn page and find my contacts. They are the people who, in one capacity or another, have helped me in the past. Not all were successful, but they all did something for me, thus deserving all credit. May I have the time, strength, and wisdom to do something for them too.