Nobody wants to hear the news that his/her superior or manager is quitting, except those who’re waiting in line for that exact position.
As our team was in starting on the next phase of our newest product, the first part of the news trickled in:
Entire global technology landscape will be overhauled, and some of infrastructure staff in IT will be absorbed into IBM.
This kinda news delivery is at best haphazard. First it used the words ‘entire’ and ‘overhaul’ in the same breath. It also only mentioned ‘some’ staff, in just the ‘infra’ team.
The management never had a situation like this, in all of the company’s history of several decades. The atmosphere in the software development team quickly turned to be utterly unproductive, within the next couple months, while the tech staff waited for additional clarification on how the news will manifest. In hind sight, the mood would have been better if more details were shared, in those early stages.
But with sweeping changes do not come details that most hope for. Instead come the high-level statements courting the keywords ‘efficiency’ and ‘opportunities of improvement’ – and it sure did not quelch the workers’ thirst for knowledge. Neither survival or direction seemed clear, to some.
Of course, some of voiced concerns over the “transformation” to line management, but no details followed.
So I began hearing cries of fear and foul, from everywhere, with rumors of people moving on, before the s**t hits the fan.
Luckily, the tech market was in high demand for the tech-stacks we were using, as well as the solution approach. All that we had to think was, “when should I make the choice, and on which offer?” But it’s usually not like this.
Then the management called for a team-wide meeting, and we expected good news – or at least direction or clarity. We were not so lucky in this respect.
Our manager, the director of the team, was announcing his resignation – although stipulating he will stay until the current project is finished.
Very disheartening news. The guy who had hired all of us was quitting, after announcements of a re-organization of the entire tech side of the company. Questions about why met answers that were both rather short and simple, again without much details. For example, when I asked why he was quitting, when we were actually successful with the latest product launches, his answer was that he wanted to do something different, not in this company’s current industry. He was the leader, the protector and the facilitator of the whole team, and he was letting it all go now.
Recruiting professionals’ emails in personal inboxes were more enticing now. Some of them even mentioned stock (options or immediate) vesting rates, on top of higher base-salary and benefits package. Few even had coverage on likes of techcrunch, as well as news of widely-known techs joining their company.
so who’s the new guy?
We now have several. To start off, Director of Dept. replacement, who is in a bit of water figuring stuff out these days. It’s been less than a month, and I feel for him. Not easy to roll in and ingest so much information.
Our replacement for a senior dev, who went onto a start-up in finance-technology, is actually more of a front-end focused web developer for now.
We should be getting new laptops. I got a title change, but work is to be the same for a while.
offthemesh 