Thursday, June 20, 2024

Layoffs

I was trying to ponder what events I'd weathered since I started at my current employer.  I was talking to the head of IT today and he had no idea my team had not only moved between managers [my boss, my reports' skip boss] three times, but that we'd actually entirely switched the space we worked in from "engines" to "cloud".  So I thought I'd try to capture it here before I forget it...in the last year and  a half...

  • New Hire
  • Added two new devs to team
  • After three months, long covid from employee orientation for about a year.
  • Had to personally lay off a dev on my new team for layoffs and lost a tester we liked.
  • Switched from the highly technical C++ and macros suite boss I had picked to work for to a different director > engines to cloud [big shift in focus].
  • >> UK vacation, my wife needs double knee replacement
  • Layoffs - lost our favorite onshore tester and her boss, both of who had been at new hire with me.
    • Picked up half of a second team to "fold" into my existing team [their manager and other team members in the layoffs].
  • Half of team repurposed to work on sunsetting / transitioning two other projects for two months although originally to supplement my team.
  • 3/4  [3/5 if you include a second lead who doesn't report to me] of those new team members stay with their other projects after two months.  One stays with my current team and the project to sunset is now in perma-fallow with us while an alternative is devised [not my team, but we own maintenance/alerts].
  • Move from Director to Sr. Manager as my manager to align org tree
  • Another tester leaves, although voluntarily.
  • Public to private equity and all that entails.
  • >> wife's heart issues
  • Extensive layoffs after private equity details worked out including losing one of our main product owners for the second time
  • Mixed in there several rounds of will the lead stay with us or not as we move between bosses [we had several intermittent months of not knowing where he couldn't work on our features].
I think that's the gist of it so far. We've done an excellent job of delivering what we've been asked for, even with the disruptions.  We're all hoping it's quiet for a while.

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