As a mid career employee, I was laid off in early December. I was not surprised given my low ranking over the past few years. But now that I have had a month to process it all, I can't help but reflect on how I was trapped in a hopeless mental cycle from playing the ranking game that eventually lead to burnout symptoms: decreased work satisfaction, feelings of helplessness, and worst of all, cynicism. This isn't another 'bash EM management' post, but more to reflect on my own experiences within the company, and maybe some of you can relate, in order to bring myself some closure.
I wasn't always this cynical. Early in my career, I had a lot of energy, enjoyed my work, and ranked fairly well. I enjoyed my job and learning from the really smart people I worked with, as well as mentoring the newer employees. I found as the years went by, each CL 'promotion' seemed to make life more miserable. One assessment cycle after I transferred to a new group, I was ranked in Q5 - and I'll never forget the words from my new supervisor: "in this company if you just do your job, you won't make it." Basically at my level, more was expected - I needed to not just do my job, but continuously find step out projects to even be considered an average employee.
Every year after that seemed to repeat itself over and over again. Get ranked Q5, commit to doing better throughout the year, no negative feedback throughout, write the best PADP I had ever written full of achievements and improvements, then get ranked in Q5 again. A few years of going through this cycle slowly beat me down, as I was gradually experiencing the signs of burnout.
Sign 1: Decreased satisfaction and sense of accomplishment
I was getting told "good job" all year, even getting recognition rewards for my work, only to get ranked low at the end of it all. It tells me that absolutely NONE of my work I did all year was appreciated. I quote from Linkin Park "I tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end it doesn't even matter". Any future work I did didn't feel important. Any "good jobs" from managers started to feel fake, and any completed project started to feel empty as I know I will get ranked low despite finishing it. Imagine coming in to work day in and out just for March/April to roll around to spit on everything you've done all year.
Sign 2: Feeling trapped and helpless
The interchangeable reasons for my low ranking every year seemed arbitrary and left me feeling helpless. One year it was "you need to be more of a leader". Then next year it was "you didn't do enough work". Each year I would try to rectify the previous year's issue, including taking on projects to show that I have improved, only to be hit with the other reason the next. No specifics on why I was ranked low either, each year it was just "relative to your peers". Even the "performance improvement plan" I went through one year felt like a monthly update meeting with my supervisor and wasn't designed to help me improve performance at all. Each PIP meeting, my supervisor would nod his head with approval of my progress (even nodding off one meeting!), then rank me low again. The systems in place really made me feel like no matter what I did, there was something wrong with me and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt like a kid that was kicked down in the playground by a bully, then having him tell me that he will let me up if I shine his shoes for him, then kick me down again as I try to get up after doing so.
Sign 3: Increasing cynicism
I had become extremely cynical about the organization and started to see the bad in everything. Every time an email from leadership came out preaching how important mental health and compassion was, I would scoff at how hypocritical they were by putting me in this mental prison. I found how incredibly ironic they keep emphasizing teamwork and collaboration, and yet they would rank us against each other based on how well we worked together. And as part of the "culture change", they want the workers to be more trusted and have more autonomy on decisions, yet I still have to go through countless peer reviews, mini peer reviews, and pre-peer review reviews, and get make sure there is absolute consensus before any decisions are made. It just felt like my time was just spent playing the system to make people happy instead of doing any actual work.
Not to mention they want people to "fail fast" or "learn from mistakes" - but if you put a fail fast learning on your PADP, that is a fast way to ensure you get a failure on your ranking cycle. I remember the time when they put up a "learn from mistake" story of Thomas Edison on the front page of the intranet and how he failed 10,000 times before he invented the lightbulb. NEWSFLASH: If Thomas Edison worked for EM, he would have been MLRP'd pretty quickly for making so many mistakes!
At some point my low performance was probably justified because I was exhibiting all the signs of burnout - procrastination, withdrawing by not attending work socials, dialing into meetings but mentally checking out... etc. I was tired, and it didn't even matter anymore.
At this point, all happiness had been drained from my life. Work hours were lifeless, and evenings and weekends were spent dreading the upcoming work day. And as a mid career employee with still a ways to go, there was no end in sight to the pain. A few months ago, I couldn't take it anymore and told my family I wanted to quit. However, as EM had just made cuts in Australia and Europe, my wife had advised me to wait to get laid off instead - it was probably coming.
As December rolled around, I was at the point of hoping to get laid off. Work had just become all about the next ranking cycle - but the thought had struck me...what if I don't get laid off? That means wasting another year of my life working pointless projects with no passion, only to get told I s—. I feel EM had stolen a few years of my life already, I couldn't stand to give another. But as I sat in the Zoom call with my supervisor and she told me that I was unfortunately getting let go, I felt nothing but...relief. For the first time in a long time, I can look to the future and feel free. No fearing the March/April hunger games to roll around, no more waking up and feeling like your life is being wasted, no more cynical triggers - I finally have my life back.
The last month, I started to enjoy life again. I started to pick up a lot of passion projects, re-started a lot of hobbies that I previously had no energy for, and learning new skills as my technical skills I have learned at EM has really pigeon holed me. I still keep a pulse on what is going on from these forums (how hard is it not to after working here for so long?), and can't help but think about how tough the next year would be for those who survived. I know morale was already pretty low prior to the layoffs, and I know for myself that if I had survived the layoffs, my mental state would not have. I hope for the best for everyone still in there.