In the past, all of us know we can look forward to a stable career with EM, and slowly grow our technical expertise. I still felt married to EM despite the average ranking. Many of us know we are not the top quintile and will never be a manager. But before 2020, this was not a bad place to grow a long-term career, regardless. Because -
Slowly but surely, we knew we would build expertise and become a subject matter expert in our respective areas, be it infrastructure, risk management, or applications.
We forged real friendships and trust with many colleagues in our offices and around the world, some of whom we had never met and who were of a different skin color, culture or opposite time zones, or a lot older or younger than us.
We looked forward to slowly building up a good sum of retirement money. Yes we always knew EM didn't pay like the tech companies, but it paid enough especially if we project the stability out to retirement at 60, and we believed we traded money with work life balance.
We had stability that allowed us to take care of our family. We all took pride in learning opportunities, in our safety controls that allow us to act with integrity.
I wrote in the past tense because that's past.
We trusted in the stability, although there were opportunity costs but we decided it was worth it. Quickly, all that changed in 2020, with the sudden 8-10% NSI and PIP, the layoffs in Australia, Europe, Canada and Singapore, and so much rumors about HW3 and further job cuts. Before 2020, none of us thought we were always one rank cycle away from being out of job. Today, this is true for the vast majority of us, except maybe the hi-pos and Outstanding with Distinction people.
When management talked about "we know we have lost the trust of the people", there is always a implicit BUT in their speech. They always sounded like they know have lost the trust, BUT they are also one pay increment, or one 401k restoration, or one LinkedIn Stephen Covey's Trust training, away from restoring all the trust. They always sounded like we are kids throwing tantrum but would be pacified with candies.
But I want to tell management that the trust lost is so, so fundamental, and the worker bees all know that.
The crux of the issue is not the pay freeze because the company was in crisis. We are NOT selfish people who insisted on increments in bad times; I remembered when the COVID pandemic and NSI announcement first broke out, many people were asking in the forums, why wasn't the company considering cutting our pay and saving jobs? Those conversations in times of crisis made me so proud of being a part of EM and EMIT. We were asking for pay cuts to save other people's jobs, that's who we were!
As long as there is a mandatory 8-10% NSI - PIP - PIL, the management cannot, SIMPLY CANNOT, tout a long term career or growth opportunities. Because these are fundamentally opposite and contradictory.
Because:
We can no longer slowly but surely build expertise and become a subject matter expert in our respective areas. Every cycle is a hustle cycle. Every cycle we need to be highly visible, show some projects, show some step-ups. The technical folks, the young developers, they cannot think, I'll take 3-5 years to grow my technical expertise, take part in projects, learn from the tech leads. Because they will fear that by year 2, they could already be ranked NSI if they were not visible. But if everyone only focus on high visibility work, we would all only ever become generalists like our own managers. How do we build technical depth if the system doesn't allow us to focus on quietly building our T-shape expertise? Young people are not stupid. They know if they only have a few years to build their technical expertise before the younger ones catch up
We find it harder to be real friends and build trust with many colleagues, especially in other places in the world. Everyone is a competitor, especially people from lower cost countries. What is at stake is no longer only a ranking number, which many of us could care less about. What is at stake is our job that we can easily lose, and it impacts our family as well.
We now know that the longer we stay, the more disadvantaged we'd be. Firstly, the longer we stay, the higher the possibility of being placed in NSI bucket. It is only logical statistically - the older we get and the higher our CL, the more competitive it is in the rank pool, especially if we are ranked as individual contributors. Also, many of us beyond our 40s know there have been ups and downs in our careers, our family and personal lives. Most of us had encountered personal issues that affect our performance at our work, but this company used to offer the stability that allowed us the leeway to bounce back. Now, well, that is gone. We are one health or family crisis away from losing our job.
There is no longer work life balance for many of us. I found myself unable to care much about my personal life anymore. I had to onboard and hand-hold 2.5 new people in their work since late last year while the layoffs and high attrition are taking place, while doing my own job. EMIT management said they have already stopped doing some work. But is anyone brave enough to claim these as achievements in next year's PDS form... what they stopped doing? Would these brave souls be ranked well?
Keeping the lights on has been so draining the past 6 months. I wonder whether the management knows this. My biggest achievement this year has been that I onboarded 2 brand new people, when people with 20+ years of experiences were suddenly laid off. I've also worked 50+ hours every week for couple of months to help cover the work of these brand new people and myself. Might I put this on my PDS to save me from being ranked NSI? Oh but keeping the lights on is not good enough.. we need visibility... so let's hustle some more. Then more the year after next? And some more... just to try to keep a job that no longer gives me any stability.
Most of us, if we are honest, don't feel married to EMIT anymore. If we were to imagine how we would one day leave this company, few of us would think we'd retire in 20-30 years' time.
Most of us likely realise we'd either get PIP'd or impacted by a HW3 type of program, or forced layoff when we are in our late 40s or early 50s, which is the worst time in life to be out of a job. We saw that happen to many of our colleagues recently. When we read about the Cold War or the Great Depression, we learn that a few years of hardship can change the mindset of entire generations of people who lived through those times. I muse that in EM, one year of bad HR policy has changed so much for us.