The survivors of ER are all going to experience the consequences of “lean” teams that have been the unfortunate reality for areas that have been operating lean for years already. Doing the job of 3 or 4 is the best you can hope for. Doing 5 or 6 jobs is the norm due to attrition. The worst though is when you have a low performer on your team that does essentially nothing and everyone else has to pick up the slack and there is no end in sight because the role is occupied and management/HR are too incompetent to get b-ms out and backfill the position.
Once your area is hollowed out by ER pray you don’t you have a deadweight in your group that causes everyone else to be overworked, crushing their vitality and morale. Leadership will do nothing to save you and the most you can hope for is some tough conversations with the do nothing colleagues, extra coaching and maybe a PIP after an extended period of inactivity/bottom barrel performance. Yet, leadership will still hammer you all to produce high quality product on priority lead times while shoveling more on your plate each passing quarter as if you don’t have an anchor dragging you to the depths. I’ve seen workers do basically nothing for YEARS except collect salary and bonuses with little to no consequences while leaders/directors/GPs work everyone else to the bone and dole out meets expectations.
I’ve not see leadership one time correct a resourcing issue or solve bandwidth problems effectively. In fact, I’ve rarely seen them do a thing at all except sit in meetings or write single sentence performative emails designed to appear like they adding value that more often than not cause confusion or re-work. In my experience, these high grades mainly exist to dump the work downhill and demand results. The best of them might tell you some encouraging lies or give you an attaboy once in a blue moon to muster some motivation. Most however are too lazy, stupid or self-absorbed to even do that much.
I swear, I wish I had one of these leadership roles where I got paid many times my current salary to nothing all day except soak up kudos work product I didn’t lift a finger to produce and point the finger at anyone lower than me on the org chart when things go wrong.
Sad to say all the worthless higher-ups in my sphere made it through ER unscathed with their ridiculous salaries intact. Now I’ve got continue putting up with their nonsense until I’m sh-t-canned myself or through the grace of the maker locate a new job externally.
We’ve truly lost the plot and us plebs are paying the price. Everyone else is laughing as they drink spicy margaritas out of fu--ing Waterford Crystal carafes at their 6000sq foot summer homes. FML.