I thought we had great working relationships with some brilliant ex-colleagues, but I’ve been cut off after they left the company. It hurts more than I’d like to admit, and it’s happening more often. I genuinely value those people and would really like to work with them again. Why does it happen? I want to keep the relationship but they don’t.
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@25f it sounds like you have unrealistic expectations of what work relationships are like.
People always seem to think confuse coworkers for friends. Yes, sometime they can be the same thing, but majority of times they’re not. Courtesy or fun times together at work events or happy hours does not equal friendship.
When i got a promotion at adi everyone who wanted something from me was my friend. When i was pushed out through reorg all friends disappeared. I have no interest to stay in touch with these transactional people. It is as simple as that.
For sure it hurt but lufe moves on. A cleanup was needed. Nobody wants to have fake friends, and adi is not the place for friends.....
As an employee with more than a decade of tenure, I expected my departure to be handled with professionalism and respect. You show your true colors when things get hard, not when everything is easy. I will never forget how my departure was handled. A couple of them reached out to me later, and I met a few of them again in business events. They are dead to me—forever. Once people show me their true colors, I can’t unsee it.
This is a really good question, which is impossible to answer as each situation for each person is very different. I left the company and am in touch with people who work at adi, but only a handful who were friends already and who I have a history with. You have to remember, whatever the circumstances were around people leaving (the VLP, or finding another job, or perhaps both) each person had their own struggle and potentially a grieving process after leaving that workplace, especially if they worked there for a long time. Perhaps they have even left Germany, which involves a lot of stressful organisation and requires energy. Speaking from my own experience, the VLP process was genuinely horrible. I felt pushed out of the team, even though my boss and his boss (and my colleagues) did not say it directly. I was pretty much ignored by my direct line manager for the last few weeks, so leaving the company after working there for many years felt awful. I tried to handle it as gracefully as I could at the time, but there was a very strange atmosphere, and it could have been handled a lot better. Easy to say in retrospect :) For this reason, I personally needed to have some distance to recover, and I know a lot of people who left at that time also felt the same. Having said that, no one from my remaining ex-colleagues reached out to me after I left, not even the people I thought I got on with really well and worked together for years with, also extremely well. Like you - I also wondered why. Because if it was the other way round and they left the team/had to leave, I would have reached out. The fact that your ex-colleagues have not kept in touch may not be anything to do with you personally. Also, ask yourself were these relationships exchange-based or genuine, have you reached out to them and asked how they are? There can be a lot of stress to being unemployed, for a prolonged period and in a foreign country, so it's also uncomfortable for those who are struggling to find something new. There are many, many factors. To the person who wrote "colleagues are not friends, learn that" - we all know things are not always so black and white. Most of my direct colleagues were not my friends, with the exception of a couple of people who Ieft as well that I am in touch with. But I definitely have made a few life-long friends during my time at adi. Who don't just "like" my Linkein posts, or only get in touch or are interested in me when I announced my new job. I'd suggest if there are people you genuinely miss, reach out to them with a kind message or pick up the phone, it's rare that people intentionally cut people out, it happens but it may not be anything to do with you personally :)
I left and to be honest, the common theme with people at the office was work or sports. Having left and the way adidas has become, I am not interested in what Adidas does anymore so unless there is another common topic you share with a person, they won’t invest time …
It’s a bit like having kids: once they are small you spend time on the playground talking to other parents about kids stuff while you watch them play although without the kids you might never have thought to spend time with those people. once they are older and the common interest „kids“ is gone - similar to leaving the common space work- only a few of those people remain in your circle of friends …
You want to stay connected to them because you see value in it. They don’t see value in keeping the relationship with you. Were you the one always took something without giving anything valuable back to them? People don’t like the ones always taking, never considering giving something back or considering „how can I help you?“. I am surrounded by similar people and have zero interest in keeping them once I leave.
colleagues aren’t friends, learn that
It is normal for a connection to weaken over time due to lack of proximity. However, if people do not maintain the relationship at all, it may indicate a lack of trust. I can’t know the reason, it could be that they never trusted you, or that you let them down at some point.
In the vast majority of cases, your coworkers are not your friends.