Well, that was intensely painful.
Nov. 1st, 2024 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonOn Monday it happened; I lost that cute little team that I started 2.5 years ago, and I did not crack and tell them early in our team meeting... but maybe I wish I had. They were devastated, and I'm not saying that lightly or to brag. Exactly as anticipated, it got so much worse when they realized that they might not get their expected new teammate because the new manager wasn't just going to go ahead with the plans I'd made. There was anger. I tried to explain to this new manager that the team felt betrayed, and he tried to tell me that seemed "immature", and I didn't quite slap him (mostly because this was over chat). Our director's town hall about the whole thing didn't go as well as his, honestly, usually do. My people -- not my people anymore -- cried in some of the goodbye 1:1s, and I worried about them, and I worried about maybe being a shitty leader who can't create resilient teams, and I worried about other people being such shitty leaders that they immediately start to kick apart whatever nice thing they're handed, and maybe that's not my fucking fault, huh.
Thursday, my very last workday, which I faced on 5.5 hours of sleep, was the most exhausting and the first to at least have better outcomes. There was a nice meet-and-greet with my new team (yes, there's a team I picked up, also, and in a way I'm getting them back because, like, I founded them back in the day!), a hot-seat situation with anonymous questions. And the new manager and I both did a meeting with the devastated team, and came clean about the fact that we both felt surprised and screwed over by various aspects of the reorg too! Raise your hand if you think Director could have done better this week I said, and all hands went up and it was like tension hissing out of a balloon. I also, and this is separate, had an entirely different idea that may help this new manager with the other half of his team..... taking pressure off the ones I care about. This entry must be incomprehensible, sorry, the point is that I exhausted myself and I cried too, and the squirrel had such a bizarre workweek that it sounds like a parody of corporate dysfunction (executives dysfunction?). For our date we were just zombies together, and not in a Halloween way.
I was grateful to have "coffee" withmotyl and a couple of other work-friends, scattered into my two days at the office. Relationships outlast companies all the time; once I'm out I think I'll get a lot more systematic about making some of these work-friends into out-in-the-world friends, maybe even using something like these.
Now I'm flying to Costa Rica, beginning a swoosh that will take me very quickly through a lot of November. With my teams changing, and That Thing happening next week while I'm gone, I feel like I'm posting this from an even more liminal space than an airplane usually is. What country will I come back to?
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-be-away-from-my-desk-on-november-6
Yeah... far far away.
Thursday, my very last workday, which I faced on 5.5 hours of sleep, was the most exhausting and the first to at least have better outcomes. There was a nice meet-and-greet with my new team (yes, there's a team I picked up, also, and in a way I'm getting them back because, like, I founded them back in the day!), a hot-seat situation with anonymous questions. And the new manager and I both did a meeting with the devastated team, and came clean about the fact that we both felt surprised and screwed over by various aspects of the reorg too! Raise your hand if you think Director could have done better this week I said, and all hands went up and it was like tension hissing out of a balloon. I also, and this is separate, had an entirely different idea that may help this new manager with the other half of his team..... taking pressure off the ones I care about. This entry must be incomprehensible, sorry, the point is that I exhausted myself and I cried too, and the squirrel had such a bizarre workweek that it sounds like a parody of corporate dysfunction (executives dysfunction?). For our date we were just zombies together, and not in a Halloween way.
I was grateful to have "coffee" with
motyl and a couple of other work-friends, scattered into my two days at the office. Relationships outlast companies all the time; once I'm out I think I'll get a lot more systematic about making some of these work-friends into out-in-the-world friends, maybe even using something like these.Now I'm flying to Costa Rica, beginning a swoosh that will take me very quickly through a lot of November. With my teams changing, and That Thing happening next week while I'm gone, I feel like I'm posting this from an even more liminal space than an airplane usually is. What country will I come back to?
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-be-away-from-my-desk-on-november-6
Yeah... far far away.
