Red in Tooth and Claw

From: Project Manager
To: Engineering Team Manager
Subject: Technical stuff being developed

Hi EM,

We had review with Kahuna last week on Thingum/Me-Bob and got several AR’s to prepare for a response. I was going to set-up some follow-ups. I heard from Minion that there is organizational change within the Folsom HW DE team. Is there any org changes that have already been announced to the team that you can share with me? I want to make sure I’m sensitive to people’s situation and don’t pull people into the planning activities when they are no longer expected to work on THiS or THaT.

Thanks,
PM

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From: Engineering Team Manager
To: Project Manager
Subject: RE: Technical stuff being developed

Hi PM, very sad to say my whole team is in redeployment…

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From: Project Manager
To: Engineering Team Manager
Subject: RE: Technical stuff being developed

The entire team? OMG! All the XYZ programs I worked on met their commits because of the great execution by your team. The methodology, the execution, and the customer services that was established on the XYZ RVP’s was superb and shifted the program to the left!

I really don’t know what to say…I’m sad and disappointed to hear this!

Rgds,PM

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From: Engineering Team Manager
To: Engineering Team
Subject: FW: Technical stuff being developed

I had to tell PM about our bad news and see his reaction. Wait until Kahuna announces his new org….

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From: Engineering Team Senior Member
To: Engineering Team
Subject: FW: Technical stuff being developed

This is the same reaction I have gotten from a lot of people across multiple geos. They highly respected our group and said that we were the finest HW team many had worked with and could not believe this decision. Like I said this is going to have a domino affect that will be felt right down to the new customer levels we were helping to gain momentum with.

* * *

And so it goes. But I refuse to take the easy path of cynicism. Mainly because it is the easy path. The fact is in the newly merged organization there were now three hardware teams, instead of just ours, and it is Management 101 to start with eliminating apparent redundancies. Competence aside, I suspect they kept the Oregon team because it is large and more local to management, and the Bangalore team for easily-understood strategic reasons and cost. Besides, there are local groups in other divisions that are poised for growth, so most of us will probably get jobs, and the company doesn't much lose.

As for those jobs, a lot of other groups shut down their open reqs (job requisitions, i.e. open jobs) on word from on high to do so. The intent was to preserve open positions for people affected by this move, and upper management didn't want them getting filled before people like me had a crack at them. There was some confusion on that point. But the system will balance itself out in fairly short order, and there will (I dare to hope) be more jobs opening up than just the one that I have already interviewed for. (I don't feel I did so well, it being my first interview in several years, and I'm feeling insecure about not having displayed a lot of leadership the past few years.)