Being forced out of my company
- Thread starter SD-[Inc]
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Well they sent me my package to sign. It’s ok. I get to keep 40% of my shares, my bonus, and 3 months severance. They are keeping me on the payroll until May 15th and extending my health insurance 3 more months after that. Seems reasonable enough. The announcement to the company goes out next Weds. I am looking forward to it. My last few months I am supposed to focus just on a couple of projects I like. The rest gets unplugged the day after the announcement (rip the bandaid off). The CTO has to be one of the most clueless person ever. The number 1 fear of all employees is that he will outsource their jobs. He is Indian and frequently opted for low cost labor in the past. I have pushed back when it mattered. So with the big announcement coming next week what does he do? He takes a trip to India and posts a bunch of photos of him all smiling with a new team we hired out there. Unbelievable!!! It’s going to be a shit show next week and I am basically going to direct all questions to him. I have a no disparaging the company clause in my agreement. I will abide by it because he is doing a good enough job destroying the company on his own. 
This is probably another reason I am on the outs because I have strong feelings on outsourced labor. I believe in building strong core teams that can innovate. I am not against outsourcing for projects that CAN be. But, it’s fricken impossible to do that when teams are 12 time-zones from their customers. The CTO is still under the delusion that labor costs are the best way to shop teams. Proximity to customer, ability to collaborate, and things like that are not really necessary as long as all team are good at taking direction. I think that fails over and over. But, it is popular to do because you do look good for about 12 to 18 months with the board. I am really a terrible corporate person as I think all that is a BS waste of time and detrimental to long term sustainability of the company. I wasn’t raised in the Bay Area is probably another reason I detest this sort of thinking. No big deal. I’d rather be gone with my dignity intact anyway. Unfortunately the shares I leave with may never be worth anything if things go too far south. But, I’ve sort of wrote those off anyway. Kinda sad in many ways. When I started there 4 years ago the company was 180 degrees the opposite of this and wildly successful. The new private investors decided that being wildly successful isn’t enough and changed everything. Not sure it’s going to work out for them.
This is probably another reason I am on the outs because I have strong feelings on outsourced labor. I believe in building strong core teams that can innovate. I am not against outsourcing for projects that CAN be. But, it’s fricken impossible to do that when teams are 12 time-zones from their customers. The CTO is still under the delusion that labor costs are the best way to shop teams. Proximity to customer, ability to collaborate, and things like that are not really necessary as long as all team are good at taking direction. I think that fails over and over. But, it is popular to do because you do look good for about 12 to 18 months with the board. I am really a terrible corporate person as I think all that is a BS waste of time and detrimental to long term sustainability of the company. I wasn’t raised in the Bay Area is probably another reason I detest this sort of thinking. No big deal. I’d rather be gone with my dignity intact anyway. Unfortunately the shares I leave with may never be worth anything if things go too far south. But, I’ve sort of wrote those off anyway. Kinda sad in many ways. When I started there 4 years ago the company was 180 degrees the opposite of this and wildly successful. The new private investors decided that being wildly successful isn’t enough and changed everything. Not sure it’s going to work out for them.
They are private and worthless unless the private investors sell the company. I have to wait until then. Probably 2 years or so. Most likely the big reason to move me out is because they want to make the company look better on paper and then sell it. I think the CEO, who is about my age, is probably going to retire after this next transaction so he doesn’t give a crap about how screwed up the company gets either. My morals cost me 60% of that payout. But I am too old to whore myself out that way.
No. They have the option to buy me out but I doubt they will. They are “class C’” shares given with these exact conditions. So this is nothing new. It’s fine to maybe have a payout in a few years. It’d be a nice surprise if it is anything decent at all.
Today I went into the office for probably the last time. It was super emotional. My teams are all energized and pumped up for 2023. I don’t have courage to face them leading up to and after the big announcement coming on Feb 1. I am a big baby and cried in the parking lot today before heading home
Today I went into the office for probably the last time. It was super emotional. My teams are all energized and pumped up for 2023. I don’t have courage to face them leading up to and after the big announcement coming on Feb 1. I am a big baby and cried in the parking lot today before heading home
SD-[Inc said:;n11059215]No. They have the option to buy me out but I doubt they will. They are “class C’” shares given with these exact conditions. So this is nothing new. It’s fine to maybe have a payout in a few years. It’d be a nice surprise if it is anything decent at all.
Today I went into the office for probably the last time. It was super emotional. My teams are all energized and pumped up for 2023. I don’t have courage to face them leading up to and after the big announcement coming on Feb 1. I am a big baby and cried in the parking lot today before heading home
Just human dude... and work is part of us.
Finally the CTO today made it public at my company that I am moving on. It’s actually a relief. It was interesting how he tailored the messages. There were 3 meetings, one with my peers on his staff, one with my staff, and one with the entire org. To my peers he sort of leaned into I didn’t have what it takes to move the company to the next level, to my staff he had nothing but praise for my accomplishments, and to the entire org all he talked about was how great his long term plans are and oh, BTW, John is leaving at the very end. At the peer meeting he literally lied right in front of me about what occurred in 2019. I just did a virtual eye roll and moved on. This is definitely the best thing right now. Afterwards I had people on my team reaching out to me and some were crying. It was very emotional. I got quite a few personal notes that I may print out and frame. They were that heartfelt and gratifying. CTO will probably hire a new SVP and off-shore the entire dev org anyway. He is not built for running teams and building good products. Sorry to pick on you Bay Area people. But, I find most leaders coming out of there have this same short term mentality. This whole pump up my stock value and bail attitude is just so pervasive today. It’s not in my DNA which is why I am not rich and also getting fired. I leave without realizing fortune, but at least I have my integrity.
I am still bummed out on how it all went down with you. The politics at top level is why I don't want to move to US in my company. I can probably do way more than in my current role and also earn slightly better but the politics with incompetent Indians that plague all tech in my company will kill me.
I value happiness and have left my fate to God rather than take such a risk with my career. My boss sees value in what I bring to his team and that is what matters. Also we already had the conversation about if he will let me go just because I am in Dubai and not Amsterdam (mega regional HQ). He said absolutely not. At the end of the day it might not be his decision but I know that he has my back. Now if he were to leave then I will be left naked (again). Let's see how that turns out.
I value happiness and have left my fate to God rather than take such a risk with my career. My boss sees value in what I bring to his team and that is what matters. Also we already had the conversation about if he will let me go just because I am in Dubai and not Amsterdam (mega regional HQ). He said absolutely not. At the end of the day it might not be his decision but I know that he has my back. Now if he were to leave then I will be left naked (again). Let's see how that turns out.
Thanks!
I never mentioned that my boss was Indian. But you probably guessed that. I’ve only had two Indian bosses in my career and they both were terrible. I’ve also worked with traditional Japanese managers that were similarly awful. Tech companies require constant innovation, and leaders of any race, that believe they are the engine of the organization and not the people doing the work will fail long term. The problem is these types of managers are very good at selling short term BS that sounds tasty to investors. but are impossible to deliver with the current org. They only know how to make PowerPoints. So, when things start going south they just keep making changes to deflect blame. My boss just gained more time to cover up his failures by taking decisive action against me. All of the major issues he complain about are actually not under me. But under him. It sucks because the CEO of our company is also in the mode of just hanging on for one more transaction and is not paying attention either. The thing that really pisses me off though is while I was in charge, I couldn’t even take a crap without 5 levels of management reviewing how much toilet paper I was planning on using. This major change is announced and not one person, outside of the CTO, had any input. No one came to me and asked my side of the problem. No one came to me with a list of performance issues, no one came to me with any sort of plan to continue. All I got was the CTO telling me he thought about it over the holidays and he thinks its time for a change. The oligarchy at the top is in full CYA mode just hanging on long enough for another transaction to occur. It’s really sad because this year the company had a great pandemic rebound and had great success. No one understands or cares how much I had to do with that success. But they will find out soon enough. My team is in total PTSD mode right now. They had NO idea this was coming and it is making sense to no one. The all hands was a total joke. The company did amazing last year and BTW, we need to get rid of the main guy responsible for all product development too. What a mess. I am sure once I start on whatever comes next, I will look back on this and be glad things went the way they did.
I do feel and sound pretty bitter in that last post. But am glad this thing are moving forward. Me and the wife booked a big trip to Europe in September, I can now freely work with contacts on a new opportunity. My first day of doing that already had some promising. I’ll probably hang low and play a bunch of Witcher 3 today instead of working. So things are looking up. Thanks R3D for being my rant outlet. It helps!!
SD-[Inc said:
Fcking A holes like that are everywhere. I have seen it so many times it's not even funny. I'm 99.99% our CEO also jumped shipped last year... to new venture. But he left the place with the most incompetent bunch of fcking clowns in place... thanks. So he left on a "high" looks good and the resume... but meantime it's eye blind.
Silent-Runner
Noli timere messorem
SD-[Inc said:
i only wish you the best for your future, there's always some bitterness involved in situations like this, but in the end you did the right thing, that's the only thing that matters.
And have a blast while in Europe of course!
Man sorry again you had to go through this. Of course I could know it was an incompetent Indian. I am surrounded by them. Some are also competent and good friends but the incompetent and political ones far far far outweigh the good ones. So sad. Most of global tech companies are ruined by them.
SubCog
Radeon 8500 64mb
My team got outsourced to India a few years back. They kept me (I'm the director of the team) in the US, and I did keep 1 employee in the UK, but I had to lay-off everyone else. I was pretty bummed, and very cynical that we'd be able to hire good designers out there.
Well everyone I laid-off got very generous severance packages, and they all quickly found higher-paying jobs, so that all worked out.
I was able to hire a really great Lead in Pune, and she was able to help hire other good people out there to fill out the team. They're dependable and very solid workers, and I've extended more and more license for them to work without close oversight from me. I've been really impressed with the talent out there. There's a couple things that we've done that's made this work:
Well everyone I laid-off got very generous severance packages, and they all quickly found higher-paying jobs, so that all worked out.
I was able to hire a really great Lead in Pune, and she was able to help hire other good people out there to fill out the team. They're dependable and very solid workers, and I've extended more and more license for them to work without close oversight from me. I've been really impressed with the talent out there. There's a couple things that we've done that's made this work:
- Hired a very strong lead to anchor the Pune team. Someone who's very dedicated & hungry, and eager to help others too.
- Learned to let go of the very hands-on management style that I was used to, when working with local employees. Especially with a 12 hour time difference, we found out quickly that we can't wait for them to run questions against me and wait for permission... very simple interactions can be multi-day turn-arounds. So I gave them more license to make decisions and inform me afterward... that's been very enabling for them, and also taken alot of weight off my shoulders.
- We hired a few Product Managers in Pune, and created a geographic focus... we have several products that are run entirely out of that office now, end-to-end. Makes a massive difference.
Oops, good catch. My brain is a bit scattered lately…