Re-orgs and Other Nonsense
The company I work for just completed their second re-org of the year. As if 2020 wasn’t already bad enough.
The first was to get the “pillars aligned”. That’s management-speak for, “We probably shouldn’t have put the DBA’s and the Android developers under a director who specializes in marketing.” Okay fine. I get it. Occasionally, it makes sense to evaluate parts of the organizational structure and see if you’ve got the right teams and people in the best place.
The second re-org was a lot “ickier”. It was about evaluating talent and making sure people were in the right position for their skill set. A lot of people were moved around. Some were invited to re-apply for their own job. And others were invited to apply somewhere else. It was done in secret, which is to say it was done without any transparency among team members, contractors, or team managers. Everyone was told to keep their mouths shut for a month and many people spent 2–3 weeks in limbo about where they were going to land. It was a completely bonkers atmosphere. Nothing like I have experienced before with this company.
After the dust settled, the team I support had a new manager and two fewer developers. It was worse in other areas. Because of the secrecy, some teams found themselves losing several people with little or no notice, which created a serious talent gap with deadlines…
