Career Update

Wow these last few weeks have been a roller coast­er. Last time I post­ed about my career sit­u­a­tion, I was unable to apply for a posi­tion and I had just got­ten a lot more com­pe­ti­tion for the few jobs available.

I feel almost as if this is a TV show with a dra­mat­ic cliffhang­er. “Last episode, we saw the hero in this pre­car­i­ous posi­tion! Tune in tomor­row to see how they mag­i­cal­ly extri­cat­ed them­selves from cer­tain death!”

I’m not sure if I’ve vault­ed out of trou­ble just yet, but some of you have reached out to me to see how I’m doing so I thought I’d pro­vide an update for every­one to see.

I applied for a posi­tion before I left on my two-week trip to Europe. I was advised to not wait for THE ONE and instead find a job that I could deal with until the eco­nom­ic out­look improves. Then I spent a lot of time stuff­ing my face full of deli­cious foods and ciders, and tried my best to for­get about every­thing going on at home. I suc­ceed­ed for the most part until I woke up to a rather omi­nous mes­sage from a coworker.

She told me Mega­Corp announced a Vol­un­tary Sep­a­ra­tion Pro­gram for some peo­ple in the com­pa­ny. To be eli­gi­ble for the sev­er­ance pack­age you need to be high­er than Lev­el X. I’m unfor­tu­nate­ly not high enough in the com­pa­ny to try to take it, so that option isn’t avail­able to me.

Mean­while HR is over here bein like, don’t wor­ry we’re fine.

I did­n’t think next year’s fore­cast was that bad that we need­ed to start cut­ting peo­ple, but I guess it was­n’t an improve­ment like they want­ed to see. We have A LOT of peo­ple at Mega­Corp who have been here 20, 25, even 30+ years. Most of them are on the pre­vi­ous com­pen­sa­tion plan that includes a nice pen­sion and health­care costs cov­ered in retire­ment. Aka, they’re pricey. And Mega­Corp does­n’t want them around anymore.

From what I’ve been told by those who have been here that long, this is the first step in a series of actions they could take. If enough peo­ple don’t vol­un­teer to leave, they’ll do a reorg and force out every­one who “needs” to leave.

“How does this affect you, Gwen?”

It does and does­n’t affect me. My imme­di­ate posi­tion in the ear­ly devel­op­ment pro­gram is safe. I will prob­a­bly have a job after all of this is said and done, even if it isn’t the great­est job in the world or some­thing I’m good at.

It does affect me in oth­er ways in the short term. The posi­tion I applied for before leav­ing on vaca­tion was pulled from the board and giv­en to some­one in the resource pool. Every sin­gle domes­tic IT post­ing on the board was tak­en down until after the impact from the sev­er­ance pro­gram is known.

How­ev­er, because a cer­tain some­one took the sev­er­ance pack­age, a job I very much want (and kind of freaked out about) got post­ed imme­di­ate­ly. It is lit­er­al­ly the only job post­ed for IT right now because it’s mis­sion crit­i­cal this team have at least 2 peo­ple on it. This is more or less my dream job. I hes­i­tate to call it my dream job because I know this job is going to be full of ridicu­lous­ness, long hours, and stress just like any job. I don’t want to build it up into this fan­ta­sy “la la la best job ever”. It might be bet­ter to say this posi­tion is the per­fect fit for my skill sets. It is still in IT, but I would­n’t be devel­op­ing any appli­ca­tions. I would be work­ing with the top exec­u­tives at Mega­Corp by sup­port­ing their IT needs. Reset­ting iPad and iPhone pass­words, unlock­ing com­put­ers, trou­bleshoot­ing any issues with oth­er forms of tech­nol­o­gy, and even mak­ing sure off-site loca­tions have the com­pa­ny Wi-Fi net­work turned on would be just a few of the things I would do.

Most peo­ple I’ve talked to about this posi­tion scrunch up their faces and go “ewww that job sounds awful.”

For­tu­nate­ly for me and unfor­tu­nate­ly for every­one else that would con­sid­er apply­ing (not many), I have an “In”. The hir­ing man­ag­er is my man­ag­er from when I was a brand new intern at Mega­Corp. He’s told me, mul­ti­ple times in the 3 years since I’ve been there, that I am his favorite intern and he wants me back. I’ve also been keep­ing in touch with his man­ag­er who is also enthu­si­as­tic about me com­ing back. I’ve even talked to his man­ager’s man­ag­er (3 rungs up on the lad­der from me) about the posi­tion. After our brief con­ver­sa­tion about the posi­tion, he said I would be a good fit for it. I don’t want to be too con­fi­dent, but it seems like the ground­work I’ve been lay­ing the last 3 years is about to payoff.

I sub­mit­ted my appli­ca­tion about 30 min­utes after the posi­tion was post­ed last Wednes­day. The post­ing has to be up for at least 7 busi­ness days and then they can begin the inter­view process. Hope­ful­ly I’m the only one they inter­view and the process does­n’t take very long, because I want this posi­tion almost more than any­thing I’ve ever want­ed in my life. I’m not thrilled about the loca­tion (I’d have to move back to my pre­vi­ous loca­tion which I was thrilled about leav­ing) but I do like the sound of going up a lev­el and the 10% pay raise (ish) that comes with it. Good news is the new/old loca­tion has a real­ly low cost of liv­ing, so I will be able to reduce some expenses.

Please keep your fin­gers crossed and I will keep you post­ed should any­thing change!