It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.
Remember the letter-writer asking about how to tell his employer “I’ll quit over this”? Here’s the update.
To the commenters who asked, yes I left the letter intentionally vague for two reasons. A) For anonymity and B) To keep the discussion away from the questions of ‘is this a warranted reaction’. Apologies I was not able to participate when the letter went up, I very much wanted to but could not.
Things took a weird turn and then slowly started to crumble. Shortly after I sent this letter, we paused our pursuit as some positions in management changed again, and we wanted to give them a chance. When things continued to get worse, we resumed trying to address our issues. I felt prepared to resign after reading the advice, but things didn’t go as expected.
One of our outspoken group was “asked” to resign in a – to put it nicely – very unfriendly manner, effective immediately. There was yelling involved. It was a big hit to morale to lose him across multiple departments, and especially painful without any notice period. He had a lot of important, highly visible and specialized work on his plate. Him being friends with many people in the company, word got around about what happened very quickly. We gave up pursuing the issues at that point, because it was obvious it would happen to us as well.
Immediately after that happened, our new boss pulled us both individually and directly asked if we were planning to leave (because we were all close friends). In more professional words, we both basically said ‘I don’t know. We’ll see.’.
They opened a position within a week of him leaving and ~6 months later still haven’t been able to fill it. We were understaffed to begin with. As I mentioned, it’s a competitive market. Their pay/benefits/etc aren’t bad, but it’s also not highly competitive in this area.
His “resignation” happened about mid January. That happened on a Thursday, and by Monday he had 2 job offers on the table, an interview planned, and was expecting another company to contact him. (The power of networking!) He took a week of vacation and then started a new position.
Bonuses got paid about a month later, and that same day another person quit in our department (voluntarily) effective immediately.
Also the new VP quit without notice around the same time, because of problems with his bosses. He’d been here around 2-3 months, and was impressively not hesitant to voice his issues. I’ve heard he told a small number of people he was leaving that day, but it took awhile for most people (self included) to find out about it. There was no announcement or anything, he just vanished one day. He still has not been replaced either.
Our department had an emergency meeting shortly after that, because our (new) boss panicked about quitting without notice becoming the norm. Those of us who remained explained that while we appreciated his assurances and support (and held no ill-will or blame towards him), none of us believed that the company would follow through on it. We’d all seen many patterns of this promise-then-pivot behavior from upper management.
A few people in other departments quit in the following months. A couple managers who were planning to quit got promotions suddenly, so they’re staying around for now. This week (late May) another one in our department quit (with notice).
So now, there are 3 of us left – myself, my friend, and 1 other. The 1 other had always been on another project (and is currently job hunting). My friend had been transferred to a different project months ago, and it happy there. Both of them will refuse to change projects if asked, and given our massive shortage I fully expect their demands will be respected. We all have some major job-security right now and for the foreseeable future.
I’m the only one remaining in our department who works on the company’s largest and most profitable project. There’s supposed to be at least 10… (For anyone concerned for my sanity, all 3 of us help each other whenever possible. I’m not completely isolated.)
I’m thinking about asking for a raise.
In other departments, I know of about six more people currently looking. 3 others are about to have babies in the very immediate future. There’s going to be a lot more shortage pains soon – as predicted.
I’m (probably idiotically) planning to stick around 6 more months before I start job hunting for a few personal/family reasons. We’ll see, that may go out the window at some point.
update: how to say “I’ll quit over this” was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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