Changes..

So recently I’m going through a process at work for a restructure. It’s my first time being directly affected by this kind of thing and boy is it not great. Let’s start from the beginning.. Flashback to Thursday a couple weeks ago. I’m wrapping up for the day of WFH, around 30 minutes before I finish for the day. I get a call from my manager, asking me if I’d be ok to attend a meeting tomorrow that’s later than usual, after I’ve finished for the day normally. Said I can start later if so. Sure I said, no worries. I’ll wait for the invite. 45 min or so pass until I get the invite. Meeting members: me, my boss, the GM, HR, and one other member of my team. The content? “We’re going to change the way your team works going forward” “we understand change is stressful” “you can bring a support person” “EAP is available to you”. Instantly alarm bells went off in my head. Am I getting fired? A meeting on late-ish Friday afternoon, with HR, GM, etc? Are we getting restructred out? What the hell? I panic and call my manager, who of course can’t say anything until the meeting. I spend the rest of the day redoing my CV, writing cover letters, and applying to jobs. I don’t sleep. The next day, get into work, find out my colleague also had no idea about the meeting and had a similar reaction to me. We get to the meeting, and they reassure us there will stll be enough jobs after this. Just.. not the same job. Basically we both have to apply for a senior version of our role, and the person who is unsuccessful has to take another role in the business. OK, better than worse case, but still not ideal. They give us the spiel, give us the documents, answer some questions in typical corporate HR responses. We have a week to provide feedback, then they’ll take a week to review it and then let us know the outcomes, then a week afterwards it’s the interview. I speak to some people who have been on both sides of this, try to rationalise, try to beat away the demons of “this is targetted. they’re doing it because they want YOU out. the other guy will get the job and you’ll be stuck in the other role”. Given the state of my mental health it’s not surprising I went to some dark places, and the Saturday after the initial meeting was okay, but eventually it started clawing its way back into my thoughts until I was rolling over trying to sleep on Sunday night, wondering how I was meant to act on Monday. Luckily, Monday was busy as so it kind of flew by. I arranged a 1 on 1 with my manager for Tuesday, had a discussion with him (he answered what questions he could and said the right things to calm me down - regardless of if they’re true or not". I felt ok for the rest of the week, responded to some responses for job applications, accepted the ones that gave no response I was rejected by. Took Wednesday off for stress. The next week comes and I break again on Sunday night / Monday morning, so call in sick. Receive a response to my feedback, didn’t expect anything but they did concede on one point so that was ok, not fully what I suggested but at least it was something. Now it’s Friday and I have a meeting with them for the results from the feedback, and the actual next actions. I have a feeling that there won’t be much new in this meeting, just a formaily. They’ll iron out the details of the interviews and the timings possibly.
Throughout this whole thing.. I’m still thinking though.. is this the really what I want? Do I want to stay in this company that treats me as barely visible on the best of the days, doesn’t give me any opportunities for growth, rejects my attempts to force myself into projects like that? I even thought deeper - do I want to keep working in this industry? Had a look around at other roles that I could easily pivot to, but the main issue with that as always is that you’ll most likely miss out on money. You’ll have to start at the bottom for 3-4 years again before you can get back up. With my ’life goals’ I guess being “don’t be a burden to family at retirement age”, I really want to get a home, and with the way the world is currently it’s just going to get more and more expensive. I’m already in a hugely expensive city, country, heck world I guess, so taking a significant pay cut at my age and being stuck there for a few years really chews into those goals. On the plus side though, I did have another role that I was somehow pretty successful in, as in I got responses from them. But the weird thing is.. I had to sit this ’test’ for the interview. It was a proctored test (i.e. I had to screenshare, and I had to have a webcam on) and it was a mix of questions related to the role and general knowledge, reading comperehension, and basic reasoning skills. I was pretty apprehensive about doing it because of the screenshare aspect. I even considered doing it on my laptop but it’s running Linux so that wasn’t the best option. Possibly some compatibility issues, or flags triggered by their software that would make me seem suss. I considered doing it on my work laptop but.. the webcam on that hunk of junk is dead so that wasn’t an option. Ended up using a browser I don’t use (edge), disconnecting all my monitors, hiding all my icons on my desktop, and just sending it. The test went.. not well I think. There was some basic algebra I bombed pretty badly haha. The role related questions were specific to things I knew when I was studying, but while working I’ve forgotten. It was still an experience to have though so that was something. I dunno how but I also had a mindset that made it kinda.. fun? Like nothing much was on the line. I threw it away as a fun excercise and thought nothing more of it. Filed it away in the oh welp I failed that. But surprisingly very shortly after finishing the test, the company contacted me to set up another meeting. So I’m doing that this afternoon. It may be surprisingly thorough “hey you failed haha” but it might lead to an in person interview! Gasp. So yeah, my work situation, while far from worst case is definitely changing. What I’ve learnt about myself in this situation is even if the changes aren’t that ‘bad’ or might even be in the right direction I’m vehemently opposed to it. After some self analysis and reflection this might be because of my very turbulent youth, moving countries, schools, etc. constantly. Or it could just be I have a weak personality that struggles with it. shrug