[This post was typed directly into my WordPress site on an iPad, so bear with me for potential typos.]
On the morning before my CHI presentation (for a paper whose the first-author/former-intern couldn’t attend due to visa issues) I noticed cryptic messages from two coworkers about soon-to-lose Slack access. Given that we were on the same team, my hunch was that we might have been impacted by an organization change.
I gave the presentation as usual which seemed to go well (albeit from some AV equipment issues kindly resolved by a helpful student volunteer) and then noticed “time sensitive” meeting requests from my management chain. (The meeting slots were in my afternoon during which I already planned museum visits, so I took their calls while in the grand hall of Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.) It turned out that my entire team has been “role eliminated” because our project doesn’t fit the new org mission well. We were “highly encouraged” to find alternative internal roles within a 2-month period with partial employee status meanwhile.
If you were me, what would you do? (1) find another job, inside or outside the current employer, (2) take it easy, settle for a more relaxing role or retire, (3) convince your teammates to start up together and see what would happen. I have thought about this potential eventuality for a while, and the answer is kinda a no-brainer to me. Counterintuitively, I feel more excited and energized than before when my career has become somehow stabilized.
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