The Cog in the Machine
Recently, I caught up with a former colleague whose days are numbered at the company where we used to work together.
She’d wanted to leave the company for a while, but the company beat her to the punch, saying that there was no longer a place for her skillset. In a sudden, impromptu meeting, the managers involved were calling her situation a “mutual separation” (whatever the hell that meant). Her last day would be the last day of the month. On the plus side, there was severance involved. On the downside, she was imminently unemployed, and though she’d wanted to quit for a while, she didn’t get to depart on the terms she’d have wanted to.
She was upset. I don’t blame her. I’d gone through a similar situation just a few months before in which I’d stayed employed by the skin of my teeth. When I was going through that situation, I cycled through a number of emotions:
I felt let down. My manager said she’d fight to help me transition into a new role that better suited my professional ambitions, only for that role to fall through and for my previous job to no longer be available to me.
I felt unwanted. I’d been a high performer in the past and had a strong, go-getting track record, but despite my past accomplishments, I wasn’t winning the game of “what have you done for me lately,” making me as good as dead.
I felt puzzled. I was told I was “smart” and “talented” and “full of potential” but also that I cared too much, took my work too seriously, and that I should temper my ambition. What was I supposed to be?
I felt angry. I had thought of leaving the company months ago but stuck around in hopes of things changing for the better with a team structure change. They didn’t, and now I was on the chopping block unless I investigated some other options. There are few things more frustrating than being the one broken up with when you—YOU—were the one ready for the breakup, and you failed to beat your partner to saying, “We need to talk,” first.
As we spoke, I tried to remember what I needed to hear in those moments, what she might need to be reminded as she processed and prepared herself for whatever was next for her.
The concept that resonated the most with her was this, something that reminded her of the impersonality of the corporate world:
Most companies don’t care about you beyond your capacity as a cog in a prescribed machine. Most companies don’t owe you anything and are under no commitment to keep you or care for you. You could be an A player or a D player individually. You could be the top of the heap or the bottom of the barrel in an org chart. A shift in strategy or organizational structure.
No matter who you are, where you stand, or how influential you believe yourself or your work to be, a leadership change, a strategy change, or the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and circumstance could make you suddenly and arrestingly irrelevant. Don’t ever think you’re too good not to get fired at anytime. You’re a line item on a balance sheet, a number more than a name. Nothing really stops you from being cut along with a budget.
For all your uniqueness, you are eminently replaceable. The company will go on without you whether you like it or not, whether it likes it or not. Why value yourself by a company’s whim?
This is the thing I needed to remember then and will need to remember assuming a departure from the corporate workforce in the future. That the work isn’t worth taking personally. That companies are impersonal machines. That a life that will make me happy will be one in which I can break from the machine and build one of my own.