Lord of War

My coworker’s desk being stripped clean always reminded me of the infamous plane scene in Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage. If you haven’t watched the movie, it’s where locals come and strip a cargo plane clean in the middle of a country in West Africa. It’s like seeing a bunch of piranhas devour its prey like pack animals.

Big Trouble In Little Company

This was many years ago but I worked for an executive at a smaller company that had a global presence. Obviously, it’s wasn’t a mom and pop shop with only 100 employees but at least a sizeable enough company to where it’s clients are the top firms in the world. I happened to be in a very unique position and worked intimately with its two owners and my boss who was one of the key executives. I knew some of the other people in the office were jealous of this because I had come in with immediate visibility to c-suite across all regions. I hate to sound arrogant but I had a few key things that they didn’t have like A) quality experience at Fortune 500 level firms and B) functional experience across multiple departments.

One day, I was quietly asked to join a meeting with the two owners and my boss. It seemed like they wanted to keep it hush hush so I entered the room without making a big fuss about it in the office. My boss had his spreadsheet up as a brainstorming session and it had a list of the senior leadership and salaries on a list. Obviously, because of the type of analysis I was doing in my role…I already had access to the salaries of the top folks in the company because those are the ones that are going to individually move the needle in terms of cost. But I was just using an average for middle manager/staff level roles because the positions were way too convoluted.

Example:

Analyst I, II, III, IV, V

Senior Analyst I, II, III, IV, V

I mean come on, you have like five levels for both Analyst and Senior Analyst roles? No way I’m forecasting this crap on an individual level. I just asked my boss for an average by general positions which I used to get me in the right ballpark range for various scenarios.

But what about the meeting? They explained to me this had to be kept confidential but they were going to initiate layoffs. As I saw them go through name by name, they were trying to figure out who to cut based on the salary and redundancy. If we cut this person, who can take their position? How much lower can we pay them? How will this hurt morale?

I’m not going to lie to you, it might’ve been pure coincidence but a lot of these folks on the list were very difficult to work with. And these are the folks you put in charge of entire departments? Must be a hard knock life working in that environment.

They then had me do scenario analysis for multiple combinations and scenarios of moving offices or changing things like salary levels based on cost of living areas or outsourcing. Typical cost savings crap. But the last conversation was about when to do this because Christmas was coming up. They had to wait until the spring time so it wouldn’t hurt morale too much.

The most surprising thing? One of the people scheduled to be laid off was the person who sat right next to me in the office. Was I sad to see this? No, I salivated at the thought of him being notified that he was going to be let go. Is this the most Christian like thing? No, Father forgive me. But I had enough of listening to his crap all day.

This 5’4” midget was always telling people how great he was and the arrogance overflowed to cover up his insecurities. In fact, I question if his degree is even legit but I guess they stop caring about that kind of stuff when you have two decades of shitty experience. Quite frankly, he delivered nothing. The most surprising thing? His actual salary was almost 30-40% above the average for his role. I had been using an average for people in his position but realized he was the outlier.

Crocodile Tears

When layoff day finally came, his boss pulled him into a room and notified him. He then packed up his stuff and said his goodbyes to everyone and left. Then the crocodile tears started flowing.

Coworker A: “I wish there was something we could do to help him. I really wish there were some other way without letting people go.”

Coworker B: “Man, I respect him a lot. He took that way better than I thought he would.”

Manager A: “You know, we’re like a family here. There was nothing we could do but I’m going to do everything to make sure he lands well somewhere else.”

Manager B: “Yeah, it’s sad. He was a cool guy.”

Coworker C:" “Not gonna lie, it was sad but I was really glad I was safe.”

My Thoughts? What a bunch of fake ass crybaby hoes. We are most certainly not a family and that arrogant little prick had to go because he was taking up a lot of useless salary space. And lets not pretend like everyone has each other’s back here. You guys are all a bunch of garden snakes who think they’re vipers living in a PetSmart cage. This is not the real jungle.

And then what happened? Not even two days later one person meekly asked if anyone had helped clean out the empty desk. Translation: let me go raid anything of value like hungry Somali pirates. Soon as one lady started to go through his desk, the entire office ran over and began plundering his belongings left behind. This was exactly like the scene in Lord of War that I described earlier. One person even turned to me and said “hey bro, you want this shirt? this might be your size.”

Pfff. Are you kidding me? Why would I want that man’s shirt? Ok, honestly I took it because it was a nice shirt. I admit the company has nice swag and I loved the design.

The layoffs were then followed by one of the owners explaining why the layoffs had occurred and why he was purely to blame for it. If you ask me, he cut the bloat out of the company. But it shook everyone in the organization. Many immediately started looking for new roles even during company time. Why was I not shook?

Honestly, I was used to it at much larger and tougher environments. How many layoff rounds had I survived by then? Probably at least 7 or 8. Seriously. I know especially in corporate America it’s usually a dog eat dog world when it comes to this type of stuff. Your crocodile tears or excuses don’t sway me one bit and I’m always ready to jump ship if needed.

Within a week, those same coworkers crying and whining did a 180 and started to talk trash about the dude that got laid off.

“You know, his expense reports were always a bit shady when I processed them.”

“He seemed to use his kid as an excuse a lot and was never in the office.”

“I never understood what he really did and his projects were always slow.”

“He never really added value to be honest and was just really difficult to work with.”

Spoils of War

I’ve seen the game at a much deeper level but it doesn’t mean I know how to play the game correctly. I just know that my resume and LinkedIn need to be ready to go at all times. I’ve seen direct bosses fire individuals, entire teams, and clean house across entire regions (seriously). Never seek loyalty to a company. Ever. Best advice I got from a mentor. And also, never trust your coworkers.

But I will say I still wear that shirt I got from my coworker’s belongings. It’s my spoils of war. This represents survival and victory in the face of adversity. If you want to talk real Lord of War stuff, look no further than the wisdom of Admiral Yi Sun-shin…not a fictional character played by Nicholas Cage.

“Those who seek death shall live. Those who seek life shall die.”

Let me translate that into this scenario.

“Those who seek layoffs and don’t give a F shall live. Those who seek to hang on shall die.”