Of course she didn't. But she greatly devalued herself by showing poor judgement - at this point, unless she was highly influential in the organization or her value (in other projects) was high enough for the company to support her regardless, she had committed a career-limiting move [1]
>She saw that she was working so hard and moving so fast, that even if she was delivering quality results, she was working against herself, putting her job at risk, and making things harder for everyone.
To add more context from the Harvard Business Review article:
> "Laura, our bookkeeper, was bright, hardworking, and
> creative. She’d been very important to our early growth,
> having devised a system for accurately tracking movie
> rentals so that we could pay the correct royalties. But
> now, as a public company, we needed CPAs and other fully
> credentialed, deeply experienced accounting professionals
> —and Laura had only an associate’s degree from a
> community college. Despite her work ethic, her track
> record, and the fact that we all really liked her, her
> skills were no longer adequate. Some of us talked about
> jury-rigging a new role for her, but we decided that
> wouldn’t be right."
(edit: To point out the obvious, in this scenario there was no argument that Laura was an "A Player", just that for her to become an experienced CPA would be a multi-year process, and the company needed a CPA immediately. The options the company has are thus:
A: Put Laura into a job that doesn't add any value to the company, and encourage Laura to retrain as a CPA. It's possible that Laura might be perfectly happy as a bookkeeper, and might not want to retrain. Also since the company needs a CPA immediately, the CPA job isn't guaranteed to be open if Laura finally does retrain, so the company would be asking for a big commitment from Laura with no promised reward at the end.
B: Give Laura a generous severance and a great reference, and help her find a job that is a reasonable "next step" for her in her career.)
So this person violated a few unwritten laws of job switching, but you have to have some compassion for her - she was in a terrible job and was looking for a way out. You'd make mistakes too.
note that she took a pay cut because she wanted a greater stake in the company. does that fit with her not believing in it?
it does sound like she didn't have the experience or the maturity to whittle down to an achievable project, however. learn to code, maybe that plus this experience will make you a much stronger manager and designer next time around.
From the article she switched to the firm specifically with the understanding that her compensation would be much higher, and then they ended up reneging on the agreement as she understood it.
Not really if it’s by choice. She decided more to “retire” from being a director. A “demotion” is involuntary.
It’s not a demotion in the same way that voluntarily deciding on a career change from IC to management is not a promotion. A promotion is given to someone, not chosen by them.
Of course.
She moved from an F500 to an F100 company in a global leadership position.
It's crazy how a person like that, without any kind of skills (neither human), can have an amazing career only for the right name on the resume.
But at least my company replaced her with someone better.
Don't get yourself too down about it compared to her. She moved internally, has a lengthy employment history and was backed by her manager, there was no loss to the company here as knowledge of previous projects would stay with them. There is hardly any way to compete against that from the outside.
She might have been looking for new job and proudly posting here social media presence. The people recruiting would have checked that and immediately went nope. You don't leave until you have next job joined up unless you really really hate it.
That she chose to stay in the same industry was her fault
I consider my mind and my skill set as a tool of my trade. If I can't use it freely, I'm a serf. Presumably she wouldn't be allowed to /start/ a company, either.
A cow-orker of mine came to (large software company) from (another large software company), and had expertise in a certain sensitive area. We only found out about this when we asked him the reason he would go silent in meetings on certain subjects. He was under a funky trade-secret non-compete that had been worked out by lawyers, and was gagged for (I believe) five years from having technical input on stuff he was an expert in at the other company.
Or more likely management didn’t care whether she looked for new employment.
I’ve been through three of four of these situations and every time there is a list of positions that management deems important enough to grant options. It was always clear how not being on that list is perceived and that people might quit and some consideration was made to not risk losing some they considered important enough.
I bet it wasn’t the author’s title but the author. The COO knew who she was and didn’t think she was important enough to grant options. Saying it was because she had the wrong title seems like a coward move.
I never felt good being on or off the list or making the list. I think it’s better to award some amount to all early staff. One of the myths and legends of tech that I loved hearing as a kid was the Microsoft secretary who is not a millionaire.
Options grants like this describe the character of a company. I don’t think it’s impossible to work in an org like this, but it should be a factor in choosing to stay or choosing to join.
[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=CLM:+Career+L...
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