My boss called me into a surprise meeting with HR at work last week. My company had just been bought out and lay-off rumors had been floating around for months. So I knew this was probably coming and I was OK with it.
Maybe too OK with it. Because I was by far the least emotional/nervous in the room. I even opened with a joke ("My boss and HR in one place? Are we finally going to discuss my promotion?"). I didn't say it was a good joke. And the nervous laughter I got in response told me this was not the appropriate time to pull a David Brent impression. (Speaking of awkwardness - I've always wanted to do a line-for-line reenactment of this, but at that particular moment, even though all the right players were there, it seemed inappropriate.)
The meeting went as well as it could, and my company did what it had always done these last 10 years, they took care of me. The severance was generous and I'm still around for another month to help ensure a smooth hand-off.
After it was all over, I felt relieved. In part because the band-aid had finally be ripped off, in part because transitions during buy-outs are always a mess for those still around, and in part because I realized I had fulfilled my mission at Advent Software​.
I built them a damn fine social media program from scratch. I had a great team helping me along the way, and together, we killed it. No small feat for a rag-tag marketing department of a global B2B company in the investment management industry.
I'm bummed that the momentum we built is seemingly coming to a halt, but I fully understand that this is how Corporate America works. The new owners paid big bucks for Advent. If they don't believe social media will help them achieve their goals...well, they're totally wrong (and I have the numbers to prove it), but that's not the point! The point is, its their call to make.
So I have some free time this summer. I'm going to spend a lot of it with my daughter. I'm going to watch movies in the theaters during the weekdays. I'm going to focus on losing the 25 lbs I put on in "anxiety weight". I'm going to take singing lessons. I'm going to find a way to finally fix that f-cking smoke detector has been dangling from our hallway ceiling for the past 2 months. Maybe I'll even revive this long-dead blog.
I'll start actively looking for a job once my transition period at Advent ends. I will miss my team greatly. I will miss Advent. I had many great co-workers and mentors and learned a lot. But as a famous super group once sang, "When it's time to change/You've got to rearrange/Who you are and what you're gonna be." Truer words were never spoken.