Ruminations on how your corporate career ends

Aweh fellow Ruminants & Groupies in day 363 of Re-Modified Lock Down Now Level 1.

Remaining Life at Sasol: 6 days

This will be my last Ruminant Pink Friday™ submission as a corporate drone. I am then going to classify myself as semi-retired and will try to get part time temporary gigs if anyone wants me. My days of full time corporate employment are over.

I have been in formal employment since January 1984 when I was employed as a junior research officer at Wits University when I started my Master’s degree. Apart from 3 months of unpaid leave spent sailing in the Mediterranean I have been receiving a monthly salary for 36 years. I have been with Sasol for 29 years and some change. In April this year there will be no monthly salary.

For many years my career  and earning’s trajectory was up as I gained experience and was promoted. As with many people my career peaked several years ago and then declined as the company was restructured, started to shrink, ran into financial difficulty and paid me and many others less. My corporate ascent was over many years ago and next week it will be completely over.

This has led me to reflect on how it ends. For some people, with access to the private lift, a corporate career ends with a company sponsored banquet for several hundred to provide a fitting goodbye and exit. For others, lower down in the dominance hierarchy, perhaps a smaller dinner with a few colleagues and even lower down perhaps just some cake, bought by your colleagues,  in the company canteen.  At the other extreme one can consider the abrupt bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 when people went home on Friday with a job and arrived on Monday morning to be told it was over and Lehman was bankrupt. They were given a box to collect their belongings and there was no severance package and no salary at the end of the month. Forget about the goodbye function. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/15/lehmanbrothers.creditcrunch1.

The CEO of Lehman Brothers, Dick Fuld, dubbed the gorilla of Wall street got $500 million in compensation during his tenure and was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 people to blame for the financial crisis. http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877326,00.html.

Given the chaos and disruption brought about by Covid-19 and the associated economic fallout company “restructuring’s”, with associated “headcount reduction” are a growth industry and the number of people retiring and being retrenched is overwhelming. People are understandably punch drunk and there is no goodbye function.

Given how brutal it can be I cannot complain that I leave voluntarily at age 59 with a severance package. In addition I have planned for this day for many years and have put effort into investments to ensure I can retire. For younger colleagues in their twenties and thirties although it may be difficult there is plenty of time to start over. For older colleagues above 45  at lower levels with families and many commitments and limited reserves tremendous hardship potentially awaits and they bear the brunt of the suffering that follows any company getting into financial difficulty. It is very hard for me to know what to say to them other than hang in there.

To my younger colleagues the only advice I can offer is that you need to be understand the financial position of your organisation because your future is tied up with that. You need to apply critical thinking and realism to what is happening before you drink the corporate Kool Aid. Value destruction has tough consequences for the rank and file in an organisation. If a company does things that don’t make economic sense and takes too much risk there will be consequences and the associated suffering will be disproportionately felt at lower levels. Loyalty isn’t always rewarded.

Thank you very much for the many helpful suggestions and input which I’m researching and please keep the submission ideas flowing.

Regards

Bruce