No Job Is Safe Anymore!

A good friend of mine was at one of the leading companies in the U.S. for the better part of two decades. He worked his way up the ladder to become a VP of Finance (one of about 20). He is a great leader, an intense worker and thinker, and a great person on top of it all. And he was just let go.

Where does one start with that? I mean, after “holy smokes” and “I’m really sorry”, what does one say to the person or about the event? Let’s start with the event itself. Here is a person who earned his way to the top of a very steep and tall pyramid now being unceremoniously let go. Sure, the company will say this was simply about consolidation and efficiency, but this guy was good at what he did. I witnessed it myself both close up and at a distance over years. He busted his tail and gave his all for the company. And, importantly, he drove great results.

The lesson is: no job is safe today. Absolutely none. No matter how large the company, how well you have performed, or what industry you’re in. None of it matters. What matters is: do you control your own destiny? If so, to what extent, and how much influence can you have. I see good folks tossed overboard pretty regularly these days. Maybe their division is being cut and no one in the remaining organization wants to do the hard work of figuring out who’s worth keeping. Yup, 5% - 10% of the company, the good along with the bad, just tossed out. This is like cutting off your entire hand when only your pinky needed to go. That is some lazy, short-sighted thinking. But it has become more and more common. CEOs come and go. CFOs come and go. If they can be at risk, so can you.

If you thought being at a big company was any sort of job/career insurance these days, I say think again. The bigger the company, the less control you exert on your own destiny and the greater the risk. This is just the opposite of what we’ve been taught, and it has been a long time coming, but it’s reality now. Small companies have all sorts of execution and market risk, but so do the big ones. It used to be that the big ones could survive with woeful performance at some of the units. The whole protected the parts. But Wall Street is too smart for that now and big companies feel forced to measure every corner of the enterprise and react accordingly. The difference is that at a small company, like at Cheers (the bar), everybody knows your name – and how well you do. If you perform well at a small/mid-sized company, chances are that you will be noticed and protected when the company takes corrective action. Risk is absolutely still there, but you have more control, based on your results.

Does that mean we’re all going to leave for startups or small/mid-sized companies? Well, no. However, I do think more people are going to think hard about what their ideal company situation is, which will change their behavior and career. I think a lot of entrepreneurs will come out of this last downturn. Even finance and accounting professionals, which should serve to surprise many (sorry, but we’re not thought of as generally entrepreneurial). Even if they are not the CEOs, they will at least strive to be closer to the main decision locus at smaller companies, rather than a small cog in a huge machine.

As for the person let go, the timing is never good and there will be a rush to market oneself and get that next offer. Any offer when you are mid-career and cast adrift by your employer will look sorely tempting. One’s ego takes a serious blow when this happens, no matter how good you are.

My hope, and I am an optimist, is that this will prove liberating after it’s through being heartbreaking and gray-hair-inducing. Perhaps he’ll land with another big company, or maybe he’ll follow his passions and land at a place that both appreciates his talents and knows how to put them to good use. But one thing is sure, no job is safe anymore – you can count on that. The smart finance leader will increasingly look for places that have more to offer than just heft.