Reorganization

In big companies there are a million reasons to reorganize. You reorganize if the CEO decides to change the mission of the company or a part of the company. You reorganize if you're not making enough money with the current org or if you're making a lot of money but you think you can make more. You reorg when you buy a company or product or you sell one. Etc., etc., etc.

Our reorg happened officially on Friday although I knew what was going to happen by mid-week. We reorged because my org hired another manager to handle the ever-increasing size of the department and it was a good time to rearrange everything since I think it had been a few years since the last reorg.

This reorg was done by moving around the various project areas and then moving the people that went with them---or something like that. My group wound up being pretty much dispersed except for the project managers like me. The idea is that we'll get more people in the group to staff our project areas as more people are hired.

We had our last group meeting today. People were not at all worried about the changes which was interesting. While all the managers in the group are very professional, there are definitely differences between them so some people are headed for a big cultural change.

At Not Big Blue I must have worked in three or four different organizational setups and survived numerous reorgs and a lot of layoffs (NOTE: Not Big Blue laid off people in my old area just last week--that's a topic for another day.) We always expected the worst from a reorg and often got it.

I care about reorgs because I do care who my manager is. I left Not Big Blue for Widgets to work for a tough, intelligent, brutally honest manager who created the perfect work environment for me. Then she left and I eventually wound up with...ugh,I don't want to think about it. I guess in the end it's like my current manager says, "You can't choose your manager."