Companies are often insane. I'm working in one who has this one guy build a super complicated architecture, because he don't know aws. So instead of just using a message queue on aws, he is building Java programs and tons of software and containers to try and send messages in a reliable way. Costs the company huge money, but they don't care, since he is some old timer who has been there for like 10 years and everyone let's him do what he wants.
That happened to me. I noticed a vague Monday morning meeting when I logged on. Checked with my team to see if they knew what it was about and no one knew. Supervisor was MIA on slack. Just before it starts we got a group text from him that essentially said, "what the fuck. I'm so sorry guys. I'm not allowed to speak or I'm immediately fired"
I checked the invite list and, sure enough... VP of department, VP of HR, my supervisor, and my small team. I instantly knew we were all fired.
Joined the meeting a few minutes early and it was just my teammates all wondering out loud what's going on. They're all pretty young. Couldn't help but blurt out, "nice knowing yall..."
Supervisor texts me with "please don't, we'll grab a drink right after this"
The cool executives log and blah blah blah your team is getting shuttered thanks bye.
We did get drinks at 9:30 in the morning.
We got reorganized last month. Scrapped almost all the projects we were working on and fired 1/4 of the workforce (mostly sales and support staff). On the plus side, I'm still employed and I've been able to use the last month to catch up on personal shit while the higher ups figure out what they want to spend money on next. On the down side, the new project I'm assigned to sucks and is never going to be successful. At least I don't think it will.
But, as long as the paychecks keep rolling in...
How about a meeting an hour after our daily standup and it's the CTO and CIO saying "ok is everyone on the call?"
I was telling myself "oh crap, the company is gonna shut down"
5 minutes later "So as of this very moment, everyone stop working. The company is officially closed as of this meeting."
We were a start up essentially. Made it almost 9 years with ups and downs. This all happened at the end of July. At least got 3 month severance and insurance covered. I do start a new job Tuesday.
So how the daily go?
Sometimes you get the opposite too. Like an 8pm slack message stating the head of engineering has "decided to step down effective immediately" (aka: forced to resign). Which is a nice surprise cause you had a meeting booked with them for tomorrow.
For me it was a random 15 minute 1 on 1 with the director that appeared out of nowhere on my calendar.
I checked his calendar in outlook and saw like 8-10 15 minute meetings scheduled back to back. I immediately knew something was up. 5 minutes later my coworker called me almost sobbing saying he had been cut. I knew the deal. 15 minutes later another coworker called and said he had been cut too. Sure enough, my time came too.
It sucked but, I found another job before my last day and managed to pocket the 6 weeks of severance.
Scrum meeting now a corporate war room.
If it's after 4 on a Friday and your VPN has just kicked you out, start leveraging those external contacts HARD.
Ouch
