I've worked at a relatively small company for about a decade now. I loved the majority of my time there. I became great friends with my coworkers and have many fond memories over the years. One issue though was that we essentially got no raises over the years. Things then took a sharp downturn last year. Our CEO decided to do some “organizational restructuring” which involved a bunch of strange decisions being made in the dark and hardly any communication. For whatever reason, rather than include us of 7+ years in the growth plan, he wanted to hire new people to move into roles above us. And for whatever reason, he picked people with less experience than us to do that (??) My colleagues and I basically started storming HR demanding raises and voicing our displeasure in feeling we are overworked. We were repeatedly told no. The ceo even said something along the lines to the manager like “get them to do the extra work, without raises” We were all friends so even the dept manager would share the bs that was going on from the higher ups. We all started looking for other jobs and my colleagues started leaving. I ended up being the sole 'original' left, the last one to get anotger offer, and the past few months have been hell. After my friends left, I was given a substantial raise and point blank lied to about 'you're being promoted!' (That was 3 months ago and my job title never changed)
Anyway, I finally have a new job lined up and get to leave next week. The department, and to some extent..the company..is a former shadow of itself. It is now full of inexperienced people and they've already lost business due to the decrease in quality. All of which could have been avoided by just including us in communicatios and giving us better pay. My last couple weeks have been spent trying to encourage my successors to band together and collectively bargain, but also trying to link them with contacts for external jobs so that they have 'lifelines' if the business fails.
I feel accomplished.