I’m a software engineer at one of the huge companies you’ve seen in the news lately that is in the process of laying off thousands and thousands of employees.
I have not been lucky enough to be laid off, but my entire team of a dozen engineers has been “redeployed”. We were all given a new job on Wednesday together on a completely different team that is currently run by only 4 people. My current boss and his boss are no longer managers, and will work alongside us (we loved these managers. Really were good.). Our new management has told us to expect startup like culture, and brags about getting on on-call issues at 2am, like that’s some sort of selling point. We then learn this new team is a total fucking mess (and by the way… nobody asked to join this team). The company is not sending out an email describing these changes to us to keep it out of the media.
So basically all of my old teammates and bosses have discussed looking elsewhere. My bosses have said they will help any of us find a new job, no hard feelings, if that’s what we want. I was told I cannot simply ask to be laid off.
The problem is that I don’t hit my 1 year mark until August, which is a long time to deal with a dumpster fire. If I QUIT before then, I have to give back my signing bonus. Even though in my opinion placing me in an unrelated position that I never applied for or agreed to is close to a constructive dismissal…
So basically, my boss told me that he’s just going to phone it in until it makes sense to quit and won’t be doing much work and suggested I do the same (which is hilarious, he really is a good boss). But, even doing that sounds awful because we are on call, meaning I will be called at 2am consistently.
So how can I best take advantage of these dumbass high ups that fucked over hundreds of people (I’m not the only team reorged) ideally to get laid off or fired for a reason that won’t ruin my credibility?
Worth noting that I cannot just find another job that has a signing bonus to cover my existing one because once I leave I’m planning on going to school full time.