Got hold of highly confidential presentation laying out a re-org where my role was supposed to change. The file was in a VP's outlook calendar appointment that was open to everybody. Boomers and IT don't match.
So I had the presentation open and photographed the slides because I immediately knew this was worth to be fired for.
They wanted to re-org almost the entire department and had all roles to be let go or changed laid out. There were confidentiality notes all over the place and when I looked a bit further through the calendar, I noticed they planned this for a couple of months and have been absolutely silent about it – no office gossip saw this coming.
Their communication strategy was to Blitz the employees on one day and give them the details in 15 minutes briefing and offer them their new roles without further discussion.
I had about 2 weeks until the announcement and used the time to do some scenario planning around my options.
So when the announcement came I walked into the room, listened in silence to their explanation for why the change has to happen and how much they are going to appreciate my contribution in my new role. They then handed me the print out of the details and asked me what I think. I accepted the paper, didn't even look at it and told them I heard their point, will reflect on it and come back to them. That left them speechless and I left the room.
2 days later they came back to me asking for my thoughts. I told them that in accordance with company policy my pay needs re-assesment as too many details in my job changed and that I'd expect to be allocated to a higher pay bracket. Else I would not agree to the terms which would have blind-sided them as I was the only technical manager capable of doing the job and I was supposed to hit the ground running.
Job got re-assessed and (drumrolls) I got a 30% raise, that I wouldn't have gotten if their strategy of tricking me into accepting the job in the first meeting.