Cuts & Stabs

M- worked at a head hunter firm in Manhattan. She was there seven years. The company, which has offices throughout Europe and the United States, is an employment agency specializing in Executive job placement—high level executives, mid-to-high six figure salaries (often higher) in top companies in all sectors of the economy, especially Healthcare, Technology and Finance. She was gaining seniority and could be considered a junior to mid-level executive. The job requires researching companies and individuals, then the process of match making the individual with the position. The companies were the clients who paid for this exclusive head hunting service.

Around 2006, company management changed and she was one of the last ones left from the old regime. Tensions never ceased between the newcomers and the veterans. Executives based in Manhattan and the New York offices of companies had a corporate culture that was more blunt and straight forward, like New York. The new regime saw corporate culture as interchangeable worldwide, and there was more emphasis on following rigid protocols and pecking orders. This is business after all, so there wasn’t so much of a contradiction but still, a clash of perceptions on the role of individual initiative persisted. There were eruptions, feelings were hurt, people insulted. Then work went on.

M-‘s immediate superior was of the new regime and they never liked each other. They did a lot of the same work—research, assessment, client contact—but M- was always the better performer which for the newcomer was fine. Occasional conflicts could be overlooked because in the end, her work ethic and positive results made him look better.

Being in Manhattan, about half of the firm’s business was in the financial sector, an understandably higher percentage than their offices in other cities. The summer of 2008 is remembered for a heated election where the republicans increasingly looked foolish and the democrats increasingly looked better and the economy was melting down. Ground zero for the meltdown was the financial sector. Banks failing, mortgage crisis, bail out fund legislation, we all remember the drill (how can we forget, it’s still going on!).

Hard to have pity for banking and financial company executives and their rapidly shrinking job market. Companies weren’t replacing executives, or adding executives, they were cutting whole departments. For every executive gone, there could be dozens of other employees that executive was in charge of; they lose their jobs too. M-‘s company was hit hard. Executives of all type were under fire and less in demand, job prospects going from dim to black but the New York office, with its heavy financial industry involvement, suffered the worse.

One wave of lay offs, then another. Early October, M- explained to me the dismal situation. “I wasn’t sure I would survive the last one, now everyone is over-worked. I miss the ones who were friends.”

Three departments now shared one secretary where before, each department had a secretary and each secretary an assistant. There were two junior employees, entry level right out of college types who also were part of those early waves of lay offs.

In other times, higher-ups who have to fire employees console themselves when turnover is higher because it brings in new blood and injects a new energy. True, but not the whole truth because training new employees and the time it takes for the new employee to adapt impedes productivity. In small doses it can help and in large doses it will hinder.

These days, turnover is turning but not over. The equilibrium is off. There are more workers going out than coming in. Those employed have no hope of any increase in salary in the foreseeable future, their work loads have increased and the gloom and doom, paranoid atmosphere only escalates.

By November, M- lost her position. It’s a high toned firm, she got one of the best severance packages I’ve ever heard about. She’s married and her husband’s position is secure and well paying. She’s not as bad off as many or even most who’ve lost their jobs due to the current economy. But, it always sucks to lose your job and it especially sucks to lose your job right before the Christmas holidays, when you are supposed to be celebrating and you are spending more money than usual and even a bad job market is worsened by the fact that few companies do any hiring until after the New Year.

Her immediate superior was the one who cut the position. “We never got a long. Cuts were mandated from on high. The earlier cuts weren’t enough.”

She made nice dough so her removal easily fulfilled mandated budgetary tightening requirements. The mid-levels left were now all from the new regime. The economy made it easy for the immediate superior to fulfill the back stabbing fantasy he held ever since the new regime took over the Manhattan office.

M- holds an annual Christmas party. It’s a gathering of her and her husband’s friends from work and social circles and their previous lives. I fit in the latter. Merry Christmas and how do you know M- are the ice breakers. In a way, it was keeping up appearances, but in another way it was a phenomena I’ve been seeing lately, we’re going to survive, we are not going to let the economy ruin everything. This party had that against all odds we will survive quality.

Past parties, there were the secretaries and junior employees along with the higher ups. This year there was only one from the Head Hunter firm, higher up, the gentlemen who hired her seven years ago. “Madoff seems to be the last straw,” he told me (the Madoff scandal coming to light was at full throttle). “This was news New York didn’t need.”

He’s a nice guy, I’ve talked to him once or twice before at an M- gathering. Graying hair, wine lover, stays in shape, just turned sixty, smart businessman. “I am doing things that I haven’t done in more than ten years, and I still have to do everything all upper managers have to do. I’m sharing a secretary. I’m writing letters. And, it’s not like I have less emails to answer.”

What is morale like? “Terrible. I’ve never seen it so bad, it self perpetuates but there are bigger problems to deal with than morale. You can’t worry about morale, and as a manager, I know that not worrying about it just makes morale worse, but that’s the situation.”

The immediate superior who cut M- was let go in February. Basically, a whole department that employed more than a dozen college educated people is now gone and there’s not even a glimmer of hope of those jobs ever coming back.

Today, the New York office is populated almost entirely by people who do not know or appreciate New York corporate culture—the same culture they are supposed to service.

And M-? She’s freelancing, applying research skills of executives for a fund raising project. She’s in her 40s. “I want to start something that I have more control over. Companies put people out to pasture at age 50, even in better times.”