Just had a sit down with my boss for lunch earlier this afternoon to discuss the future plans he has with the company and based on the conversation we had, things aren't looking well.
My boss has decided to trim down the current team of 7 down to a team of 4, one of those 4 includes me, but it doesn't include my friend Yan, whom I had introduced to the company to join as a Project Manager earlier this year. Our company's financial hasn't been fantastic for the past few months, we have been losing quite a few jobs, so what is coming in simply cannot sustain what is going out, which is the monthly overhead.
When my boss told me of his decision to let Yan go, I was shocked because her termination wasn't due to her performance, but because the company simply needed to cut cost. Aside from the company losing Yan, he was also letting the other designer on the team go, we only have 2 designers on board at the moment, that means her (the designer) termination will result in me handling all the design related work.
I didn't really have too much of an appetite after I learnt about the future plans.
A part of me immediately thought of quitting, if the company is in such a bad state that half the team needs to get terminated just for it to survive, do I really want to stay on? Is there any point for me from a career perspective to stay on? Am I wasting my time here when I could be at a bigger firm and climbing the corporate ladder instead?
No, there isn't, the smart thing would be to look for a new job right now and leave when I can, but my boss is a good boss and to leave the company when it is struggling so much would honestly make me a piece of shit, especially when my boss and accountant decided that they would take a pay cut, to ensure my salary stays the same during this period.
My conscience simply won't let me quit just like that and looking for a similar job in the industry that doesn't require me to do Sales and Project Management is going to be extremely tough.
I felt so guilty because I felt a bit underserving of the sacrifice that my boss and accountant are doing on my account. We barely finished our lunch because I guess the both of us didn't really have a lot of appetite after that.
Yan also decided to drop by the office to chat with me about her future plans moving forward.
She had been informed about this the yesterday, so when she came to the office, she just looked really dejected. She had a lot of future plans that she had to put on hold because of this sudden termination and I felt really bad for her because she honestly didn't deserve it. When I say plans, I don't mean plans to buy a new bag or the latest iPhone, by plans, I mean actual adulting plans like getting a house within the next 6 months.
We spoke for a while about what we could do, my boss joined us a while later and then I decided to sacrifice 30% of my current salary for the company to retain Yan, this 30% will act as her basic salary and she will be introduced a profit sharing scheme that will hopefully cover the rest of her pay.
Both my Boss and Yan were quite shock at my offer, and at that moment in time, I just wanted the company to try and retain Yan, because she is a good Project Manager. My boss was agreeable to this arrangement, but he told me to really think about what I am offering, and the amount I am comfortable letting go, and then counter offered that if I get such a huge pay cut, I can consider coming in lesser days, so instead of working a 5 day work week, I can just come in for 3.5 day, which I thought sounded fair.
It is a painful sacrifice to be earning $1,200 lesser every month, tentatively for the next 4 months, but I guess we all have to make some sacrifices here and there when the company is not in a good situation. This is why it is so important to be a good boss because what you get in return is loyalty from your employees. I am also able to accept the pay reduction because it is meant to be temporary (I told Yan I will take a reduced pay for 4 months), and more importantly, I have worked so much harder for so much less back when I was working as a Sales Designer at ID4, so I am just thankful that I can still be drawing a decent salary every month despite what is going on right now.
Anyways, my boss goes off after a while and Yan and I continued to discuss about how she can benefit from the commission scheme without the company having to feel the pinch, we played around with the numbers to find the best way for her to sustain with the commission system and I think we came up with a pretty good win/win situation for her and the company, so we will be sharing that with my boss tomorrow to see if he is able to accept it, my accountant is also trying her best to retain Yan as well, she claims that the company is still financially able to to retain 1 Project Manager, so hopefully, my pay cut that I offered won't be as severe, maybe from $1,200 down to $600.
I told Yan I will only be willing to accept the reduced salary for 4 months because we are hoping for the situation to improve after the CNY period, and if the situation doesn't improve after 4 months, then for the sake of our career, we will honestly have no choice but to look for a different company.
No comments:
Post a Comment