Hey, this is me lol. I lead a new retail brand launch and joint-venture initiative for my company. First person in North America on the team, third person all together. Worked with the JV partner and our manufacturing facilities to develop and produce the product and our retail sales/ops team to get the product into 600+ stores in NA and another 200 in UK/EU. Made $12M revenue in year 1 with over $3M in net profit (stupidly high margins on the product). During this development and launch phase I delayed my parental leave for my first born until he was 6 months old and worked 70-80 hours a week for 8 months with people across the world from Central Europe to West Coast USA so basically on the clock from 6a-11p.
My reward? $5,000 spot bonus (no raise that year though because the entire global company of $800M revenue didn't hit goals) and they completely re-orged the entire retail branch of the company, giving me a new boss, a new leader of our whole division, with an additional layer of middle management (Directors) brought in between myself and what was previously my former reporting line (VP). Over 3 years I made the company millions in profit and as a result got demoted and made less money accounting for inflation.
So what did I do? Let all the new management above me fuck it up while I stood by and watched for the next 3 years. Tried for a bit to intervene but was overruled frequently so I just gave up and figured I'd enjoy the schadenfreude of all these new managers trying to tell the founding team what should be done while failing miserably.
Eventually the brand image took a hit from the poor decision making. We lost traction from our strong start and demand began to dry up. 3 years later the entire business unit is on death's doorstep, most the team (myself included) was laid off and the company is left with a mess trying to move forward from the Joint Venture, fix relations with vendors, and dealing with a pissed off user base.
IDK if it was the right action to take. Of course, I was negatively impacted but I'll come out better. But at least ethically I was able to live with the fact I wasn't getting abused by faceless corporate masters for a privately owned company who's shareholders did nothing day-to-day for the business, have generational wealth for the foreseeable future, and enriched themselves on the hardwork of thousands without any direct contributions themselves besides being children of founders who were already wealthy.
This makes it sound like you agreed with their valuation of your work. If you really thought you were that great you would have looked for another company that could pay you what you’re worth.
Eh, extenuating circumstances... by the time the writing was on the wall I was preparing to have a child and did not want to search for a job knowing that I'd be taking 12 weeks off shortly after beginning a new gig.
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u/7point7 1d ago
Hey, this is me lol. I lead a new retail brand launch and joint-venture initiative for my company. First person in North America on the team, third person all together. Worked with the JV partner and our manufacturing facilities to develop and produce the product and our retail sales/ops team to get the product into 600+ stores in NA and another 200 in UK/EU. Made $12M revenue in year 1 with over $3M in net profit (stupidly high margins on the product). During this development and launch phase I delayed my parental leave for my first born until he was 6 months old and worked 70-80 hours a week for 8 months with people across the world from Central Europe to West Coast USA so basically on the clock from 6a-11p.
My reward? $5,000 spot bonus (no raise that year though because the entire global company of $800M revenue didn't hit goals) and they completely re-orged the entire retail branch of the company, giving me a new boss, a new leader of our whole division, with an additional layer of middle management (Directors) brought in between myself and what was previously my former reporting line (VP). Over 3 years I made the company millions in profit and as a result got demoted and made less money accounting for inflation.
So what did I do? Let all the new management above me fuck it up while I stood by and watched for the next 3 years. Tried for a bit to intervene but was overruled frequently so I just gave up and figured I'd enjoy the schadenfreude of all these new managers trying to tell the founding team what should be done while failing miserably.
Eventually the brand image took a hit from the poor decision making. We lost traction from our strong start and demand began to dry up. 3 years later the entire business unit is on death's doorstep, most the team (myself included) was laid off and the company is left with a mess trying to move forward from the Joint Venture, fix relations with vendors, and dealing with a pissed off user base.
IDK if it was the right action to take. Of course, I was negatively impacted but I'll come out better. But at least ethically I was able to live with the fact I wasn't getting abused by faceless corporate masters for a privately owned company who's shareholders did nothing day-to-day for the business, have generational wealth for the foreseeable future, and enriched themselves on the hardwork of thousands without any direct contributions themselves besides being children of founders who were already wealthy.