I have been giving some thoughts as to why I was laid off because I really wanted to understand and rationalize the thinking and the process behind it. Again I do not feel sorry for myself because I had felt quite miserable at work for a while, and I had conveyed that sentiment to my wife repeatedly. My wife had even suggested that I look for opportunities elsewhere. Although I had heeded to her advice and looked around internally and externally I had not found anything that really excited me. For me to jump ships, the offering had to be meaningfully better, and to be frank it was not easy to find one because my work was interesting and the only big piece missing was career progression due to lack of support from either management or from the manager. The latter problem was exacerbated by high turn-0ver in my group. While my peers, some of whom I thought were not as competent were moving up in titles and responsibilities I was stuck with no glimmer of hope in sight. Another constraining factor was family; with a young family I preferred stability; my immediate family would not have been thrilled if I had left a global investment bank for something less.
Could I have stayed longer and fixed the career problem and thus square the circle? Yes it would have been possible but it would have been a long up-hill battle and I am not sure if I was ready for it. First, I had to get strong support from my manager who was based in London with the rest of my team. Given that I had recently joined the team and the geographic distance, it would have been difficult and time consuming to build a solid rapport. Second I did not have any kind of working relationship with the US head; for all intents and purposes she ignored my existence. I think that both those managers cared less about career because neither of them hired me, but rather I was inducted into their teams when my managers left and I stuck around; so neither had stakes in my success. The London guy had to told me he wanted to hire someone to market his products (meaning that I was not that person) and the US lady had supposedly interviewed someone (established?) to work in the position similar to mine. All in all, I was being screwed all around because I was the weakest link. My problems with the mangers in London and US would have been less of an issue if I had exposure and support from clients. Unfortunately my previous managers did not give me any opportunity to build supportive clients around me.
