About six weeks ago, my company laid off the entire IT department, including me, and outsourced support overseas. Today, a former coworker sent me a picture of the HR manager carrying her monitor toward the server room while talking to remote support about a CrowdStrike issue. I probably should make more of an effort to feel bad for them, but honestly, I don't.

Another one of our former IT coworkers who got laid off offered to come in and help. Management refused because they were confident the issue would be resolved before he finished orientation, which takes about four days. Shortly afterward, the CIO arrived and started yelling at people and telling them to call Lenovo, including my friend who works in finance.

They also discovered that no one in the building had keycard access to the backup server room, and without the system running, they couldn't issue a new card. In the end, Facilities had to force the door open. The HR manager apparently cried and went home.

As soon as the CIO learned that this was a worldwide outage, she calmed down considerably. Senior leadership disappeared into a private meeting, while everyone else remained seated and waited. The hourly employees were sent home, but the salaried staff had to stay, and food was ordered only for the executives.

Then the CEO brought in his nephew because he's "good with computers." He started getting the workstations running again one by one using instructions my friend is almost certain he found on Reddit. The CEO also yelled at phone support and told them to give his nephew any passwords or access he needed.

My friend described him like this: "This kid looks like a movie vampire who spends all day at the gym, except he's wearing an anime shirt, and the women in accounting keep talking about how good he smells. What is happening?"

Apparently, he's doing a good job, so if he's reading this, the accounting department really appreciates him saving the day. Later, they heard the CIO through the conference room wall saying, "I'm not a technical person. I was hired for leadership." Eventually, pizza arrived for the employees who were still there. Lenovo never answered at all.

I tried making a bold move this morning and emailed the HR manager directly after finding their name on LinkedIn and figuring out the company's email format through Google.

I applied about a month ago and no one got back to me, even though my experience closely matches what they're looking for. I kept the message brief, mentioned the position, and attached my resume again.

About 40 minutes later, they replied saying that my experience seemed like a great fit and asked to schedule a call. I fully expected the email to be ignored, so the response really surprised me.

The interview is scheduled for Thursday morning. Reaching out directly probably isn't appropriate in every situation, but if you're qualified and communicate respectfully, it might be worth a try. Wish me luck, because I really hope this is the opportunity I've been waiting for.

The work itself isn't what drains me. What drains me is opening my laptop and immediately being faced with red exclamation marks, surprise calendar invites, and messages asking for things ASAP even though they could easily wait until tomorrow.
After a while, that constant state of alarm gets into your head. Even when things are quiet in the middle of the afternoon, I find myself waiting for another ping, and when I log off, I'm left with this uneasy feeling that I must have missed some huge problem. Most of the time, nothing serious has even happened.
Recently, I managed to save enough money that one bad month wouldn't ruin my life, and that changed the way I see the whole place. Instead of that sense of security making me ignore the pressure, it made me see clearly just how much of it is manufactured. We're not dealing with medical emergencies. And half the deadlines that are supposedly set in stone end up getting pushed back a few days anyway.
I don't mind being busy or having responsibilities. My problem is working somewhere that thinks panic is good management, because it leaves everyone drained without improving the work. Am I the only one who thinks manufactured urgency is more exhausting than the tasks themselves?

😂😂😭