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Imaginary Movie title: Anatomy of a resignation

Updated: Mar 9, 2022



Opening Scene: Our protagonist Neon, a talented JS/frontend developer at a premier tech company, has resigned and manager Smithy is caught completely off-guard (obviously zoom in on Smithy's face as you cut to the next scene)


Scene 2: 4 months ago -- Neon's sitting in a team meeting where Smithy is talking about how they're going to ship project X, a high-profile full-stack feature over the next 6 months


Scene 3: later that night, Neon is hanging out with his college buddies and learns T's company allows her to opt permanent remote work, M took up a new job that let him buy a new car and O is now a full-stack developer. Zoom in on Neon's face as he's clearly confused and is now evaluating his own role subconsciously


Scene 4: Next morning, Smithy has a 1:1 with Neon and tells him the 8 things he needs to do for project X to succeed and reminds him of how he missed that one thing in Project W earlier, especially under aggressive deadlines. The 1:1 was a wonderful one-way conversation, one for the ages -- imagine Smithy wearing AirPods-Max throughout the 1:1, with noise-cancellation on, for dramatic effect


Scene 5: With Eye of the Tiger playing over a montage scene, Neon types up a resume, applies to a bunch of companies, takes coding exercises, some distasteful questions, Zoom interviews, signs PDF documents; Neon takes his BluePill offer as a full-stack developer


Scene 6: Cut to present -- Smithy's manager is disappointed in him for putting project X at risk and so, Smithy makes a counter offer matching BluePill and gets rejected, with Neon saying "too little, too late" and walk away with swag and a semi-evil smile of accomplishment. Roll credits.


What does the manager in the audience take away from the movie?


- A lot of managers in tech discover an employee's misalignment only when they resign, but turns out the resignation is the end outcome of a journey, not the beginning where it is completely manageable/avoidable


- The only way out for managers is to genuinely care about an employee's interests and concerns -- proactively -- and 1:1s need to be empathetic 2-way conversations.


- Lastly, this is pure business, not a nice-to-have -- employee resignations cost disproportionate money for a growing company -- to "listen" is a core part of the Manager's job description. More so, in the new normal, with the Great Resignation going on in full-swing already.


Post-credits scene: contact us if you want to see how Yuga can help you get proactive


#futureofwork #greatresignation #employeeengagement #thegreatresignation #careers #greatreshuffle #management

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