They Fired My Boss Today
Jan. 22nd, 2026 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerThey fired my boss today. Our department got the news from our new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) in a hastily-convened meeting this morning. It's not because of any misdeed or shortcoming on his part, as far as I can tell; it's just a reorg. The CRO is devolving us sales engineers (SEs) out to be managed by regional sales leaders.
I have a lot of thoughts already about this situation, plus more thoughts are are still developing. For now, for this journal entry, I'll share just two, one good and one bad:
The good: I am optimistic about this "pod" model of sales teams. With professionals from different functional specialties reporting to regional sales VP, those sales VPs can route the right tasks to the right people. And those VPs will have incentive not to overburden people in adjacent functions like mine (a challenge I've faced the past 2 years) because we'll be a direct part of their team. They'll be responsible for prioritizing our work.
The bad: My job function no longer has a functional leader. There is no SE leader to hire, promote, or mentor SEs in the company. There is no SE leader looking across our function globally to roll up our findings, concerns, and needs, and present them coherently to senior leadership. There is no SE leader to press senior leadership for answers to these challenges and disseminate the answers back to us.
I have a lot of thoughts already about this situation, plus more thoughts are are still developing. For now, for this journal entry, I'll share just two, one good and one bad:
The good: I am optimistic about this "pod" model of sales teams. With professionals from different functional specialties reporting to regional sales VP, those sales VPs can route the right tasks to the right people. And those VPs will have incentive not to overburden people in adjacent functions like mine (a challenge I've faced the past 2 years) because we'll be a direct part of their team. They'll be responsible for prioritizing our work.
The bad: My job function no longer has a functional leader. There is no SE leader to hire, promote, or mentor SEs in the company. There is no SE leader looking across our function globally to roll up our findings, concerns, and needs, and present them coherently to senior leadership. There is no SE leader to press senior leadership for answers to these challenges and disseminate the answers back to us.
