Straight From the Horse's Mouth

That post about corporate euphemisms I wrote the other day? Meant to be informational, but with a ring of sarcastic truth to it; often times these nicknames help exiting employees to cope and offer them an element of control in an otherwise bad situation. 

An alternate reality? Sounds like Pfizer...
Source: briterevolution.com

Survival in the heavily matrixed environment at Pfizer apparently took more than just hard work and pedigree. Over the past few days, I've spoken with some former employees, and I'll briefly paraphrase the conversations (Note: I'm hardly the first to discuss these layoffs...)


All former Pfizerites felt that they had spent a lot of time meeting and politicking, perhaps as much as they did generating new data or discovering new drugs. One said that layoffs were announced as early as six months prior to corporate action, leaving employees wondering if they would have a job next season (I guess they were "lucky" not to be let go over the weekend?!). Another worker alluded to overemphasis of negative traits during performance reviews, such that if you were laid off in the future, the document might seem to presage your departure. 


When layoffs occurred, scientists often abandoned still-running equipment and in-progress experiments. The equipment would sit around for a time, unused, and later be sold at auction to recover costs. Since no one would be hired to replace the outgoing researcher, many data sets were irrevocably lost.


The most shocking sentiment I heard was that of a long-time chemist, who compared negotiating the enormous, post-merger(s) Pfizer to a zero-sum game, where the only way to move ahead was to "bring someone else down." 


To borrow a popular sentiment: Best wishes to all of us.