Restructuring

January 2023 marks the beginning of my third year living in Berlin…and I also when I got laid off due to “ongoing restructuring”...whatever that means. Even though working at Pleo was only my second job, I

feel like I’ve shuffled through roles almost every year of my career. This has been a great thing for someone like me who tends to get bored every 8-12 months. From HR generalist ( still cannot believe that this was my first job out of college), to moving to Berlin, and somehow ending up in a Strategy & Operations role, I’ve learned some things that I’d like to share:

• No job is worth (even a cent of) your peace of mind. Let’s rewind to May 2022. I just joined my latest team at Pleo. I felt like, “yes, finally a role not in People. I feel successful. I report to a CFO. Life is good and nobody can question my decision to move to Europe because I’m S U C C E S S F U L!” Well, joke is on me because even though I was living in the summer destination of the year (Lisbon), I think I spent my days chained to my laptop and my Whatsapp messages. I felt like everything had lined up, that I should feel some sort of career satisfaction because of these “external” factors, but no amount of prestige is worth having to take a spontaneous zoom call at 7am during your morning gym session. I had the title & salary, but was happier in my “simple” HRBP role than I ever was with the new title. I constantly worried about work deliverables, had horrible imposter syndrome, was horrible with my friends, and overall just completely intolerable to be with for the whole summer - all for what? Which brings me to my next point…
  

• Nobody cares more about your job title than you do. I’m going to take the liberty of saying that this one has been deeply rooted into me by my 16 years of American schooling, but damn, I (embarrassingly) care a LOT about my job title. Now that I’m applying for new jobs, I’m trying my best to move away from this, but it satisfies some itch in me to say I do X thing for (insert cool company here).
  

• People > Product. Maybe this one comes from having worked for an e-commerce (wanna-be tech company) and an expense management SaaS, but I’ve hardly worked with people who are passionate about the product being produced. Maybe they’re passionate about their role within the ecosystem, but I’ve never heard anyone in Tech saying they’re passionate about e-scooters, wearable health gadgets, expense management systems, or the like. If we broaden the scope up to mobility, wellness, and fintech then maybe we have a few takers. That being said, I would 100% pick a company again for its people over its product. There’s no point in working for your dream company if the people you’re going to be working with day in & day out are wet blankets. Pleo somehow managed to hire some of the absolute best human beings I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, which makes saying I work for an expense management SaaS a bit more bearable.
  

• Don’t equate your self worth with a job. It’s funny that I say this because so much of me was brought up to believe that your self worth is tied so closely to your career/title/job. I think there are a lot of people out there who love their job - and I’m happy for them. But being let go taught me that even if I love the job, the job doesn’t necessarily love me back in the same way. It can be taken from me at any time with literally no reason (your colleagues are not your family blah blah). And for this reason, I will try my best to make sure I separate my self worth and identity from my future jobs. Being let go from Pleo hurt - a lot. But it also gave me such good friends, experiences, learnings, and memories. I loved those two years! But again, it’s just a job. Life goes on. There are other amazing companies with great people and memories to be made. More importantly, I am not my job and people don’t like me because of my career/title/job. I’m trying to not sound cringe here, but it’s embarrassing that it took me getting laid off to realize the truth of that statement. I don’t love my friends because they’re Product Managers or Marketing gurus, but rather because they’re happy, genuine, loyal, fun people. I shouldn’t hold myself to a different standard when it comes to this either.

I’ll miss the ease and comfort of working for a remote-first company but this “breakup” has also been great for me to explore what I actually want to do with my career. Did I want to be a “Strategy Activist” (whatever the heck this means) in a Finance team implementing new systems and pretending like I knew what the hell was going on in my daily calls with Billing specialists…?

Sometimes people stay in a bad relationship rather than being single and alone, even though they know that there’s a chance there’s something better out there for them. This is how I feel with Pleo. Right now being “single and alone” job-wise feels risky, vulnerable, and all sorts of uncomfortable but I’m hopeful that the right person (ahem…job) is out there.