Week One

I had been working at an engineering firm for approximately 25 years when the firm (about 25,000 employees) was acquired by another company (50,000 employees) in a merger. One of my jobs was as the Software Compliance Officer, and as such I negotiated and understood the firm’s strategic IT contracts. As part of the merger implementation team, I was responsible for standing up a new global IT procurement organization to rationalize $450 million in IT spend.  It was complex, stressful and time consuming work, and ultimately although the team met its goals was not well understood or respected by senior management.  After about a year I tendered my resignation. 

I was immediately offered a substantial retention bonus to stay with the newly merged company, to be paid out over a year – assuming I stayed and took a newly created role.  I decided to stay and give it another chance. Part of that decision was the attraction of the money, but a larger part was the feeling of recognition that came with the offer.  Ultimately I lasted only about 6 more months, the money could not compensate for the fact that I continued to feel unappreciated and came to the conclusion that the new organization had values of how it treated people that were different than my own. So, the extrinsic reward worked for a little while, but could not overcome the stronger desire for intrinsic rewards that were lacking.