I am in a work related quagmire. I have an open offer to join another team within the company. It’s local, I would be managing a bigger team and my scope would increase. The downside being it’s an internal only facing team with no revenue and only builds folds for internal employees – which means it’s a dispensable org for all good purposes. And anytime layoffs have happened in past this org is first target coz honestly everyone can live without the tools it builds.

On the other hand in my own team I am being handcuffed into putting a report of mine into performance improvement plan with specific intention of laying him off no matter what. My manager basically said i don’t care if he improves 10x, he needs to go. I am at a losing end of this convo because I really don’t feel it’s the right thing to do to a person who is not really bad. He is showing all the right indicators and should have never been in this situation but is now thanks to “the management”. I also don’t like my boss much anyway (have posted about him enough here). That said the team I manage is amazing and my extended team mates are also good. I am well established and the risk of org shutting down is lower even though we may not be making much money, yet.

I feel like I am stuck between a rock and hard place. I don’t want to keep working here but the option I have is not great either. And I need to wrap up this performance plan by March end so I don’t have too much time either. This is the part of management job I truly hate.

Six months ago a white colleague had told me if T wins presidency she will think of moving out of country. Today she told me she is moving to Europe in summer of this year along with her family and ready to bid goodbye to the country (she does have dual citizenship). She will still work in the team but won’t be here anymore. I truly admire such people who pull through their word and are unafraid to pack up and restart. Of course I don’t think it was just this presidency that may have sealed the deal, but still. I should learn from this!

Some real hard things going at work; will post about them later but forcing me to refocus for sure on my next steps.

The Weekend is out with his latest album Hurry Up Tomorrow and I can’t wait to hear it on my drive back. I have been a huge fan of After Hours (2020) and Dawn FM (2022), and Hurry Up Tomorrow is last of the trilogy, after which apparently Weeknd is giving up his Weeknd moniker. The Weeknd has always been one of my favorite modern artists so I am looking forward to this! At 85 minutes, this should take a while to finish.

Had an excellent dinner at JOON last night in Tysons Corner. Fabulous Middle-Eastern/North African food. The drinks were terrific as well!

Done with my yearly blog post. I am not linking it here because I want to keep the blogs separate, but my regular readers know where to find it. And if you love me so much that you want to read, drop me a direct message and I will share!

Writing my yearly post forever. I need to post by tonight!

On a whim this morning I decided to check out what are working laws in India for a foreigner like me. Turns out just like USA, if I as a US citizen want to work in India, I have to go through similar process, get a work visa, be paid well, and do a job that an Indian national did not quality for. For whatever reason i kept thinking that because I am an Indian (I am still not used to being an “American” even after citizenship of few years), I should be able to do any job in India right away. Was a good sobering moment to realize its not the same anymore. Which leads me to believe, knowing all the uncertainty there is right now, if you are an Indian citizen on a Green Card in this country, please considering waiting this presidency out to see what might be the impact. As a GC holder you won’t miss much that citizens have, but you have a ready option in India to go back to work unlike us! Definitely food for thought!

I did not sleep well last night at all. Somehow all the negative news of the day caught up with me and I was just stressed. I am a step away from muting all the keywords also now on bluesky/mona because I truly do not want to hear what this administration is doing or care. I need less stress in my life and this is not helping.