Any advice or professional leads appreciated!
At the end of 2025, I was working as a client executive for a software company. It was a decent job and I like working on the client-facing side, but I wanted to get back to the operations or product development side as I had fulfilled that role for about 10 years prior to 2025. So, I was on the lookout for a operations manager/product owner/product manager role. At the beginning of January, I interviewed for a product manager position with a smaller company (~300). The interview was with the director of the department and another product manager who I was scheduled to work under if I got the job. After another phone call, they offered me the job. They explained that I was being offered the product owner role rather than product manager due to the lack of specific experience they were looking for, but they liked me so much for the knowledge and experience I was bringing. The offer letter also specifically stated I would be reporting to this director I had interviewed with.
I started two weeks ago. On day one, I noticed the director that interviewed and hired me was no longer a director. They shook up the department on the Thursday before I started and demoted the guy I had interviewed with. I also noticed I was no longer assigned to the projects I was told I would be working on. The new director didn't talk to me about any of my experience, skills etc. He introduced me to the department and then to the entire company in a town hall meeting where he announced that I would be leading an entirely different project. I had never done anything like this and didn't have the experience necessary to do this project. So I immediately started looking for company documentation or SOPs to find out the context, history, outlined processes that could help me figure out and get the project done. There were none. I asked my colleagues about support and any documentation/SOPs that could help me and they laughed and said there is no support. There was also absolutely no training sessions or plans to train me on the software.
Finally, after a project kickoff meeting with stakeholders (the CEO was one of the primary stakeholders), I recognized that my new director had never looked at my resume and had never attempted to see what my experience/skills/background were. So I jumped on a call with him after the meeting and discussed all those details with him and his response was "Oh.... I thought you had years experience specifically in this area". Later that day I called the HR director and explained what happened and how my onboarding had been. She recognized that my onboarding had gone horribly and I had no support.
Fast forward to today. My director and HR director call me in a meeting and let me go stating its within the probationary period and I didn't have the skills/experience they needed for the role. When I asked about recognition of what happened to me or a possible severance package to help me out until the next role, the HR director just repeated the same sentence over and over again that I was being let go for this reason and thats it. They refused to say anything else. So no severance, no recognition of what happened to me... nothing. Life is crazy sometimes.
At the end of 2025, I was working as a client executive for a software company. It was a decent job and I like working on the client-facing side, but I wanted to get back to the operations or product development side as I had fulfilled that role for about 10 years prior to 2025. So, I was on the lookout for a operations manager/product owner/product manager role. At the beginning of January, I interviewed for a product manager position with a smaller company (~300). The interview was with the director of the department and another product manager who I was scheduled to work under if I got the job. After another phone call, they offered me the job. They explained that I was being offered the product owner role rather than product manager due to the lack of specific experience they were looking for, but they liked me so much for the knowledge and experience I was bringing. The offer letter also specifically stated I would be reporting to this director I had interviewed with.
I started two weeks ago. On day one, I noticed the director that interviewed and hired me was no longer a director. They shook up the department on the Thursday before I started and demoted the guy I had interviewed with. I also noticed I was no longer assigned to the projects I was told I would be working on. The new director didn't talk to me about any of my experience, skills etc. He introduced me to the department and then to the entire company in a town hall meeting where he announced that I would be leading an entirely different project. I had never done anything like this and didn't have the experience necessary to do this project. So I immediately started looking for company documentation or SOPs to find out the context, history, outlined processes that could help me figure out and get the project done. There were none. I asked my colleagues about support and any documentation/SOPs that could help me and they laughed and said there is no support. There was also absolutely no training sessions or plans to train me on the software.
Finally, after a project kickoff meeting with stakeholders (the CEO was one of the primary stakeholders), I recognized that my new director had never looked at my resume and had never attempted to see what my experience/skills/background were. So I jumped on a call with him after the meeting and discussed all those details with him and his response was "Oh.... I thought you had years experience specifically in this area". Later that day I called the HR director and explained what happened and how my onboarding had been. She recognized that my onboarding had gone horribly and I had no support.
Fast forward to today. My director and HR director call me in a meeting and let me go stating its within the probationary period and I didn't have the skills/experience they needed for the role. When I asked about recognition of what happened to me or a possible severance package to help me out until the next role, the HR director just repeated the same sentence over and over again that I was being let go for this reason and thats it. They refused to say anything else. So no severance, no recognition of what happened to me... nothing. Life is crazy sometimes.
