OMY "Glide Path" plans

After my chat with my manager on 8/31, I fully expected to be retired by 11/30. But, I still may be in the glider cockpit at that point, and possibly through the end of the year. Megacorp has not had any layoffs, at least layoffs impacting our organization.

However, for all intents and purposes I am working part time on a full time salary. I have whittled my workload down to 3 fairly easy projects which take about 1.5 days to manage. Staff work and "advisor" conference calls are about another day (or less) of work.

My manager is not pushing me to do more, because (a) I am not causing any deadlines to be missed - in fact I am actually early on things he cares about, and (b) since he knows I will be happy to be selected for the nest layoff, that will make his job easier to deal with that action when it occurs.

My 2nd line manager keeps trying to send me more work, but this person is like someone who sees a nice shiny bauble and exclaims "Oooh! I want that!"... then sees another nice shiny bauble and exclaims "Oooh! I want that!", and forgets about the previous bauble. So I have been politely replying on the baubles with my reason on why it does not make sense and/or with a suggested alternative course of action that minimizes or eliminates my involvement. So far there has not been a negative response. Of course, 2nd line manager might be filing my responses in their "reasons to lay off jollystomper" folder, but that is fine with me.

We will see how long I can milk this cow... :)
 
For now I am on a holding pattern on the ground.

The rumored 4th quarter layoff did not occur. But, I am fine with it. I have had (for me) relatively minimal work this quarter. The two business trips I had to take this quarter DW was able to join me, making them more a vacation than work. I have not worked full weeks since Thanksgiving, and I just have 3 more days of "official work" next week. Then it is vacation until after the New Year. :dance:

I can deal with working those 3 days from home, just waiting for the phone to ring or instant messaging to pop up. Most of my colleagues and clients are also winding the year down now, so I doubt there will be anything I do not choose to work on. I will get to "practice" my retirement “lifestyle” for about a month. :)

Of course after that a layoff (or a part-time work offer) may arrive in January, but that is fine with me.
 
Sounds great! Enjoy your month of leisure!!
 
Wonderful glidepath!
 
After 3 weeks of vacation, it has been tough to get back to work. And of course, some changes that make things more interesting:

- Our organization has done a little shuffle, and by the end of this month I will have a new manager, likely someone who is going to be a manager for the first time. I also have a new 2nd line manager, and my former 2nd line manager is now my 3rd line manager. Looking at this management change and the personalities involved has further solidified in my mind that it is time.

- One of the key members of my team, whom I've worked with for over 25 years, has had enough of the stress and has found another job starting next month. He went through a medical scare last year, and being still in his mid-40s, with kids in and about to go to college, wants a more stable environment, which he has found. He is giving his notice tomorrow. I have been open with my plans and he was very concerned about me leaving - so we joke that my retirement "motivated" him to find a better (for him) job.

With mixed rumors about another layoff (some say end of month, other say end of February), I've decided to put a stake in the ground. My current plan to get out of the glider is April 30. I've already spoken to Megacorp HR (who fortunately does not share ones retirement process actions with your management until you authorize them to) and have started the process. One interesting finding is that what I expected medical insurance to cost through Megacorp as a retiree may not be as bad as I have been planning for, so I'll see what the official numbers look like.

DW and I have some overseas vacation to visit family planned for early February, and in the event of no layoff, or not being selected for a layoff, I will inform management of my plans when we return... if they want me to leave earlier, fine. If they do not want me to leave but make a part-time offer, fine as well. Either way I can accept.

I am feeling very good about this. :)
 
seems closer and closer to the finishing line. It's wonderful that all outcomes are positive.
 
I returned from a great early February vacation to find continuing interesting developments at Megacorp:
- In addition to my team member giving notice, another member of our unit quit for greener pastures.
- A new member brought on to head a high profile technical project as was "anointed" as the new group leader by Upper Management turns out to be more what I can "presentation technical": can make pretty charts about the technology and give a good presentation but does not know how to actually use it, which the project requires. In sum, Upper Management on the day I returned to work said "Jolly we are putting you and this person as the co-leads on this high profile project"... essentially meaning I do all the work but the other person gets all the glory.

For me these were all signals to definitely land the glider. So in mid February after a talk with my new manager about other things, I put a stake in the ground:

Me: "With these new developments, it is only fair for me to tell you that I'm am planning to retire April 30th"
Manager "<nervous laughter> don't kid like that"
Me: "I'm not kidding <said with a smile>"
Manager "<few seconds of silence> Are you serious?"
Me "Yes... sorry to bring it up now, but I have planned for a couple of years, and my previous manager was aware that I intended to execute my plan soon"
Manager "I know... I just didn't think it would be now... I need some time to absorb this, can we talk about this more in a few days?'
Me "Sure"

A few days later we had a more detailed discussion. My new manager initially focused on additional raise/promotion opportunities for me to consider... but I simply said "truth be told, the most valuable item to me these days is more time to do what I choose". The reply was "there may be options we might want you to consider." So... My ears are figuratively burning because there do seem to be at least a couple in my management chain who want to convince me otherwise.

This gets better by the minute... :)
 
jollystomper said:
I returned from a great early February vacation to find continuing interesting developments at Megacorp:
- In addition to my team member giving notice, another member of our unit quit for greener pastures.
- A new member brought on to head a high profile technical project as was "anointed" as the new group leader by Upper Management turns out to be more what I can "presentation technical": can make pretty charts about the technology and give a good presentation but does not know how to actually use it, which the project requires. In sum, Upper Management on the day I returned to work said "Jolly we are putting you and this person as the co-leads on this high profile project"... essentially meaning I do all the work but the other person gets all the glory.

For me these were all signals to definitely land the glider. So in mid February after a talk with my new manager about other things, I put a stake in the ground:

Me: "With these new developments, it is only fair for me to tell you that I'm am planning to retire April 30th"
Manager "<nervous laughter> don't kid like that"
Me: "I'm not kidding <said with a smile>"
Manager "<few seconds of silence> Are you serious?"
Me "Yes... sorry to bring it up now, but I have planned for a couple of years, and my previous manager was aware that I intended to execute my plan soon"
Manager "I know... I just didn't think it would be now... I need some time to absorb this, can we talk about this more in a few days?'
Me "Sure"

A few days later we had a more detailed discussion. My new manager initially focused on additional raise/promotion opportunities for me to consider... but I simply said "truth be told, the most valuable item to me these days is more time to do what I choose". The reply was "there may be options we might want you to consider." So... My ears are figuratively burning because there do seem to be at least a couple in my management chain who want to convince me otherwise.

This gets better by the minute... :)
Click to expand...

It's great to be in the catbird seat.....:D

I'm hoping you'll keep us posted.

omni
 
unless there is a big payoff in immediate cash w/o retention requirement I would follow thru.
 
I have always wondered in these situations if an agreement about reduced hours but retaining health insurance might be possible. In cases where I knew a retiree was staying on at the request of the business, the HR folks always seemed to stick strictly to no health insurance if the worker was scheduled for less than 30 (or 32) hours. But maybe this could be negotiable if that's something more valuable than straight salary in your case.
 
Jolly's glide path is much more interesting than my own! Enjoy following this saga:cool: and wishing Jolly the best.
 
Good luck, Jolly!

At my Mega, similar things are occurring. We have some people with reduced hours, but since they expect everyone to work all the time anyway, a 3 day a week person works 5 instead of 7.

I floated a trial balloon last summer about retirement and my boss mentioned part time. I'm not going to do it. It would be like letting the glide path intersect sea level and trying to glide under water.
 
growing_older said:
I have always wondered in these situations if an agreement about reduced hours but retaining health insurance might be possible. In cases where I knew a retiree was staying on at the request of the business, the HR folks always seemed to stick strictly to no health insurance if the worker was scheduled for less than 30 (or 32) hours. But maybe this could be negotiable if that's something more valuable than straight salary in your case.
Click to expand...

Our Megacorp has done this in the past. Management will let me know if that is still available. Typically the offer was 24-30 hours a week at 60-70% of base pay, but full benefits (same employee health insurance, same 401K match at the reduced salary rate, etc). But this was usually for no more than 12 months. After that continued part time work in under a contractor agreement.
 
JoeWras said:
Good luck, Jolly!

At my Mega, similar things are occurring. We have some people with reduced hours, but since they expect everyone to work all the time anyway, a 3 day a week person works 5 instead of 7.

I floated a trial balloon last summer about retirement and my boss mentioned part time. I'm not going to do it. It would be like letting the glide path intersect sea level and trying to glide under water.
Click to expand...

Great point. I have good friends who have already gone through this route at Megacorp, so they have given me lots of pointers about how to make sure you stick to that part time agreement. The main is you need to be tough, block off your calendar on non workdays, and shut down work email completely on those workdays. Our jobs entail traveling so if that is done be sure to track the travel days as work days and get them back. For example, one friend would help me teach a class that including travel was 4 days a week, so she never signed up to for classes in consecutive weeks and was always sure never to work more than 2 days the week after a class.

The biggest challenge is to (as the saying goes) not letting perfect be the enemy of good. During my climbing the ladder years I often did this, and would spend extra hours and days on a project to make it perfect in my view. Fortunately I have been seeing lately that my "good" satisfies the requirements 99% of time... so I'm saving a lot more time following that path :).
 
Do you really need the money? My boss tried to tempt me with offers of bonuses, working from home 100%, etc., but what I really valued was spending time with DH, family/friends, and traveling. By the time I gave my notice, I didn’t need any more $$.
 
Scuba said:
Do you really need the money? My boss tried to tempt me with offers of bonuses, working from home 100%, etc., but what I really valued was spending time with DH, family/friends, and traveling. By the time I gave my notice, I didn’t need any more $$.
Click to expand...

I do not really need the money, but some of the work I do find interesting and some aspects of it are like a hobby... if I can get paid for doing a hobby according to a schedule and results that I can control, I'm willing to try it out and see. I can always decide it is not worth it.

I'm already working from home, and in the last year have received some surprisingly huge bonuses. So maybe they have already subtly tried to tempt me :LOL:.
 
Sure, if you think you’d enjoy doing the work more than you’d enjoy doing other things with your time, why not? In my case I knew I would enjoy other activities more than I’d enjoy continuing to work, even if my compensation was increased, so I left. YMMV
 
One other thought, the TTR can be a nice bridge to spending more time doing other things. It also protects you on the RA side. I think if they offer it and you go for it, you need to be really sure you can lock down overtime on days you work, and checking email on days you don't work.
Perhaps find a few colleagues who have done TTR and are now gone, and ask "would you do TTR again and why?".
Good luck.
 
Glider has LANDED! Now slowly strutting off the runway

It is locked and loaded!

My carved in stone retirement date is the end of June. They offered me full salary and benefits for an additional 2 months, with only a single project to assist on. That project will be no more than 16 hours a week. Those hours are used for travel and giving a couple of short classes that I have done several times already (so that my replacements can pick up the knowledge), so no new work. I do not have to do anything else. With my other projects completing over the next 2 weeks, May and June will be very leisurely months.

I will also get a severance package with some pay and vacation reimbursement, and includes medical at employee rates through the end of 2019.

Part time has been floated... but I have made up my mind that I will not consider anything before Labor Day. It will not feel like "real" retirement without at least 2 months of no work. :) And even then, I may not go for it. But it is nice if the choice is there.

I am incredibly relaxed now... very fortunate that things have worked out like this! :dance:
 
jollystomper said:
It is locked and loaded!

My carved in stone retirement date is the end of June. They offered me full salary and benefits for an additional 2 months, with only a single project to assist on. That project will be no more than 16 hours a week. Those hours are used for travel and giving a couple of short classes that I have done several times already (so that my replacements can pick up the knowledge), so no new work. I do not have to do anything else. With my other projects completing over the next 2 weeks, May and June will be very leisurely months.

I will also get a severance package with some pay and vacation reimbursement, and includes medical at employee rates through the end of 2019.

Part time has been floated... but I have made up my mind that I will not consider anything before Labor Day. It will not feel like "real" retirement without at least 2 months of no work. :) And even then, I may not go for it. But it is nice if the choice is there.

I am incredibly relaxed now... very fortunate that things have worked out like this! :dance:
Click to expand...

Congrats on your wonderful glidepath!
 
Congratulations! So happy this has worked out for you. My thought is to allow yourself until January 2019 before doing any part-time work. Having six months is better than only two to evaluate how you like retirement, plus that way you can enjoy the holidays stress-free.
 
Scuba said:
Congratulations! So happy this has worked out for you. My thought is to allow yourself until January 2019 before doing any part-time work. Having six months is better than only two to evaluate how you like retirement, plus that way you can enjoy the holidays stress-free.
Click to expand...

A great point that I had not yet thoughtfully considered. A sister and a brother, both of whom retired, gave me similar advice

DW also mentioned, which I had forgotten, that some of our best "couples" getaways we took were in mid-late fall, when the weather is still very nice, many places have far fewer crowds, and expenses are lower.
 
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