How to avoid corporate jobless designations like Scrum Master or Manager – New Projects which might spell layoffs in corporate speak.
Your Job Title Speaks Volumes About Your Fate
It’s the elephant in the room, your designation might be a code for “about to be let go.” Titles like “Manager, New Business Initiatives” or “Scrum Master” sound important but can actually mean your organization doesn’t know what to do with you.
Why? Because these roles are often vague and non-essential when the crunch time comes. For example, the role of “Business Analyst” has become so generic that many companies have replaced it with AI tools. As per a 2023 report by McKinsey, over 30% of companies globally have begun automating such positions.
How Organizations Keep You on the Edge of Firing
Layoffs rarely happen overnight. It’s a calculated game. Here’s how it starts:
- Ambiguous Performance Reviews with feedback like You’ll hear phrases like, “We’re re-evaluating the impact of your role.”
- Promotions or raises? Forget about it.
- You’re handed random projects no one wants to touch.
Take India’s IT sector: a famous case involved a mid-level project manager who was tasked with handling multiple outdated software systems. After a year of poor performance in an impossible role, they were let go under performance issues.
The Silent Signal of Trouble (Internal Reviews)
When your company starts scheduling internal reviews or interviews for your role or similar positions, it’s a huge red flag. Why? Because it means they’re already scouting your replacement.
A notable example comes from Silicon Valley’s tech giants during the 2022 mass layoffs. Employees who were asked to “share insights about their role” in team discussions were the first to go. It’s a polite way of documenting your tasks to transfer them to someone cheaper or to automation.
The Reassignment Game Always Comes First
Reassigning employees to new roles is another tactic. It sounds promising new opportunities, but it’s a soft landing for dismissal.
A former HR executive at a leading European pharmaceutical company admitted, we’d move underperforming employees into ‘strategic’ roles with no real KPIs. It’s like putting them in a dead-end room until they walk out or fail spectacularly.
In India, the trend is visible in startups. As funding dries up, roles like Head of New Market Ventures suddenly vanish. These roles were created for expansion ideas, which never materialize.
The Boredom Trap (Making You Quit on Your Own)
Ever felt like your role was intentionally dull? Companies sometimes design jobs to bore employees into quitting themselves, saving severance payouts.
Let’s talk about “Scrum Masters.” Once highly respected in agile project management, many now find themselves in positions where their teams can self-manage. A downsizing expert from the U.S. shared, Scrum Masters are often sidelined after project completions, left twiddling their thumbs with minimal responsibilities.
In Europe’s financial sector, junior managers reassigned to endless report creation projects often resigned within six months.
Giving You Roles Where Failure Is Inevitable
As a Manager of New Business Initiatives with no team, no resources, and vague objectives. You’re set up to fail. This tactic isn’t new. During the 2008 recession, a major U.S. telecom company shifted dozens of senior employees into “strategic growth” roles. None of them achieved their targets, and 70% were let go within two years.
In India, a sales professional was reassigned to “expansion projects” in Tier-3 cities, markets the company itself had no interest in exploring. The inevitable happened, he was shown the door for non-performance.
The Power of Bad Ratings
Your Downfall is in the Fine Print. If your role gives management an easy way to rate you poorly, start packing your bags. Vague metrics like “team collaboration” or “strategy alignment” make it easy for HR to justify low scores.
Take the infamous “Business Analyst” title. A 2022 survey by Gallup found that 60% of analysts felt their roles lacked clear objectives, leading to poor appraisals.
A European conglomerate used this tactic during COVID-19 layoffs. Employees in roles like Innovation Consultant were rated poorly on criteria like impact visibility and future contributions. These phrases sound fancy but have no tangible meaning.
A Universal Phenomenon Across Geographies
Whether in MNCs, Indian startups, or European firms, the story is eerily similar. Some regions, however, are more ruthless. Companies in US are known for quick layoffs but use designations like Program Manager, Strategy to “soften the blow. In India titles like AGM Special Projects are created to shuffle employees into non-critical roles before firing. In Europe the preference is for job downgrades, often with a promise of re-skilling.
How Can You Avoid These Jobless Titles?
Yes, by staying proactive. Here’s what you can do:
- Is your work critical to the company’s survival?
- If assigned vague tasks, push for clarity and KPIs.
- If you’re in roles like Scrum Master or Business Analyst, consider transitioning into fields with clearer impact, like product management.
Job titles are no longer just fancy designations. They’re often a signal of your role’s dispensability. Recognizing these patterns early can save your career. As a prominent HR consultant from Bengaluru puts it, “The corporate world is brutal. Don’t just work hard, work smart to stay relevant.
Abhishek is a computer science graduate. He was too scared of programming so he pursued MBA. He then joined a management consulting firm but soon realised that without any real world and technical experience, consulting wasn’t real.
So he joined a bicycle manufacturing company as a marketing manager. There he got into the nitty-gritties of cycling and learned all about manufacturing, sales & distribution. But soon, things got too easy, so he quit and joined a media conglomerate, which would later give him and his wife the idea for SAM, their digital media business. His heart was still in cycling, so he rejoined the cycling company as product manager, which he truly aspired for. He got selected for a company sponsored executive MBA program at IIM-A, only to realise that it would make everybody around him jealous.
That sent him working in other business areas like corporate strategy, precision steel tube, exports, etc. After COVID-19 and becoming a father of twin children, he was made to quit. So he finally got the guts to leave the job-life once and for all, and run the media business he helped start.
Today he’s the co-founder of a media business along with his pretty wife and also runs his investment fund. He is interested in writing about topics that no one wants to touch or discuss. Over the years Abhishek has come to realise how lucky and immature he has been and wants to repay the world with good karma.
He’s used to be passionate cyclist and participated in several competitive events, as of now he’s procrastinating to get back on to his bike’s saddle again. He also has interests are in behavioral psychology, economics, stock valuations and chess.