Dear Stephen:
I work for a contract furniture manufacturer that was recently acquired, and we are now part of a much larger family of brands. Most of us are back in the office, or at least that is clearly where management would like us to be. But we still have people who moved during the pandemic and never moved back, plus others whose hybrid schedules somehow seem to have evolved into mostly remote schedules. The pandemic was six years ago, so I am starting to wonder how much longer “I moved during COVID” remains a permanent career arrangement.
Since the acquisition, I have also noticed a surprising number of people suddenly “retiring.” Nobody says they were fired, naturally. They are pursuing other interests, spending more time with their families, or beginning an exciting new chapter. The only strange part is that some of these people seem awfully young to have developed such an urgent interest in retirement. Maybe I am imagining it, but many of the people disappearing seem to be the ones working remotely or rarely around the rest of the company.
I am even starting to see it in sales. Salespeople have always believed, “As long as I hit my number, leave me alone.” Recently, one of our bosses said that “the brand makes the sale, not the rep.” I do not completely agree with that, but it got my attention. The implication is that management believes customers belong to the company, territories can be reassigned, and another salesperson can inherit the business.
Then there is LinkedIn. Some of my remote coworkers who barely posted before the acquisition have suddenly become enormously active. Every airport is a post. Every showroom visit is a post. Every customer lunch is a post. Every trade show requires pictures and inspirational thoughts about leadership. Sometimes it feels less like LinkedIn and more like they are creating a public record proving they are working.
So tell me what you really think. When a company is acquired, reorganized, or simply cutting expenses, are remote employees easier to let go because management does not really know them? And if hitting your number is no longer enough, how do you make sure you are not the easy name when somebody starts crossing people off the organization chart?
Signed
I Hit My Number. Am I OK?
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Dear OK?:
I think you have identified something a lot of people working remotely do not want to talk about. I am not going to tell you remote workers are always fired first, because that would be ridiculous. Plenty of terrific employees work remotely, and hybrid work is clearly here to stay. But I absolutely believe there is a career danger in becoming professionally invisible, and when companies are acquired, consolidated, or cutting people, invisibility can suddenly become very expensive.
I actually looked at the research because I wanted to know whether this was simply my own “out of sight, out of mind” theory. It is not. Recent research has found fully remote employees disproportionately represented among people who have been laid off. Interestingly, ordinary hybrid workers do not show the same pattern nearly as strongly. That makes perfect sense to me because the real issue is not whether you work from home on Friday. The issue is whether the people making decisions about your career actually know you, understand your contribution, and would notice if you disappeared.
Think about how layoffs really happen. They may begin with consultants, spreadsheets, compensation reports, territories, and a beautiful PowerPoint presentation about “organizational efficiencies,” but eventually human beings sit in a room and discuss other human beings. Somebody says, “What about Mary?” and the boss remembers Mary saved the impossible customer, helped train the new person, and knows three dealers nobody else can get into. Someone says, “What about John?” and three people in the room have traveled with John, watched him solve problems, and know exactly why losing him would hurt.
Then another name comes up, and everybody recognizes the name but nobody really knows the person. “Oh, right. He works remotely. Isn’t he in North Carolina now?” They know his little square on Teams. They know he sends his reports. His numbers may even be perfectly good. But there is no human story attached to his name. That does not make him less talented. It makes letting him go less personal. And careers are personal whether HR manuals admit it or not.
This is hardly a new theory for me. When I wrote my HarperCollins bestseller Bulletproof Your Job, long before anybody had heard of Zoom fatigue, hybrid schedules, or COVID, the first of my four strategies for protecting your job was “Be Visible.” The other three were Be Easy, Be Useful, and Be Ready, but Visible came first for a reason. I wrote then that if your boss does not really know who you are, you are easier to fire.
Technology has changed enormously since I wrote the book. Human nature, unfortunately for anyone hiding behind a laptop, has not. Being visible does not mean becoming one of those people who walks around the office carrying a yellow pad and looking worried so everyone assumes something important must be happening. It means your value is visible. Your boss understands what you contribute. Your colleagues trust you. Customers know you. People call you when there is a problem because they know you will fix it. You become connected to the business in ways that cannot be completely summarized by one number on a sales report.
That matters even more after an acquisition. Companies describe acquisitions as bringing together two wonderful organizations, creating exciting synergies, and building a stronger family of brands. Wonderful. Somewhere else in the building, somebody is looking at that wonderful new family and asking why it needs two regional managers, two marketing departments, overlapping salespeople, and six executives calling on the same twenty customers. Acquisitions create duplication, and duplication has an unpleasant habit of creating lists.
Your boss’s comment that “the brand makes the sale, not the rep” is worth hearing, but I would not build an entire career theory around one sentence. Brands matter enormously. Good brands open doors. But great salespeople create relationships, preference, trust, and information that the logo cannot create by itself. If management thinks anyone can inherit your customers, do not waste your time feeling insulted. Prove them wrong.
Which designers answer your call? Which dealer tells you about the project before your competitor hears about it? Which contractor calls you when something goes wrong because they know you will fix it? Which client gives you the first look? That is the difference between having a territory and having relationships. If your entire argument for keeping your job is “Look at my number,” you are leaving an awful lot of your career protection to Excel.
Our own industry gives us the perfect example. BDNY is coming up November 8 and 9 at the Javits Center. Designers, purchasing people, hoteliers, owners, developers, manufacturers, executives, customers, prospects, and competitors will be walking those aisles. So, if you are an important hospitality salesperson working remotely, I have a very simple question: How exactly are you planning to work BDNY remotely? Are you sending your Teams avatar to Javits?
I am certainly not suggesting that an outside salesperson should sit at corporate headquarters five days a week. Frankly, if you are in sales and I find you sitting behind the same desk every afternoon, I may have an entirely different question for you. Salespeople belong where the customers are. Remote from headquarters because you are in Dallas closing a project is one thing. Remote from headquarters, remote from customers, remote from your coworkers, remote from the trade shows, and remote from everybody running the company is something else entirely.
You cannot accidentally run into an old client on Zoom. You cannot be introduced to somebody’s new design director while walking an aisle from your spare bedroom. You do not overhear that a competitor lost its rep, discover that somebody changed companies, or get pulled into dinner with a prospect because somebody saw you standing ten feet away. There is business that happens because you showed up. Anyone who has spent twenty minutes at BDNY, NeoCon, or any other good industry event knows exactly what I mean.
There is also an irony here that I find irresistible. We work in the furniture and interiors industry. We make our living telling corporate America that workplaces matter. We sell collaboration, culture, mentoring, connection, and spontaneous interaction. Manufacturers spend fortunes creating products, showrooms, and offices specifically designed to bring human beings together. Then somebody selling all of that tells their own employer, “Personally, I see no particular value in being there.” Really? If the workplace is irrelevant, then the sales presentation is meaningless.
Now let us get to LinkedIn because I know exactly what you are describing. I love LinkedIn. I use it constantly and think it is an extraordinary business tool. But I have also watched what happens when a company gets acquired or rumors of layoffs start circulating. Some people’s LinkedIn pages suddenly turn into the Home Shopping Network—and the product they are selling is themselves.
Here I am at the airport! Here I am with a designer! Here I am at the showroom! Here is my coffee with an amazing industry partner! Here I am at a wonderful event with wonderful people having wonderful conversations about the wonderful future of our wonderful industry! I am waiting for somebody to post, “Thrilled to announce that I answered three emails before breakfast.”
Professional visibility is good. I just told you to be visible. But LinkedIn should amplify the work you actually do; it should not impersonate it. If you have always been active online, terrific. If your company gets acquired on Monday and by Wednesday your LinkedIn suddenly looks like a 24-hour telethon celebrating your professional relevance, do not assume nobody notices the timing. At some point, personal branding can start looking like a digital alibi: See? I was working Tuesday. Here is a picture.
So, forget performative visibility and concentrate on the kind that actually protects a career. Solve something. Sell something. Help somebody. Know your customers. Know your coworkers. Make your boss’s life easier. Become the person who gets called when something goes wrong because everybody knows you will figure it out.
If you work remotely, you may simply have to be more deliberate about creating those relationships because you are missing many of the unplanned interactions that happen naturally when people are physically in the same place. Bosses have some responsibility here, too. I would never tell a manager, “Fire your remote people first.” That would be lazy management. But I would tell every manager to know which employees genuinely influence customers, colleagues, and results rather than assuming a good-looking activity report tells the whole story.
And if two jobs become one after an acquisition, I would be surprised if relationships and visibility did not enter the decision along with performance. Managers are human, too.
Going into 2027, I would stop obsessing over the argument about office versus home. The more important career distinction is visible versus invisible. You can work hybrid and be enormously visible to the business. You can come into an office five days a week and somehow remain invisible. Physical attendance alone is not job security. Sitting at a desk accomplishing nothing is not visibility; it is furniture testing.
If your company expects you in four days, go in four days. If you legitimately work hybrid, use the flexibility intelligently and show up when showing up matters. If you were hired remotely, I am not suggesting you sell your house and move next door to headquarters. I am telling you to get on the plane for the important meeting, be at the sales conference, spend real time with your boss when you can, attend the industry events that matter, and make sure your customers know you as something more than the person who occasionally appears on their computer.
And if you are in sales, get in front of people. You do not have to be everywhere, but you had better be somewhere.
The dangerous career assumption is that quietly doing your job will always be enough. It may be enough while business is good, nobody is changing the organization chart, and your company still needs every person it has. The real test comes after an acquisition, when revenue gets soft, when new management arrives, or when somebody gets told to take ten percent out of payroll. That is when you find out whether you were simply doing a job or whether you had made yourself part of the business.
You want your name to come up in that conference room and have somebody immediately say, “No. Not that person. We need them.” Because when the list finally must get shorter, the easiest employee to cut may be the one your boss never sees.
Stephen
Have a workplace, career, hiring, compensation, or interiors-industry question you want Stephen to answer? Send it tostephen@viscusigroup.com and put ASK STEPHEN in the subject line. Questions selected for publication may appear in a future ASK STEPHEN column, with identifyingdetails withheld or changed when appropriate.
Stephen Viscusi is the founder and CEO of The Viscusi Group, an executive search firm specializing in the interior furnishings industry.He is the author of the HarperCollins bestseller Bulletproof Your Job and the bestselling book On the Job, with his books published internationally. Stephen has appeared nationally as a workplace and career expert on Good Morning America, CBS News, CNN, FoxNews, NPR, Inside Edition and NBC/Universal’s Steve Harvey. Hires made through The Viscusi Group are backed by a one-year free replacement guarantee.
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