Dave, Where did you go? AKA: My retirement

So last year, in 2025, I took my retirement. It was very early. I am not done with my career, nor do I have any medical issues that warranted this decision. To be honest, it was an extremely difficult one to make. And I was not completely honest with many people about why I made it.

The reason I provided to so many people was that my wife’s father had passed away, and I needed the time to console her, close out his estate, and help us move into his home. The house where my wife grew up, a very special place for both of us, needed repairs and attention, and I wanted to devote my time to making it our forever home.

Now, while there is a lot of truth in that, it was sadly not the entire story.

Over the past few years, there were changes and additions to the management within my department. Over time it became clear that leadership styles were clashing, and the approach many of us had built our teams around was being quietly phased out by incoming management.

It started when the senior director of our department decided to retire and began grooming another manager to succeed him. I am a strong believer in promoting from within, and while the other manager and I held the same title and level, she had been in the position longer. I was not offended by that decision. What transpired afterward is where my disappointment began.

A deputy director position was created for the person expected to become the new senior director. I was supportive of that transition. Until the day I was informed I would be demoted to a position slightly below my current role. The reason given was that the Board of Directors had decided to eliminate my position, and I would need to return to my previous role and salary. Disappointing, but I was still happy with my job and my opportunity to look for advancement again.

Within days, I was informed by a very reliable source that this explanation was not true. The real reason was that the Board was unwilling to provide additional salary for the deputy director position, and by policy, someone at that level could not manage directors at the same salary. So rather than move the deputy director up, they moved me down to make it work on paper. And to be honest, that is not what upset me most. What upset me was the lack of communication, trust, and basic consideration. I may have actually been fine with the decision if it had been discussed openly and honestly. But brushing it under the rug was, as I can clearly see now, just the beginning of the end.

After the transition was complete and the new senior director was in place, I expected some acknowledgment of how things had unfolded. Were the previous positions reopened? No. Were my duties and responsibilities adjusted to reflect the reduced compensation? No. Was there any open conversation to clear the air and rebuild trust within the management team? No. It was done. The transition was complete. Let’s move on.

But it wasn’t done.

With the senior director position filled, a vacancy now existed in the deputy director role. I asked the new senior director when that hiring process would begin and was told I would be informed. I wasn’t. I only found out after a search had already been launched for someone outside the organization. They brought in someone with no higher education experience, without first considering the two directors already in the department, both with significant time and institutional knowledge.

I can already hear it. “Dave, this just sounds like sour grapes because you were overlooked.” And honestly, there is some truth in that, I can admit it. But it was more than that. What I was watching was a deliberate transition away from a management team that valued leadership, toward a pure top-down management structure.

From that point, communication between the senior and deputy directors and the rest of the department became minimal. Meetings and planning sessions were held privately, and directors were simply handed projects to execute. When those projects did not proceed the way upper management preferred, outside consultants were brought in immediately and department directors were asked to step aside. It was demeaning. Limited direction on what success looked like, limited time to figure it out, and no explanation for why outside resources were being brought in to do work we were capable of doing ourselves.

I was not willing to simply change who I was. I rallied my team to keep thinking creatively, to keep innovating, to maintain a vision of what was possible. We participated in the micromanaged projects as required, but we also continued to advance our own technologies and deploy them efficiently. Of all the teams in the department, mine remained positive, productive, and forward-thinking despite everything happening around us.

But the situation continued to deteriorate. The senior director became heavily involved at the state level and was frequently absent from the department. Rather than loosen her grip, she maintained control through the deputy director, who by this point was clearly more concerned with his own job security than anything else. He became the perfect yes man, driven entirely by his own fears. Department staff, including my team members, grew increasingly anxious about their futures and saw no realistic path for advancement from within.

Morale dropped rapidly, despite every effort to keep the culture positive. It was like a cancer of uncertainty had quietly spread through everything we had built.

I was brought to HR for disciplinary reasons twice in the same year. Both times for defending my team members and putting their interests above management’s preferences. In 25 years at that organization, I had never once been called into an HR meeting. During those meetings the senior director sat on the same side of the table as the HR managers, which made the expected outcome very clear. They would accept either my apology and admission that I was wrong, or my resignation. There was no third option on offer.

Three critical team members were then removed from my team and reassigned to report directly to the deputy director, leaving what remained of my team fragmented and unable to continue the projects we had been building. We were being dismantled, surgically and deliberately, piece by piece. It was clear this was not a battle I was going to win. They had the power, they had made their decision, and becoming what they wanted was simply not something I was willing to do.

So, with my medical insurance on the line if I were terminated, and being fully vested in the state retirement plan shortly after my 55th birthday, I filed for retirement. Greatly disappointed, but careful not to create further problems for my team or myself during the transition, I used the personal circumstances in my life as the reason for my decision. I suppose it was a final act of humility, or perhaps self-preservation, leaving the door open for future opportunities and not burning the bridge entirely.

My retirement party was incredible. So many people attended that I was genuinely humbled and honored. Great leaders from across the organization came to show their support. The senior and deputy directors were in the building that day. They did not attend. And while that was no surprise to me, to their own staff members it spoke volumes. It confirmed what everyone already felt. The climate had changed, and support was no longer something you could expect from above.

In the months following my retirement, things did not improve for my former team members. They were singled out and subjected to a very deliberate removal of the flexibility and respect they had earned over years of hard work. Flexible hours, gone. Remote work, revoked. They were now required on-site from 8am to 5pm every weekday, no exceptions, and closely monitored for the time they spent on breaks.

What made this particularly infuriating was that these changes were not made department wide. They were applied specifically, and almost exclusively, to my former team. This was not a structural change or a shift in organizational policy. This was, in my opinion, a punishment. A clear message that said: your leader is gone now. Get in line.

So yes, you might say “Dave, it still sounds like sour grapes. You seem angry.”

You’re damn right I am.

But here is the thing. This website is not about them. It’s about what I learned over 25 years of trying to do this the right way. It’s about the teams that thrived, the people who grew, and the outcomes that proved the model works. The ending of my career in that organization was not the validation of my leadership. The people who showed up to that retirement party were, the team members who continue to contact me for honest advice on their careers and personal life.

And if any part of this story sounds familiar to you, whether you are the leader being pushed out or the team member watching it happen, then you already understand why this conversation matters. That is exactly why I built this site.