The decision also clarified something that had been a feeling and became a conviction: I was going to apply to positions where the role and the salary and the scope matched what I had actually been doing for eighteen years. I was not going to take a lesser arrangement as a starting point and then work my way up to the right one. I had spent eighteen years working my way up in a place that did not have a mechanism for arriving.
I was starting from an accurate number.
What Happened at the Alder Review
The Alder Home Supply Q4 quarterly review took place in late October. I know this not because I was there — I was not — but because Diane Keller called me in early November.
I had not spoken with Diane since I left the company. I had not reached out to her, because reaching out would have required me to navigate a set of questions about what I could appropriately say, and I was cautious about navigating those questions alone without knowing exactly where I stood. The cleanest path was to be reached out to, and to be careful about what I said when reached.
Her number was stored in my personal phone from seven years of professional calls. I answered on the second ring.
She said she had a few minutes and asked if I did. I said I did.
She said she’d been thinking about reaching out for a few weeks and had decided it was appropriate to do so directly.