So yesterday I saw that Virgo career forecast post pop up on my feed. Honestly rolled my eyes at first – horoscopes aren’t really my thing. But something about that “do this now to advance faster” line stuck in my head when my boss suddenly called an all-hands meeting that afternoon.
When Stuff Hit The Fan
Whole team got told our project was getting axed. Just like that. Felt like getting punched in the gut. Manager mumbled something about “strategic shifts” while avoiding eye contact. Walked back to my desk with that heavy sinking feeling. Two colleagues were already packing their monitors. Shit just got real.
What I Actually Did Next
- Panicked quietly for 15 minutes straight. Chugged cold coffee while staring at LinkedIn jobs section. Saw 500+ applicants for every decent opening. Awesome.
- Dug out last year’s performance review. Remembered my lead said I “lacked visibility in cross-department initiatives” back in March. That stung but clicked now.
- Slid into engineering team’s Slack channel. Sent the most awkward message: “Hey uh… anyone need help with side projects? Free after 4pm“. Fingers hovering over delete button.
The Embarrassing Breakthrough
Got 7 “seen” receipts and total silence for two hours. Was sweating buckets. Then Maria from DevOps replied “Actually… could use manual QA on Jenkins pipeline? Nobody wants to touch it lol.” Spent that night Googling basic commands and breaking her test environment twice. Fessed up immediately when it crashed. Surprisingly she sent “Tysm for admitting it! Most ppl ghost me after breaking things 😂 Let’s screen share tomorrow?“
Where This Got Me
Two weeks of daily 4pm crash courses later:
- Accidentally volunteered to document her nightmare legacy system
- Got looped into migration meeting with directors
- Raised hand about redundant processes nobody questioned
Yesterday? Maria’s manager offered me interim role in infra team. Salary bump? Nah. But visibility? Massive. Funny how crisis mode forces that “advance faster” crap to actually work.
Still think horoscopes are silly though. But if Virgos need career moves this November? Get ready to embarrass yourself publicly. Repeatedly. Turns out that’s the actual “secret sauce”.
