A week ago, everything fell apart for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – the 16th largest bank in the US, and my employer for two and a half year. I was busy planning our team offsite a week ago. Now we are in a whole new reality for all 8500 employees – the threat of permanent extinction.
- I had to cancel the team offsite of course.
- SVB no longer exists and the parent company filed for bankruptcy
- Our office locations are all closed ‘temporarily’ but may actually be permanent. who knows?
- We are now employed by the bridge bank SVBB, Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, with a new CEO and we have been working like mad helping our clients access their money.
- We are faced with 3 options that are from okay to ugly – stay independent as a much smaller bank, get acquired by a big players, or close our doors forever.
Only time can tell what will happen next!
How do I feel?
I cannot begin to describe how this feels. Every day, I wake up with a different set of feelings – shock, numbness, sadness, anger, but also relief and perhaps new excitement. I will explain the last two in a little bit. My most consistent thought is did this really happen? How could this have gone this bad this fast? I have seen a bit of dysfunction at my company but I had no idea a bank valued at $13B in 2022 and “loved” by our clients could be destroyed overnight.
I am sad for especially my colleagues who have spend many years at SVB. My tenure is relatively short compared to theirs. I cannot imagine their pain in watching what they worked so hard for obliterated literally. All of us invested in the SIVB stock via an employee investment program. We got to buy the stock at 15% discount of the lowest price every six months. That seemed like a great deal at the time. Now it’s worth zero dollars.
I am sad also because our clients are hurting. While panic led them to withdraw money all at once last Thursday and Friday, they realized too late that by breaking our bank, they also put themselves in jeopardy. Many are now not able to make payroll on time and are realizing they have fundamentally blew up the innovation economy ecosystem SVB help build with them in the last 40 years without a good alternative plan.
I am angry at our ex-CEO, ex-CFO, PR team, and a handful of VC clients who started the panic. The former set seems to be over their head as we grew so fast in the last 5 years (tripled our deposit during covid years) and the latter didn’t think ahead of the consequences before they recommended to everyone in the innovation economy to pull their money out of our bank. Ugh!
Am I Okay?
I think so. It’s hard to fully answer this question. My thinking is evolving daily. I found myself crying a few times out of the blue but not really due to my personal situation. It’s just a lot to process. My colleagues sent me this GIF that totally made me laugh, as what else can I do but laugh at the extremity of what has happened.
All jokes aside, I think I am in a better position than most of my colleagues. I almost feel guilty about it.
First, financially I am doing okay. I live below my means for all of my adult life, so I have a good cushion for most disasters scenarios. This is why I drive a 12 year old car and we live in a rent-controlled apartment. I am also thankful this event happened the week of our bonus pay and not weeks before. At least all of our bonuses were paid in full. It was only about half of last years’ bonus since the market was not doing well, but I am happy to have a good cashflow for family expenses.
Second, while the timing of this was sudden and bad for most, it wasn’t as bad for me. I was planning to look around after bonus day already. I believe in what I shared before in this blog – everyone should look for a new job every 2 years to see what’s out there. Also, strategically, I don’t agree with where the private bank was headed prior to this disaster. I was also getting quite frustrated at how little I can protect my team nor our clients from the various dysfunction I was seeing. This is why in some way, this overall tragedy also brought me relief. With a complete reset, there is a chance to look at everything anew. There could be net new possibility for both the private bank and for my own career .
Third, another gift out of this disaster is so many friends, ex-colleagues, old classmates, and Linkedin connections reached out to check on me and see if I needed help. I feel super blessed and look forward to reconnecting with them.
What’s Next?
I don’t really know yet what I need for myself. For now, I am prioritizing that last. While SVB was far from perfect, the one thing that was and still is beautiful is so many of us care so deeply for our clients and their well being. So for now, we are 100% focused on helping our clients.
As for me, I am living day to day but also decided that this is my priorities for now in this order.
- Help our clients access their accounts and funds – this is the beautiful essence of SVB. We all rallied as a team to help our clients this week and will do so again next week.
- Help my team and colleagues prepare for the job market – I now have a new purpose to help others prepare for the job market if that comes to pass. Whether we survive this as a company or not, lay offs are inevitable. I want to be there to help many colleagues that I come to care about.
- Plan for my future – I will feel better to do this once the first 2 have progress. I am excited about this. I have no idea what the rest of the year will bring for me, but I am thinking there is only one way to go from here – that is up!
Why did I write this post?
I did it to both share my saga and to tell you that if you ever encountered something like this, you will also be okay. The best thing to prepare for this now are:
- Know your finances and live below your means – this way you always have some months of cushion if there is a sudden disaster like this. My stress level is lower just because I know my family is taken care of regardless of what happens at work.
- Invest time to hone your job search skills, starting with how to write a good resume. These are skills you will always need for your career. Make sure to set aside time to learn this. I have many resources on this in my blog.
- Network often – I am blessed to have a large network that I also worked to maintain. It’s important to do this when you don’t need it so that you can tap into it when you do. I also have a ton of networking tips in this blog.
- Stay calm – build your mental fitness. When you are calm, you can solve and face anything. You will be able to ride any storm if you build your mental fitness muscles now. Just like going to the gym, our mental fitness muscles need constant exercise. This bootcamp can teach you what are the 3 core mental fitness muscle and how to build/grow/use them during challenging situations. I used all 3 mental fitness muscles this week and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. This is not to say I was fully zen. I cracked many times as most of us don’t have strong enough mental fitness muscles to handle so much change in such a short period of time. However, I also recovered quicker than before. It’s a process and a journey. I know I am getting stronger everyday. I look forward to helping others build these mental fitness muscles as well.
Overall, I know many people are suffering already in this “bear” market, not just those impacted by the sudden SVB collapse. To all of you out there, stay strong, know you are not alone, and believe this too shall pass. Best wishes!
Your comments: I hope you are all faring better than those of us impacted by SVB’s demise. I look forward to your questions and comments
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Lei
