Betrayed and Dumped She Rose Stronger Than Ever novel Chapter 365

“What?!” Sonja shot out of bed, completely stunned. “Say that again!”

Shawn pulled the phone away, speaking lazily. “Aiden and his whole team, you know, the ones you called out yesterday, all resigned. And because of your little speech last night, people from other R&D and delivery teams are quitting too. I just had HR run the numbers. Right now, almost sixty percent of our technical staff are thinking about leaving.” He paused a beat. “Dr. Campbell, you really need to come back and deal with this yourself.”

“Hello? Shawn? Shawn?!” The call had already ended. Sonja stared at her phone, then hurled it onto the bed in frustration.

Now what? With most of the development and delivery teams gone, what would happen to the Skyline Capital project? If they couldn’t deliver on time, they wouldn’t get paid. That would delay the company’s IPO. The longer the IPO dragged out, the less chance she’d have to gain control of NovaStack Cloud. And if Bruce found out she was secretly scheming for NovaStack Cloud, she’d be finished.

Sonja ran downstairs, panic rising in her chest. She saw Avery questioning the housekeeper about where Alan had disappeared to so early. But Avery stopped mid-sentence as soon as she saw Sonja’s pale, frantic face.

“Sonja, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Sonja blurted everything out, barely holding back tears. “Mom, what do I do now?” She was shaking. If she’d known things would blow up, she never would have snapped at Aiden last night. But it was too late for regrets, and there was no way she could bring herself to apologize to her staff.

Avery frowned, but pulled Sonja into a hug. “It’s okay. There’s a way out of this. They don’t really want to quit. They’re just trying to scare you. If you back down now, they’ll never respect you.”

Sonja wiped her eyes, trying to steady herself. “You’re right. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Avery nodded. “If they want to leave, let them. We’ll just hire new people. There are plenty of qualified candidates out there. If you’re willing to pay, you can get anyone you want.”

She stared at her in disbelief. Did Sonja really just say that? Fifty engineers, just like that, gone? Sonja was not even going to try to persuade them to stay?

The HR manager swallowed hard and tried again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’ve already had several rounds of people leaving this year. After the last team-building event, over a dozen people quit. Half of our current engineers only joined in the past year. And the ones resigning now are mostly the veterans. They’re the backbone of our company.”

Sonja just looked at her, cold and confused. “So? What exactly are you trying to say?”

The HR manager faltered, then spoke more bluntly. “If all our experienced people leave, the company will be in real trouble. With only newcomers left, how can we guarantee the quality of our products? Who’s going to fix things when problems come up?”

Realizing Sonja still didn’t get it, the HR manager pressed on, her voice rising in urgency. “This industry isn’t like others. It takes months for new hires to get up to speed. If all the veterans walk out, and the new people need three months to ramp up, who’s going to keep things running in the meantime?”