About Me
or How I Got Here Without Entirely Meaning To
Hi,
I’m Tony Rogers, and I’ve had a varied career for over 40 years. I’d like to say that it was a confident, well-planned journey to the top, but it wasn’t quite like that. It was more like a determined stumble in the right direction. I’ve definitely fallen down my fair share of holes; some I’m sure derailed or slowed my career progress, and some I wasted time kicking myself for being so stupid that I took my eye off the ball and became negative.
I started my working life with a four-year engineering apprenticeship and then, via customer-facing sales and product marketing roles, gradually moved into product management, eventually reaching Senior Director of Product Management in aviation satellite communications.
Today’s work life moves fast. It’s full of shifting priorities, endless emails, unclear expectations and pressure to always be "on". It’s easy to lose confidence or feel like you can’t survive, let alone thrive.
What I have noticed, over time, was a pattern. Not just in my own mistakes, but in the mistakes of talented people around me. Experienced professionals who were quietly nudged out of organisations. Smart people who said one unguarded thing in a Tuesday morning meeting and never quite recovered from it. Good managers who misread a political situation and found themselves on the wrong side of a restructure they never saw coming.
None of these were dramatic failures. They were small, avoidable moments. The kind that nobody puts in management books, because most people are too uncomfortable to admit they walked straight into them.
I call these resignation traps. The accidental, unintentional moves that end careers or force people out of jobs they actually wanted to keep. Not the obvious blunders. The ones that creep up quietly, usually at the worst possible moment.
Where the SAFE Method came from
The SAFE Method did not appear out of thin air. It came about after a rather long and sometimes uncomfortable reflection on my career, including the moments I handled well and the many I didn’t.
What I kept noticing was a pattern. The situations that did the most damage weren't the big ones. They were the small exchanges, handled badly under pressure, that quietly shifted how people saw me. A response that sounded more defensive than I intended. A pushback that landed as refusal. A frustration that leaked into my tone before I'd had a chance to check it.
I started writing down what I wished I'd done instead. Over time, those notes turned into something more structured. A simple four-step method for handling difficult workplace moments without making them worse. Situation. Alternatives. Firm words. Evidence.
You'll find the SAFE Method running through everything on this site. There's a dedicated post that explains it in full if you'd like to start there.
What this site is about
My aim is for Work Survival to be your go-to destination for valuable workplace insights and professional growth advice. Focusing on delivering plain, honest, experience-led advice from someone who had made enough mistakes to know where most of the holes were.
If you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or like you’re constantly falling behind at work, you’re not alone. This blog is for individuals looking to enhance their business skills and succeed in their careers.
Work survival provides you with guidance, insights, and practical tools. Written for managers, team leads, and anyone trying to navigate a workplace that doesn't always play fair by someone who has absolutely no right to call himself a fast learner but got there in the end.
I hope this helps you move from surviving to thriving in the workplace to get the career you want and, along the way, dodge novel ways to resign.
Tony
