As I was walking to work on Friday, I noticed one my colleagues walking away from work. I stopped him and chatted with him. He didn't have much to say except that he just lost his job.
I was booked to meet at 11:15, but I got a call at about 10:50 to see if I would come meet early. I literally ran to the meeting room (in my nice shirt and shoes) to await my fate. I was a bit short of breath when I finally got to the meeting room. Pat (new boss) was amused that I had run over and was short of breath.
Right off the bat he said that he was happy to offer me a place in the new team. I was very relieved to hear this. After this he told me that many of my teammates would be gone and this will be tough to deal with. He told me that I may experience "survivor syndrome" and I may feel bad that I got a place while others did not. He also told me that he had lots of good feedback for me and ideas for areas that I could grow in. He didn't tell me those yet, he will discuss those with me after the new year.
I went back to my desk after the meeting. There was absolutely no work being done that day. Everyone was either nervous about their upcoming meeting, celebrating, or mourning.
When you work with creative and savvy people, you must keep everything very secret. Desperate people will try to read every little move. For the most part HR kept a tight lid on this whole process, but they had one little slip up and, trust me, we caught this slip up! They booked meetings in Outlook calendar for each and every person. Most of the meetings were 15 minutes long, but some were 30 minutes. The meetings that were 15 minutes were booked with Pat, whereas the meetings that were 30 minutes were booked with someone from HR and another new boss. Sure enough, everyone who had a 30 minute meeting was fucked.
It was a very strange day at work. Several people just left immediately after hearing the news, but most stayed. We tried our best to comfort those who lost their jobs. One of the people who lost their jobs just had his first child 3 days earlier. That was especially tough being a brand new Dad and then immediately losing your job. His wife is unemployed too.
We sat around for the remainder of the day drinking coffee, reminiscing, telling stories, and trying to grasp the entirety of the situation. No work was done. I did feel "survivor syndrome" on Friday (although writing this on Monday, I feel a bit better now).
This is tough to say, but in all fairness, I think the best people were given jobs. The system did do what it was intended to do. Some people could have gone either way, but the people at the very bottom kind of deserved this. There were a few people who do just enough work not to get fired and it takes a recession to legally get rid of those people.
Anyhow, I promised myself that if I got the job, I would go out and by my dream phone. So I left work at about 2pm and headed off the the phone store and bought it. After that, Julie and I headed to a little Italian restaurant that we always go to after major life decisions. I played with my new phone all weekend.
Thanks everyone for the encouraging comments throughout this process.
2 comments:
Hey Ben,
Congrats on making the new team!
Now that you have the HTC
Hero phone you need to look into the BF scheduler. Both of my flatmates have the old htc phone (dream I think) and when they changed their kernel scheduler it made their phones way faster and better on battery life. Android has already adopted this kernel patch for later phones to come out in the new year. Also there's a version where you can have the phone host a wireless network to allow devices to connect and surf using 3g.
See you soon in Carp.
Ben,
Very well (and movingly) said!
Love, Dad
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