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 | | From: | Jack Hamilton | | Subject: | And so farewell... | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:20:05 -0800 |
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 | To my job of 10-1/2 years. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, my
company is being acquired by another company, and there was talk of
"synergy", which means layoffs. I found out Friday that I am one of
those whose services will no longer be required, and my last day is the
28th (one week's notice, I suppose, because two weeks' notice would have
given me an extra month of medical coverage [1]).
I think their decision is ill-advised (of course) because they need
people who do what I do, and I happen to be good at it [2]. But that's
not my problem anymore.
At least they are giving me severance pay, so I don't have to find a job
by next week or be out on the street. I feel sorry for the relatively
unskilled guy in the next cube who just got married and bought a house
and is getting 3 weeks' pay, or for the woman I work with who recently
turned 64. More layoffs are scheduled to be announced next week.
I know that some of you have been through this? Besides getting plenty
of sleep (which I got none of the first night), what should I do?
Taking a week or so off and doing nothing at all - or just the minimum
required to collect unemployment insurance - seems like a good idea.
What else? If they're offering outplacement services or counseling or
anything like that they haven't mentioned it, but some headhunters have
been recommended, and I'm starting to exercise whatever professional
network I have.
One interesting question is whether to stay in Sacramento if that means
a major salary reduction, which it might. Sacramento is getting larger
and more crowded and the traffic is getting worse, so it might be time
to sell my house at an outrageous price and move on to less expensive
surroundings. But there's the problem of what to do about the
Boyfriend. I don't want to give him up, and in some ways he's more
specialized than I am (any of you familiar with a medical billing
package called Signature?).
I guess I need to work on my resume.
[1] Are those apostrophes in the right place?
[2] I'm primary a SAS programmer, but also use Excel and Access. I've
written lots of web pages and Javascript, written shell scripts,
whatever it takes to get the job done. I think that what I do is now
called Decision Support, but it's basically whatever needs to happen to
support my coworkers, from explaining why their programs aren't running
to setting up interactive web-based databases. I'm a generalist,
specializing in a particular software package.
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| | From: | JTEM | | Subject: | Re: And so farewell... | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 01:46:05 -0500 |
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"Jack Hamilton" wrote
> I think their decision is ill-advised (of course) because
> they need people who do what I do, and I happen to be
> good at it [2]. But that's not my problem anymore.
One of the cherished aspects of the Bush economic
miracle is the fact that many long-time employees
are having difficulty finding similarly paying jobs.
The old rules were that you liad off the experienced
people -- the ones who got a lot of annual increases --
and hire new people at a significantly lower starting
wage. Under the Bush rules though, they will very
likely be able to find an equally experienced
person who's willing to work for less.
Sometimes that means shipping the job overseas,
but companies have grown accustomed to having
to make such sacrifices....
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