A little over 2 months ago, my boss made a strange request. A big project that I had been trying to convince him needed to be done for over a year, was finally ready to begin, but with one strange caveat - I had only 30 days to complete it. The project was to replace a piece of our software that had originally taken 2 developers 6 months to build, and while I was sure it wouldn’t take me another 6 months for the new version, 30 days was just ridiculous. Nevertheless, I jumped in, determined to at least make enough progress in 30 days to be able to show off the benefits and prove that it was worth spending the time to complete the project. I cancelled my planned vacation, and dug in for lots of unpaid overtime, working every weekend and staying late every night.
Then came the original due date, and surprise, surprise! The reason the due date was so ridiculous was because I was a dead man walking. Yet another round of layoffs was on the schedule, and this time the bullseye was on my back. My team was being cut down to only 1 person, and the decision didn’t come down to talent, experience with the product, history of quality deliveries, or seniority- it came down to politics, and I was to be replaced by a developer from a company we had acquired that had not yet even worked on our software yet.
Sounds like a sad story, eh? Hardly. A month later, I can barely stop myself from giggling out loud. After spending a few weeks training my replacement at the old job, I took the time to take that missed vacation, and had a blast. Tomorrow I start my new job, and I’m excited about it. Not only will the new job be a more than 20% increase in my salary, with a nice $5,000 signing bonus to sweeten the pot, but I’m really looking forward to working with the folks at the new company. The interview was actually fun - more like a couple of geeks sitting around discussing the latest technology than an actual interview.
But the real kicker was the phone call I got today from an employee at the previous company, filling me in on the latest swing of the karma hammer. My replacement at the old company has been deported, leaving nobody on the team that I had left. I’d feel bad for my old company, getting left high and dry like that, if they didn’t completely deserve it for the way they had taken advantage of me then given me the boot.
Man, karma sure can be sweet. 