My company has decided to commit suicide

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m being laid off. Now I’m not so important to the company that it can’t survive without me. But it’s the beginning of a trend to lay off additional tech workers. The problem with this brillant plant to save money is that we are (or “were” as the case will soon be) a consulting company. These tech folks bring in revenue by doing projects for other companies. No tech folks means no revenue. It seems a simple enough concept, yep our new owners don’t seem to have grasped it. Sure, sometimes project dry up and you have to lay nonbillable folks off, but we’re not a big company. We don’t have that many folks to begin with and now the company won’t be in a position to do any new consulting work.

And if you do lay folks off, it might be a good fucking idea to know what their role in the company is before you do it. Sure we’re all replaceable, if you know what it is your replacing and you give yourself the time to do the replacing. I’m the Lotus Notes Domino server admin for my company. The new owners never bothered to find that out. They just ran their fingers down the salary list and clicked off a few folks. So now, after I’m gone the servers will be running merrily along until they need maintenance or go down and then… well then the Notes Development group is just SOL I guess. Hiring another server admin will easily cost them more money than I made and even then they’ll have still screwed themselves because I’m a developer too, so I could be billable in addition to my server duties. Good luck finding that combo again and not paying out the ass for it. I’m also the only Notes guy they have with teaching experience. I was suppose to teach a class for a client group next week. Guess that won’t happen either. Great idea, piss off a client that oversees thirty hospitals with potential work for us. And the numbskulls obviously don’t know that I’m the tech admin for the HR Net message board our company runs. So now no one will be around to maintain it. Way to piss off 300 HR folks for a hundred companies or so. HR net is featured in our upcoming company newsletter, I wonder if any thought processes will click in as they read it. Somehow I doubt it.

2

That totally sucks. You wonder if owners like that manage to keep any company afloat. (Many don’t, I guess)

Hopefully soon you’ll become employed someplace where they have their heads OUT of their asses. Lousy break.

Zette

3

You weren’t recently purchased by Navigant/NCI were you?

4

On the bright side, Blackclaw, with your skills you should have no trouble at all finding another job. Heck, if worst comes to worst, I’m sure we’d love to have more Domino admins here at Big Blue.

5

Thanks for the comments folks.

tomndebb,

Nope, I don’t want to name company names involved just yet since I’m still collecting a paycheck, but you probably haven’t heard of them anyway.

Necros,

Guess who my first resume went to? I have a friend working at IBM and he feels I have a good shot at a job there. That’s my first choice.

It looks like I might get a brief reprieve. The former CEO and owner, who unfortunately was forced to sell to these nitwits, is now an executive vice president with the company. He pointed out to our new owners that laying off someone with a current project just results in lost revenue. I’m not sure how he managed to get such an obvious point into their thick skulls. Maybe he wrote it on a piece of paper, wrapped it around an ice pick and drove it into their heads. But it is good to see that my loyalty to the former CEO paid off. It might only give me a two week reprieve depending on how long my current project goes, but that gives me valuable time to look for a new position and prep my coworkers so that they aren’t totally screwed when I leave.

6

Blackclaw, so just change the root password and forget to tell anyone before you leave. evil laugh

7

Usually, one tends to think, “So? What’s one more person?” But after reading the description of everything you do, not only am I impressed, but it sounds like this “company” is really shooting themselves in the foot.

I’m sorry about this. This whole thing is lousy and they will pay for it. They’ll realize too late how valuable you are.

Best of luck to you.