Well, I'm sitting here at my desk on my last day. As always, it feels to odd to be leaving a place you've spent a number of years working at. I suppose I'd feel better if I was leaving on my own will, but the fact that we just moved buildings and am now in a little cubicle, makes leaving a little less painful. I'm actually a little excited and nervous about the future. I've been fortunate enough to build a number of contacts over the past 8-9 years while doing web development for/with different companies, so I'm hoping some of those contacts will pay off while contracting.
I have many good memories of my time with my soon to be ex-employer, but the last 12-18 months haven't been a cakewalk. It's really gone down hill here, so from that aspect I'm glad to get out of the environment. There's not many people I know left who want to stay—everyone is trying to get out of here as quickly as possible. I've said many times in the past 3 months that Joel (my other co-worker who was kept onboard to help shut down the all the services) that in many regards we were lucky. Unlike most people who get laid off, we had a good amount of time to try to prepare ourselves financially and we at least know what our future holds. The people who are left are all very worried about their jobs. No one feels that their jobs will be around much longer—and unfortunately their probably right. Even before the second round of layoffs, I told people here that our parent organization would slowly dissolve our company into theirs and they'd drop our name all together. We're already starting to see obvious signs of this merger—from them moving their employees to our payroll budget and them combining all of our HR resources to the fact that new literature is starting to show up with their name on it. Reminds me quite a bit of MCI/WorldCom or AOL/TimeWarner (both of which are now dropping part of their names—for obvious reasons.)
Anyway, there are still people who work here that I respect and call friends (and I few whom I am glad I don't have to work with again.) A group of us "old timers" (current and past employees) got together last night to celebrate our new stages in life. The group of us meet occasionally and we're trying to make it a regular event.
I'll leave with a little quote from Bob Dylan:
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
And I think this change is going to be a good one...
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