A not so great First

Two weeks ago, October 6, 2010, I was laid off, without warning, 2 weeks prior to my one year anniversary. The company had experienced some q3 shortfalls due to revenue not coming in as fast as expected.  In order to get in front of those shortfalls, they decided to (a) focus on their core competencies, and (b) let go of 24 people, myself included.

I had always considered myself somewhat blessed to have avoided being laid off so far in my career. In the Bubble Bust version 1.0, circa 2000, I saw plenty of really good, solid people handed their walking papers. I always wondered why I was kept on and they were let go. One time, I remember seeing a really talented, really nice developer who everyone loved to work with walk out the door with his cardboard box of belongings. I asked my manager why the company would let someone so talented and so easy to work with go, and he simply said "he was in the wrong place at the wrong time". Kind of like the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan on Omaha Beach.Not that my misfortune is anywhere close to what those guys experienced. Watching that movie made my balls crawl up near my heart. I have no idea how those men actually got through that.

Well, October 6 was my "wrong place, wrong time" moment, and I did not see it coming. At all. When Darren called me into the conference room, I thought we were going to talk about some work that came up. Even though he had a manila folder in his hand, I had _no_clue_. Part of why I had no clue is that the company didnt send out any warning signals. The other reason I had no clue was that I had been kicking ass for the past year, and I thought that repeatedly delivering quality features within tight deadlines while increasing test coverage and putting good software design procedures in place insulated me from getting laid off.

Not so in 2010. It was made clear to me that my layoff was not at all related to my performance, but that these were tough times and tough decisions needed to be made. And while numerous people from within the company, from Seattle and San Francisco, reached out to me to let me know they were as confused and disturbed as I was about the fact that I was let go, the fact is that I was let go.

I'm not sure if it was a combination of age, high salary, or both, but there are obviously metrics that I did not and will never fully understand that made this an easy decision for someone. And I was not the only good person let go. They laid off the Director of Operations. While she was on vacation. And she basically held that place together until she built up a team of 4 people to do the job she had done singlehandedly. They laid off one of the best TPMs I have ever worked with. He was one of the few people who had the bandwidth to walk a feature from customer facing requirement all the way down to technical specification and back. And those are just the people I know about. Because prior to this massive layoff, the company had been hiring so much that every time I visited the mothership in San Francisco, I would walk past desks and desks of people I didnt know.

I do know that I'll really miss the guys I worked with on a daily basis. Darren, Arun, and John were great, and taught me a lot about how to code, how to approach problems, how to approach life, etc. Brad and Zi were a blast to have around, Brad was the life of the party and Zi was and is literally larger than life, I'll miss his friendly middle finger salutes. Holli took such good care of us that I'm seriously going to pieces now that I don't have my fresh cut fruit and coffee every morning. We had a blast, always giving each other a ton  of shit, and getting a lot of really solid work done. I've never been a part of a better team, and I'm going to be heartsick for a while when I think of those guys. Good thing they're local, because we're meeting up for drinks and the abuse will flow just like the alcohol.

Anyways, that was then, this is now. Since then I've been working every recruiter that has reached out to me over the past year. There is a lot of hiring going on. I'm tracking my current progress on a spreadsheet, there are at least 12 opportunities in play. It turns out that trying to get a job is much harder than actually doing a job! On the plus side, I've been paying more attention to my professional blog and some of the side projects that I blog about. And having the time to actually study has made a huge difference in my confidence wrt the dreaded whiteboard reviews.

Training has, of course, taken somewhat of a backseat to interviewing/interview prepping. I'm actually managing to get in some midday rides, which is an unexpected treat. The days are nice and crisp, and fall riding has always been a favorite activity of mine that I have always been too employed to indulge in. Since I'm not indulging in the plethora of treats that Holli managed to line the kitchen with, I'm not packing on the usual pre thanksgiving weight. And being around the house more means that I feel a lot tighter with Lopa and the kids. So there is a lot of silver lining in this particular cloud.

I'll  update this blog with various vents from interviews. I think I'm going to either do that on password protected entries, or change the names to protect my ass. Because there have already been some memorable moments with well known companies that have scarred me for life :)

More later (and hopefully some training data as well!)