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How Were You Fired?
IanBevan asks: "A couple of years ago, the company I was working for was taken over by a larger competitor. I was told, right up until the last minute, that my development job was safe. Shortly thereafter, our illustrious team leader issued a new project plan, and I discovered that all my tasks were suddenly due to finish in about one week's time. Not being a great believer in coincidence, I asked my boss if there was 'anything he would like to tell me'. Of course, there was. Looking back this seems quite amusing now, but it could certainly have been better handled by the PHBs. I was just wondering, how have other Slashdot readers discovered that they have become 'surplus to requirements'?"
Not quite the same, but my response was this:
My boss came to my desk and said he had to talk to me. So, I followed and in there was his boos also. I figured I was about to get laid off, since there had already been two rounds of layoffs before. So, pretty much I said when I sat down, "I'm getting laid off, right?" They nod, "We hope to have work again within a month though." I say, "Sounds good, I hope to be employed elseware within a month." The say that the layoff goes into effect at the end of the week, which it was a tuesday. I head back to my desk, call my wife. I then tell my boss I am taking vacation for the rest of the week.
Hind sight says not to take vacation for the rest of the week as it might influence their references quality, but I was still working within about a month and half. So all wasn't too bad.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
I worked for a local cable company while I was in college, as a traffic manager (collected and forwarded billing) and playback engineer. I was the only part-time employee -- everyone else was full-time. Our main purpose in life was to produce local-origination cable programming and serve as crew members when third parties rented TV studio space.
One random day, during the first day of a TV shoot for our primary third party client, several members of our "parent" cable station (a facility several towns away) showed up unannounced to work on the production. When asked why they were there (by the office PHB, who was as clueless as the rest of us) they said it was "to train as backups" when we were shortstaffed. Rumors started flying, and we "trained" them, which is a lot different than actual training.
The VERY NEXT DAY, the same people showed up for day two of the TV shoot, with the parent office's PHB in tow. The visiting PHB immediately called each person into our PHB's office one by one to fire them, as the "trainees" from the day before kicked us out of the studio and took over the third party production.
After everyone (including our PHB) had been fired except for myself and one full time employee, I was told I could keep my job if I was willing to commute several towns away for a one-hour "team meeting" every afternoon before driving back to my job in the regular facility -- an impossibility given my college schedule and the deteriorating condition of my car. I not-so-respectfully declined. The one remaining full-time person was told he was being kept on, at which point he quit (also not-so-repectfully). We all left the building en masse, and started helping each other look for jobs.
The end result: we all found placement elsewhere very quickly, the lucrative third party 2nd day shoot was a disaster, and the client never rented the space again -- in fact, they immediately shifted their business to a facility that one of the fired full-timers went to after the disaster. With the satellite office's primary source of revenue gone, the office was more or less shut down...which was probably the point in the first place.
Showed up to work and didn't get paid. CEO didn't come in that day and nobody could tell me when/if we would be getting our money. Turned out that no, we never did get our money. Fucker called us in a few weeks later and asked us to continue working for free. Meanwhile he got his daughter a modeling agent, cell phone, various invitations to hoity-toity parties... a real class act.
Read my old journal entries for how this nearly ruined my life, yay!
rooooar
Long backstory deleted, but the new PHB hired a consultant to come in and help me rewire the network (about 3 dozen Netware 3.x terminals with a big wad of spagetti in the breakroom...). We were there 'til 11:pm or later getting the job done, and decided to go home and I'd do the documentation the next day. Next morning, I'm about to start typing it up, and I get The Call...
I pointed out that all of last night's work will be pointless if it's not documented so you might want to let me at least finish my current task, but they refused to let me touch a computer after that - they offered to let me write it on paper, though... I heard that months later they were still employing that same consultant (who made about 4 times what I, as an entry-level guy, was pulling down!).
A week later I found a job at 50% more pay - and this was 1995, well pre-boom. (not quite a happy ending as I've been underemployed for 2-3 years now, but...)
Perfectly Normal Industries
I was on vacation for 3 weeks in Australia for 'paid' vacation. The day that I returned to work we showed up at the door which was guarded by local police and some other security guards. They took people in one by one to goto their desks to pack everything and leave. People got pissed and ran in and destroyed the place, stole computers, trashed a plasma screen tv, and sole company cars and the RV. Some of the cars were scattered all over town on the side of the road looking like they were used in a bank robery gone wrong.
Everyone lost 2-4 weeks of pay along with many investors losing the 24 million dollars that were spend in 13 months. The CEO Wayne Irving II was seen a few months later running garage sales. The second man in charge, son of maytag founder millionaire (also somehow an investor) left town that week.
Early on in this process my boss had told me that I was one of the key people of the team and when I was gone, there would be no more team.
From November on, we knew the rest of us were dead and the question was just when. Couple days before Christmas I was called (on vacation) by boss and HR lady to tell me that I had 3 months of transition work to do, and then March 31 I'd be gone along with a few other people. The rest of the team (hardware and ops) would be gone in June.
The funny part was how my boss and HR lady were so apologetic because they preferred to give such news in person. Meanwhile I was laughing telling them "So I'm getting 3 months notice that the rest of the team didnt get? And you feel guilty about that? I should be thanking you."
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I've never been fired. I'm more of a "quit in disgust" kind of guy. I did have an experience straight out of the movie Office Space (but preceding the movie by several years).
I had a job where I really didn't get along with my boss, and I really didn't like the way the organization was run. I'd said so multiple times, sometimes very loudly and publicly.
Then one day, the re-org hit the fan. We were told that we'd have to re-interview for our own jobs. I knew which way it was going to go, so I decided to have fun. I blew into the interview, and was brutally honest about everything. My interviewer was shell-shocked by the time I was done.
Short form: I was one of the only people in my group to keep my job. The carnage was bad: maybe 90% of my coworkers and even most of the managers were canned. It turned out that one of the people in charge of the re-org really liked me because I was the only one with enough of a spine to talk honestly about the problems in the organization. Everyone else just kissed ass and pretended that everything was okay.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
The first one hurt the most. It got easier over time, possibly because the jobs got less... fulfilling over time. I may have my problems with the first company, but they sure handled the layoffs well. Good severance package, not having the security goons to escort us out the door immediately, having a chance to talk to co-workers before disappearing. A class act, and well appreciated, even if I am still a little bitter about the whole thing.
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
So my Dad has to fire about 10-15 people - friends of his, etc.
End of the day, the PHB asks how it went, finds out everyone has been fired, and then FIRES my Dad, after making HIM fire everyone. What a cowardly prick the PHB was.
..........FULL STOP.
On a Tuesday morning, early in the month, after being at work a half hour or so, I got email calling all employees to a 10AM meeting in the only room big enough to hold us all (~300 probably).
The CEO seemed genuinely aggrieved at having to lay many of us (40%) off, reassured us that even then, at the peak of the dot-com bust, we would be getting 8 weeks of salary as severance, and our health coverage was paid through the end of the month. He asked us to return to our desks, where we would begin having one-on-one meetings with our immediate supervisors to learn the details of our layoffs, or new job responsibilities.
As I returned to my desk, I was considering all the projects I would need to wrap up and hand off if I were among those laid off, but when I got back, my computer no longer had access to the network.
I picked up my phone to call IS, but it, too, was disconnected.
It was by then obvious what was about to happen, and I had a pleasant enough conversation with my boss when my turn came. Turned out he had also been let go, and we discussed people we knew at other companies that might have use for me or him.
1) Early in the day, early in the week. Time to head home and immediately get started on the job hunt.
2) Early in the month, so I didn't have to worry about COBRA for a few weeks.
3) Real severance package.
I'm not sure what they could have done better, other than not laying us off in the first place.
Chris Owens
San Carlos, CA
This story showed up at a very appropriate time, as I was let go only a couple weeks ago.
I showed up to work slightly later than usual. Everything seemed normal until I tried to log in to one of my accounts, which wasn't working. This was immediately suspicious as everyone else's accounts were fine. Still, I went ahead and worked on my e-mail for a bit to see if things cleared up. About 10 minutes later my manager pops by my cube saying he needed to meet with me in his office. I asked him to let me just finish this one e-mail and I'd stop by. He looked obviously concerned. I finished the mail and noticed that my mail checks had started failing as well, meaning another account had been turned off. There was little doubt what was waiting on me in his office...
I got in there and he along with a person who just screamed "HR" by looking at her were waiting. As I sat down he pulled out a piece of paper and read a prepared statement. "Due to a restructuring of resources... blah, blah... you no longer have a position..." He then left the office as fast as he could to leave the HR person to explain my severance.
Once that was over they assigned me a shadow while I cleared out my desk and left. Apparently they also scheduled a meeting to distract the folks on my team while I was packing. (I suppose that's for the best... I doubt I would have liked to have one of them walk up and ask why I was packing.)
One thing I found humerous when I got home was a message on my machine... as I said before, I got in to work a bit late. Just before I got there my manager had called my house. "David, I have an urgent matter to discuss with you. Please call..." I'm almost surprised he didn't just say it on there, since the tone of his voice gave everything away...
It's amazing how quickly stuff like this can happen... you go in to work business as usual and suddenly you are out the door.
I worked for Barnesandnoble.com doing QA work. On sunday night at 9:30pm, I get a call from my rep at the temp agency (I had a perm position with BN.com). He tells me that BN is letting me go. I didn't have time to get a copy of the sunday paper to look at the classifieds because all the places were closed.
About 2 months later I get a job offer from IBM.com through a new agency, which I take. That week, I get a call from the rep from the previous agency askinng me to take a job with him at some company, and he would offer me more money than what IBM was offering. I told him no.
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Someone who worked with me at another dot com was asked to have a meeting with management around 3pm. They told her they had to let her go, immediately, but he's a two week serveance package. She then told them she had a new job lined up already that starts monday.
I was glad it worked out for her in that case because management was a bunch of dumb fudges which is fodder for a whole nother post.
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When I worked at IBM, during my first few weeks there, we had a small group of html monkeys, including myself there working on their redesign. One person wasn't doing well, and she was let go. Unforunately she wasn't told she was let go until she showed up monday morning to find someone in her seat. I knew as of that friday (3 days prior) she was being let go (because the project manager was cool with me and was a big mouth). Neighter him nor the temp agency had the respect to call her and tell her prior to monday.
She called the agency and had it verified. They asked her "what are you doing there, you don't work there anymore". Mind you the agency was sued by IBM later on due to their business practices.
We all knew it was coming. The company was switching lanes more than a lexus in rush hour traffic. The bill collectors were calling constantly, they repo'd the cubicles.
Then one day around noon the boss called an all hands meeting and broke the news to everyone simultaneously. The entire company was being laid-off. He had out final paychecks in a stack of envelopes and handed them out. He then gave his secretary some money and took orders for what we wanted. She came back with beer soda chips and stuff and we sat around playing cards, ping-pong and generally having a good time.
We were a start-up, we were all friends, no hard feelings. It was just the way things were. Don't make the VC, push for profitibility. If you can't maintain the cashflow we all go home.
I was laid off, but since my boss really liked me (and opposed the layoff), I got a month's warning.
So my coworkers took me out to lunch to cheer me up, wish me well, and offer advice, tell me it would all work out for the best, etc.
When we came back from lunch, all of them were called in to HR, laid off, and told to clear out IMMEDIATELY.
So beginning that afternoon, and for the next month, it was just me and their empty desks.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
I was fired in a good way, if such a thing is possible.
It was not really a surprise. I could see it coming. Others had been fired before me, as the company slowly nibbled away at us. I was one of the last non-Indian people in the department. I'm not being racist here: in fact, it was an Indian who helped me to get this job in the first place! I'm not blaming the Indians at all for this, and in fact, two of my best leads for finding another job are through Indian managers or owners. There's no denying the simple economic difference in wages between India and the USA, though.
They did a really cool thing for some H1-B Indians who would also be affected by the layoff, though: in lieu of being laid off, the company gave them the option of returning to India for a guaranteed job at the company's Indian office, paying local India wages (much less than USA wages, even for H1-B's). Many Indians took this option, including my boss. The layoff was across-the-board, affecting Indians as well as USA citizens, but USA citizens bore the brunt of the layoff. I believe that the company was preparing to transfer the entire office to India eventually, so they were taking steps in this direction, and it would have been only a matter of time.
My boss simply called me into his office, shut the door, and that was that. It was not a surprise to me, because I could see it coming for several weeks. On the same day I was fired, about 20% of the company was also fired! This is a company that had about 1000 workers at the time, so it wasn't a small layoff by any means. There was extra security around, but no harassment. They had brought in lots of cardboard boxes for packing. I was able to back up all of my personal stuff (bookmarks, etc.) that was on their computers, and burn a CD to take it home with me. In fact, they let us work through the end of the pay period (several more days)!
Because they were kind, I was kind to them in return. I cleanly documented things I was working on at the time, and organized things in such a way that anybody coming in would be immediately able to find what they were looking for (I was in charge of an internal Linux distribution at the time). When it came time to go, I said my goodbyes, gathered as much contact information from my coworkers as possible, left my contact information, gave my card to my boss, and walked out. No unpleasantries at all.
And the best part? The company was later called on the carpet for violating the WARN Act, so they ended up having to give everybody 60 extra days on the payroll! The WARN Act requires 60 days of notice before a large layoff, and since they failed to do this, they had to make up the 60 days. It was wonderful to get a mini-sabbatical of two months of full pay for sitting around at home and resting! Nice.
Now, unfortunately, the savings is beginning to run a bit thin so I'm looking for another job... not much to be found....
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
BTW, I was at home taking care of my sick, disabled wife and infant son.
Nice that they kicked me when I was down.
My most recent layoff experience was pretty obnoxious. I was a senior systems administrator for Global Crossing's Denver office in 2001, when the first round of layoffs were coming.
We all knew which Monday would be "axe day," and I'd even discussed that previous Friday with my manager what steps I should take once the layoffs started. He said I'd get a list, I'd need to deactivate the appropriate accounts, and might be needed to help update the phones and access card lists.
Monday came. I went to work, got started on my usual tasks, and it seemed like a normal day except for the air of dread hanging over everyone since they knew what day it was. Around 2:00pm, my boss came by and said "hey Will, you got a second?" I said "sure," and followed him to is office, expecting to be handed a list of people whose accounts needed to go away. Instead, as we approached his office, I noticed a woman sitting there waiting for us who I'd never seen before, and immediately recognized the classic "two witness firing trap" with my name all over it.
Getting fired or laid off never takes long. It took less than five minutes to explain my severance benefits (which they stopped paying when the company filed for bankruptcy -- the bastards) and to hand in my badge and keys. They'd set up a "career counselling" service that began with a twenty minute meeting right there at the office, which I annoyedly sat through. After that, they handed me a box, and let me collect my own things (under supervision of course). I would later learn that the very instant my boss collected me from my cubicle, another manager raced to it and ripped the power cords for my workstation out of the wall; apparently they were doing that to everybody worried that we'd all installed "dead man's switches" on the boxes or something. Heh.
That Friday, four days after my employment with GX ended, I got a call from one of the survivors asking for help on how to remove my accounts from their systems (I was their only remaining systems administrator for the office servers at t that point). Heh.
Read my stuff.
Why be loyal to any company anymore? There is no reason, financial or otherwise, to be. I hear that it used to be that way. Now everyone is out for the almighty dollar.
At my last company, there were several layoffs. Each one was followed by an email to the entire company along the lines of "So and so is no longer with the company." After a few months of slow and steady layoffs, a lot of people were unhappy, and worried about their jobs.
So what's the owner do? She calls a company meeting and tells everyone that the company doesn't owe anyone anything. If you like your job, you had better work twice as hard as everyone else, and you were expected to come in 6 days a week, plus come in early or stay late (We were all salaried).
All this while they were talking about how bad business is, and we weren't expected to get bonuses again that year. All the while, one of the owners had an $80,000 Shelby Cobra custom built for him (Then brought it to the office to show off) and the other bought a beach house, then would always talk about how rought it was having two houses because the plants kept dying at the beach house.
Last I heard, they had lost their two largest clients, and the others were about ready to leave. Also their subcontractrors they use are all pissed at them and most are talking about dropping their business with the company. Serves 'em right.
Anyways, I was looking for a new job for several months, and was in the final stages of getting hired somewhere else when they laid me off. I was off for a week before I started my new job. I've been here over 6 months, and couldn't be happier.
First all we employees had to gather in the main meeting room. Management told us to reach under our seats. Below about 5 seats were taped slips of paper. Those five people had to perform in this humiliating contest. They had to do something or say something to embarass themselves. The president of the company is sitting there as judge. Whoever has the right to be the most mortified, in his judgement, won the showdown. I lost, but it was close. Had I won, I would have kept my job.
Then he starts calling us, one by one. Each of us goes up. Some were told to go back to their desks. They were the lucky ones. They survived to work another day. The rest of us had to pick up our commerative plates--the ones we got when we started--and hand them to the president. He said, "So-and-so, you're dead to us." Then he throws the plate into the fireplace (the office was an old mansion). Then we had to leave. People were bawling. Women were fainting. It was something I'll never be able to forget.
I don't think anybody can beat that one.
Like many others, mine's not firing but compulsory redundancy, but hey...
This had been going on for a while - shaky dot-bomb, done well for its first year then took on a load of people and started to go down the tubes.
We'd already been through two redundancy waves across all departments (we did tech training and consultancy, with a bit of s/w dev on the side), and so were feeling a bit jittery anyway, when my extremely-non-PHB boss came in and told us basically that the receivers had taken over the company, that it didn't look good, and they were coming in tomorrow to meet with us.
We all looked at each other and thought a loud "Uhuh", and packed up our personal stuff for grabbing that evening.
Next day, receivers come in, disappear straight into the meeting room, and ask for us to come in as a group 20 mins later. Was handled professionally - simply a statement of "we don't have money to keep paying you, so we're making you all redundant. If you could leave before lunch we'd be grateful"
Personally, I think we surpised them - we had been expecting it after all, so this was met with a shrug, and comments of "Fair enough. To the pub, then?".
Best part was the fact that we got compulsory redundancy from the govt, plus pay that we were due that month, so being without a job got me more money that month. Plus we'd already arranged for the whole dev dept to phoenix ourselves into a new company (which is currently going well, thankfully).
The main problem after that was getting the notice pay that we were due - it's been 18 months now and _still_ the paperwork's crawling its way through the system. Ah, well. It'll be nice when it turns up.
I remember it like it was yesterday, er, that is, because it was today.
PHB called me into his office and starts getting down on me for using Hungarian notation in my Java code. One of the guys on team had complained to him about it (that same gimp that always insists on prefixing every java instance variable with a 'this.' suffix). My boss of course, the typical PHB, blows the entire thing way out of preportion starts lecturing me about being culurally sensative (you see, my PHB is ACTUALLY Hungarian). But at this point I still think its about my coding style and hadn't realized that there was any misunderstanding. Figuring since we are wrapping up the Java-based project anyway and will soon be moving to an MFC-specific client-side app I say something to the effect of "Serge, slow down, if you don't like my style I can switch over to reverse polish if Hungarian isn't good enough for you". Well, at this point, he just lost his shit. He starts screaming at me thowing his arms left and right like a George Kostanza 'Koko The Monkey' imitation, screaming in some half-english, half-hungarian mish-mosh. At this point, I notice that people in the office have stopped working and just staring at us (the cubicle space is wide open and his office is against one of the walls with one of those big glass windows.) Then, I notice my buddy Higgins in the back laughing his ass off in the corner behind my boss. At the exact second I see my buddy, I realized my boss's confusion and just totally lost it. I just couldn't help it. I started laughing so hard I was in tears and I had to violently fight the urge to start rolling around the floor in laughter. Needless to say, the 'crazy Hungarian' (one of his many nicknames) was not impressed. He ordered me out of his office, so I just shook my head and laughed it off back to my desk, took an early lunch and didn't come back.
It will be interesting to see what happens tommorow. Worst case scenario, I've got my consulting side-line to hold me over until something better shows up. I also just finished burning a CD with the last dev version that has all sorts of GPL-infringing code. We'll see who has the last laugh in this one, which I guess is me already anyway...
All your base are belong to us!
I was called into the CEO's office. There were four pieces of paper on his desk. One was a check for my last two weeks pay, the second was 2 weeks severance pay, and the third was a letter of recommendation in positive terms. The fourth piece of paper was a contract wherein I would agree to never disclose that he had been embezzling, since that would endanger his negotiations to sell the company and smear his "good name," and that if I ever told anyone, I would be liable for $50k in liquidated damages, as the contract clearly stated. I was told I would only receive the checks if I signed the contract. I refused, I said it was illegal to withhold my previously owed pay. He screamed at me until he was blue in the face. I signed the contract and wrote "signed under diress" underneath the name. Embezzler CEO tore the paper up and threw it in my face. He said he'd blackball me forever unless I signed. He threatened to have his buddies break my legs if I didn't sign. I finally signed, just to get the asshole out of my face. I immediately went back to my desk and found the VP, who wanted me to hand off any work remaining on my CPU, whereupon I found that my hard disk had been formatted by the CEO, presumably to wipe the evidence I had collected of the his embezzling. The VP was positively livid, but he knew the CEO had done it and not me. VP was tasked with watching me clear out my desk, and escorted me off the premises. I drove to the bank and immediately cashed the checks. Then I consulted a lawyer as to whether a contract signed under diress would be valid. The lawyer said I could probably win and have the contract nullified in court, but what would be the point? I'd be free to tell the truth about embezzler CEO, but I'd spend thousands litigating it and there wouldn't be any money in it for me. The best I could win was a wrongful termination suit, and I could get my old job back, oh boy what a prize! The asshole CEO blackballed me anyway, I haven't had a decent job ever since.
Once my replacement was adequately trained I applied for my holidays to begin the following week. On friday afternoon I handed them my resignation and walked out the door (to cries of "you can't do this to us!").
Funnily enough, one of the other employee tried to emulate my technique but did it the wrong way around (hand in resignation, then request holidays for the remaining notifivation period). Strangely they didn't grant her holiday request. :)
Of course I still had to serve them documents explaining what laws they were in breach of when they tried to screw me out of the sick pay/time-in-leiu and the penalties if I had to sic the government on them. Very typical of the scams they played.
Their response to my leaving was to fire half of the remaining staff... I felt bad about that for some time. They also demoted one of their most loyal employees to cover the gap (or at least ensure the directors wouldn't be bothered by customers) and he was so shocked that they would repay him in this way that he quit, taking about half of the companies servers with him (they were his).
Ironically the replacement I trained and I have remained good friends and our kids play together most weeks. He has just resigned from the same company with the difference that they had not let him hire/train a replacement.
Oh and they have just released an enormous update to their software. They are soooo fucked....
I love my current job and the people I work with. They respect me and I respect them. It's amazing what a difference it makes.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
... I refreshed my browser...
... and got this...
Got another job the same day. Aah. dotcomm days, where are ye?
I agree.
I was "let go" a year and a half ago.
I packed my things, and as I was leaving I remembered that half of the RAM in my workstation was mine - I'd installed it after an upgrade at home.
The network admin knew this, as I'd cleared it with him and done the install in his workshop, but he hadn't come in yet.
I mentioned it to my escort and got a noncommital grunt.
I was peeved, but not much, and I let it go.
Good thing, because eight months later I got a call from the same company - they needed someone to take over their core program and my name had come up.
Now I'm back, making twice the money, and because of the wording of our agreement I own every LOC I produce.
That didn't seem like a big deal (to either party) when I took the job, but now I'm rewriting the entire application.
Don't burn bridges when you can bomb cities.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
I was working for a streaming company when we sort of got the feeling it wasn't going to last long. Showing up at work for two weeks with nothing to do doesn't help morale. Anyway I was called into some shabby office and told what was up. I took my envelope with me to my desk where all my things were already packed up. As a parting gesture while the managers and bosses observed me, I played an MP3 from the film Halfbaked where Scarface yells "Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You, your cool...and Fuck You, I'm out!!" It felt a little better. After work we went to a nearby bar to get pissed and the company attorney was there. He had a shit-eating grin and was bragging because as we were all getting fired he got a 10k raise. Fucker.
--Residential Interior Design
This is a story I still feel bad about almost ten years later!
I was working in a small company office, about a dozen tech sales and a husband-and-wife management team, let's call them Bob and Joan. As a regional office, we were doing badly. We all really liked our managers, they tried really hard, but sales were poor partly because of their management and partly because we were just not trained for the task of selling the rather rubbish products anyway. And so we were all talking behind our managers' backs about it, and we schemed a revolt in which we lined up jobs with our local competitor, who actually promised some real training on a good product range.
The day before we were all due to hand in notice and skip the sinking ship, our managers called us into a meeting and started to tell us the office was being closed and we were all being fired by the head office. They were really cut up and they both started to cry, saying they felt they had let us down! Not one of us had the guts to admit we already had something lined up, and we trooped out of that room and rushed off to confirm our new jobs.
Two weeks later I heard that Bob had had a nervous breakdown - he had spent the previous two months stressing over how he could protect "his people" from head office, which was about the same amount of time we'd spent scheming.
I was a manager for a large well known company that got hit ( like everyone else ) by the bursting bubble, and I had to lay off about 1/3 of my staff. The list was given to me, which I suppose is just as well since they were/are all good workers.
On that list was a personal friend that had been working at the University I attended years ago and that I had only recently sucessfully recruited out of his comfortable, safe and stable job. On top of that, his first child was going through a great deal of medical attention because he was born with heart defect that needed several operations to repair ( if it could be repaired at all ).
If you have never been on this end of the stick, I can tell you that it's no fun. I'm no PHB. I went to bat for my staff all of the time. I was a rather well known for picking what seemed to be loosing battles ( however, it turned out that they usually just had longer time horizons ). I was sick to my stomach for weeks and must have lost 10 pounds before it was all over.
At any rate, I broke one of the first rules they told me, which was DO NOT let any of these people know in advance. I called him as soon as I knew he was on the list, and asked him if he thought he could get his old job back. He was stunned, but he understood what I was doing and why.
Turns out he was able to get his old job back, but if I had waited a day or two longer that might not have been the case ( as it was about to be listed ). He was able to keep the signing bonus, and as a Laid Off Employee he was given a very generous severence package ( 6 months pay and vesting as I recall ).
Oh yes, his son came through with flying colors and is now just fine.
Eschew Obfuscation
I apologize for the length, but it must be told like this.
Yeah...
SO after leaving a popular, yet horrific ISP ruled by the followers of L. Ron Hubbard (that story is pretty bad, as well), a friend of mine came to my rescue during my week of unemployment.
He mentioned that him and and another programmer were working on a web-app that would be the holy grail of auto sales...
He was happy there, and he was paid, so I joined. A small company like this was a welcomed change from the corporate lies I had just escaped from. The other programmer turned out to be a good guy -- as with the rest of the staff there... with the exception of the boss / owner.
The man wasn't too intelligent, but thought himself a god. Given his constant drinking, we started to (and still do) refer to him as the Angry Drunken Dwarf. If any of you know of Hank, his might help to give you a picture of what we are dealing with here.
Anyhoo, the man was always tossing acronym's and jargon he had just read in an outdated business/computing magazine, and DEMANDED his product have all of those features that he had no idea what they even meant, and that it be completed in a week. You couldn't argue with the man, either. If he wanted his web-app to be "API compatible", you might as well smile and nod, and tell him it was done yesterday. Arguing with him that something couldn't be done or (gasp!) 'didn't make any sense' was like asking him to yell loudly in your ear using as many offensive remarks about you as he could in the process. Oh, how we hated him..
Throw in his ability to get people to pay down on something they had never seen, then refuse to give them a refund when they get something of *cough* lesser quality (which they refused, and then the dwarf sold to someone else without giving their deposit back), and you had a lot of other people whom hated him.
In fact, this hatred took on a life of its own, into what we could only see as the funniest piece of justice ever served.
So I wake up one morning to my friend and fellow programmer at X company on the phone, telling me not to bother coming in today -- as the Angry Drunken Dwarf informed him that he would no longer be able to pay us.
That evening my friend called me back with an amusing story. It seems that, while he was gathering his things to go home, two hugely muscular men in suits came in, and started talking with (your friend and mine) the Angry Drunken Dwarf. Not to be outdone, the Angry Drunken Dwarf returned fire in his mannger that we had all come to know, with only his beautiful cherry office desk between them.
Suddenly, the men grabbed the Angry Drunken Dwarf by the collar and yanked him over the desk and onto the floor *on the other side*, where the commened beating him.
My friend called the authorities and, fortunately for the Angry Drunken Dwarf, my friend managed to separate them. You have to understand, my friend is a 6 foot 250 pounds of muscle black-belt in juikido jujitsu of 6 years. It wasn't easy for him to get them separated.
So the men leave, and later the cops show when they feel they had waited long enough. It seems those large men were witht he mob -- that's right, THE MOB. The Angry Drunken Dwarf seems to owe them a lot of money. Our account mentioned a figure around 3/4 a million.
So the next day we arrive, received our last paycheck (we received a personal check, which we cashed before he could stop payment -- yes, he would do that), and then he begins to ask us to work for free -- still promising us how much money the software was going to make.
During this speech, a policeman shows up and serves the Angry Drunken Dwarf. The officer cheerily announces (he must've gathered what was going on) "Hey, you're being sued!".
A lot of people began suing the Angry Drunken Dwarf.
A few weeks later, I get an email from EBAY (our software listed on ebay) that the secret service was looking for any info or any person whom had bought f