I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but I’ve been gone for a few months. First, I had a tough project to get out the door at work, and it took a lot of my time and energy. I’m not a high energy person at the best of times, so I was basically too wiped out to blog.

And then, as a reward for my hard work, my company kicked me to the curb after the project was completed. I was hoping for some comp time, but this was absurd. I was so wrapped up in finding a job, I was, once again, too wiped out to blog. I’m gainfully employed again. I now have the spare energy to blog again, and I have several posts rattling around in my head from my unemployment days , so let’s get started on my Adventure in Unemployment.

This was not a performance based lay-off, they basically nuked anyone and everyone who was unlucky enough to be working on certain project, regardless of seniority (I had 20 years) or ranking (I was #1 in my group). They kept on engineers with lesser abilities, and lesser paychecks. Nothing personal, they said.

Fuck that.

It’s hard for me to describe just what a gut-punch this was. I thought, once I had landed my job at Big Computer Company, that I was set. All I had to do was work hard and be a good little corporate drone, and I would be able to remain a solid citizen of the middle class with a reliable paycheck. I was there for 20 years, doing a series of engineering jobs where I learned a lot and for the most had a good time doing it. Besides, BCC had a reputation as an excellent place to work with good pay and benefits. I was proud to work for BCC, and it became part of my identity.

The last several years BCC had joined the rush to off-shore everything, ended just about every part and celebration and started lay-offs. The company is still quite profitable, but Wall Street always felt we could do better, and the CEO and the board listened. I had not had a decent raise in something like 5 years. By decent, I meant one that kept up with inflation. Working for BCC wasn’t quite the joy it once was, but hey, where was I going to go that was any better? So I stayed on. At least I enjoyed my colleagues in my work group, and my work was fun.

Then they laid off all my friends, which I wrote about in my Raving of A Lay-off Survivor series on this blog. That hurt, I literally was the only human left in my row in CubeLand. It was eerie walking down the aisle to my desk. I started looking for another job, but got distracted by my project. Once the project was over, I told myself, I would jump right in to job hunting. Little did I know….

The tough project went out the door and I was assigned to another project. This project had been under development for 4 years, but the team had been jerked around quite a bit. Requirements were changed more often than underwear, and engineers who left the team were not replaced. After all the churn, they were finally about to go beta. Then, the Executioner showed up and we were all handed our walking papers. 4 years of development, flushed down the toilet.

When one is handed a pink slip, it’s hard to describe the raw terror that flows through your body. You have a mortgage, a son in college, you like to eat.  Now you don’t know where your next paycheck is coming from. You will lose your health care. You don’t know if your daughter can try out for cheer next year since you might not be able to afford the uniform. Your van needs new brakes. What will you do with the dog if you lose the house?

I lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling fan going around and around and around. I finally started turning on the TV in bedroom and falling asleep in front of it so my brain would shutdown enough for me to get some sleep. I obsessively figured and re-figured how long we could hold out on my severance, stocks, and 401(k); and, no matter how hard I tried, it couldn’t make it stretch beyond about 8 months out, would that enough time to find a job in this economy? I cried, a lot. I had my first, and only, panic attack ever.

Yeah, it was personal alright

To be continued....