Something big, yet not surprising, happened today... and everyone seemed surprised at how well I dealt with it.

The day I got laid... off

Yeah, I got laid off from About. While not having a full-time job with benefits kind of sucks, I took the news well and have been looking at the bright side of things ever since.

The weird thing is how not-surprising it was. I'm not saying that because I was slacking off and was just waiting for someone to show me to the door. I was working my ass off - and they knew it. Apparently, a decision was made in New York to eliminate the project I was working on and my engineering position as part of a re-organization. It really didn't have anything to do with my performance.

This morning, one of my coworkers told me he had gotten a raise (he's been there for a while) and said he was told some big changes were in the pipe. I kind of joked that they were going to let me go. He protested and said they would never do that. This got me thinking about how my project had been indefinitely suspended and how Dan was scrounging up odd jobs for me to do. Shortly after this, I walked into the restroom and Rich (the general manager) and Mark (VP, operations) were in there. I immediately felt the temperature of the room go down 10 degrees. It wasn't comfortable at all.

Shortly after that, Dan (my manager) asked me to step into a meeting with he and Rich and they told me. I told them I was cool with it and that I understood why they were doing it. They said they would be interested in having me back as an employee if an engineering position opened up in the future. I'm cool with that too.

I told a few of my coworkers the news. I watched as their faces went white and their jaws hit the floor. Then they couldn't believe how upbeat I was about it. I guess I'm just comfortable knowing it wasn't anything I did. Heh heh.

I sent some e-mail around to people at work and then loaded my stuff into my car and left. I went to my parents' house and loaded most of my stuff in the car there. It's amazing to me how much stuff you can put in a Mazda Protegé.

Christine, of course, was freaked by the news, but I think she's taking it okay.

It's still too early to say what I plan to do now. Iodynamics can give me a lot of work for the short-term. It's hard to say whether that will be a long-term thing or not.

As for About, there is always the possibility they might need me for some contract work and I'm cool with that. I'd love to go back. As I said in the e-mail I sent out, I was worried when I took the job that I wouldn't work very well in a team environment because I've always been kind of a one-man show-kind of guy. But it worked out really well. I think the best thing about the development environment at About is the relative lack of egos. That's one thing that really got in the way when I was at Sorenson and led me to formulate my theories about “political bullshit” — that it happens in a workplace when people don't know what they're doing or talking about.

That's clearly not the case at About. Everyone I worked with was competent and knew what they were doing. It was a pure joy to work with people like that.

Alright, that's enough of that.