happy birthday to us: Susan’s birthday was Friday and mine Saturday (we’re 3 years plus one day apart), my brother Dave’s birthday was Jan 20th and Susan’s brother’s birthday is the 21st, so what this tells me is that people get very randy in the springtime… which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
Birthdays are a good time for reflection, and with Microsoft layoffs this last week, doubly so. We didn’t lose our jobs, but 13 of my teammates did, and in some areas (like Flight Simulator) the entire project was cancelled – 140 jobs… poof… gone. One of my teammates, a younger guy and a talented junior dev, came in very drunk after consuming a 1/2 bottle of tequila and a number of beers, so one of his mates shepherded him home. He seemed somewhat better the next day. As one of the older and presumably more-expensive guys on my team, I was mentally prepared to be part of the layoff but nothing has changed for me.
Some of the farewell emails were sad, and touching. None were bitter, and most expressed pride about the product we worked on. One guy had worked at Microsoft for 14 years and rattled off a list of products he’d shipped. A few H1B visa-based workers seemed desperate to land something quick, so they wouldn’t get shipped back home. Another dev on my team, having moved up here from Southern California a bit over a year ago with his young family, got his walking papers and now has to find another job. Such is the real human cost of a layoff.
Layoffs are very demoralizing for a company, especially because nobody knows when the next shoe will drop. I would have preferred we do a large purge and be done with it, even if my name were on that list. We’d survive… I mean, we as a family would get by. We might lose our house if we both lost our jobs, but really, it’s a house. You can always find another house.
That said, it would be very weird to be unemployed for any length of time. I’ve had a job almost uninterrupted since age 12, and I think the longest I’ve ever been between jobs was no more than a couple of weeks. I’ve never collected unemployment although I have no qualms about ponying in so that others can get by. Since we place so much emphasis here in the States on having a job and earning a living, I imagine it would be very tough on the average American to go without a job for a long period of time.
Maybe because of this Microsoft thing I’ve started noticing more local indicators of economic trouble: more shuttered shops and the like. People aren’t buying, banks aren’t lending and the whole thing is sort of clamming up, like an animal that freezes hoping that a predator won’t notice it. We’re beginning to cut back too, although we’re going to go out of our way to patronize the local businesses within walking distance in the interest of helping them stay afloat through tough times. After all, part of the reason we moved here was so that we could walk to things, and the shops/bars/restaurants are part of that.
So after the roller-coaster of last week, we can exhale, and blow out our birthday candles, and maybe relax a bit. But I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of it yet. Maybe not even close.
