Category: Job Search

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The Work Saga…

Gather ’round my children and you will hear… (Opps wrong mental channel. Click. Click.)

I’ve mentioned the work situation a couple of times, I figured I’d elaborate on it a bit.

Four years ago I joined the Military Industrial Complex. I did this after having diligently avoided Government / DOD entanglements for my entire professional career.

The draft had ended when I came of age. I registered, but never did military service. I didn’t volunteer because I knew I didn’t take orders well and would probably have spent my term of service in a brig somewhere.

Had I chosen a service it would have been the Marines or the Navy.

I went to work for a government contractor.

I was proud of this decision especially in light of 9/11, our ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and that I could have a chance to contribute to the safety of our troops and by extension our country.

I was even dedicated enough that I took a hefty pay cut, figuring that I was embarking on a career with a company that I’d be able to retire from. Biting the bullet in the short term meant an opportunity for some security, a decent pension, and great healthcare. In short, it was a worthwhile tradeoff given my longer term goals.

At my age I’m looking at the whole retirement thing. I don’t want to be eating cat food and pushing a grocery cart.

A lot of the businesses I’ve worked for in the recent past have not only off-shored much if not all of their work. They’ve used off shoring as a threat to engender fear in the remaining employees about loosing their jobs.

At the same time these companies have systematically reduced benefits, and essentially told the employee suck it!

That’s another story for another time. I will say this… I think off-shoring is tantamount to treason and should be punishable.

If you can fling your business across the fucking Pacific Ocean, you can fling that business to the heartland of America and put our out of work Citizens BACK TO WORK.

At the same time we’d  reduce pollution and our dependency on oil by eliminating commuting.

Apparently this simple logic escapes most of the extremely well educated elite who control government and industry. They’d rather see us all driving Priuses which cost as much as my “Luxury”  German Auto and aren’t nearly as nice or fun to drive.

I digress…

So I bit the bullet and I was good with it. I went to work in a slightly different environment than I was used to. I’ve spent a large part of my career testing software, the difference here was the official nature of the testing.

Things move along pretty well during year one. I even managed to take a vacation! Wow been a while since I had the time or the money to do that.

Years 2, 3, & 4 Just as summer begins, we have all hands meetings. In each of these meetings Management starts ringing this layoff bell. Each year the layoff warning bell gets rung a little earlier.

Each year the employees are asked to take vacation time. The managers explain that by doing this we’ll be protecting each others jobs because vacation pay comes out of a different budget.

The first couple of years people did as requested. After all, it was a team effort and in general we all want to protect each other. The last year we were asked if we could take unpaid time to help out. It was during this time that upper management saw fit to hire an intern.

So lets review, Management says our project is having funding issues and people are going to be laid off. They ask employees to take vacation time and unpaid time off, AND THEY HIRE AN INTERN! WTF?

Needless to say we all said NO Fucking way and all of us stopped pissing our vacations away and taking unpaid furlough days.

Strangely, no layoffs happened. But managers did get their bonuses managers always got their bonuses…which seemed odd.

This year, the layoff bell started ringing very early.

As I mentioned in a previous post this year it was for real, in fact the project that I was working on was effectively terminated. With no other projects to move to… So was I.

The signs of impending doom were all around. Most of the time they were written in flashing neon on the walls.

During the tail end of the project, we were asked to choose between furlough (unpaid) and outright layoff. The higher-ups  wanted us to take the furlough because they thought there might be another project waiting in the wings. I took the furlough because I was hoping for that new project and by doing so I would have medical insurance until Oct 1. 
By the time they finally admitted that there was in fact no new project and that we were really being laid off, management had 3 months to plan for the day. They had time to collect all the information that was necessary to process us all out smoothly and efficiently and yet… They were mostly un-prepared.
This was consistent with the way management had behaved for the entire four years I worked for the company.  While I was hoping that at the end they would have at least done us the courtesy of planning the day, I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that no-one had bothered to train the person handling the exit process.
I no longer have any illusions about why we have 200,000.00 toilet seats, or how more expensive airframes that are still on the drawing board are selected for our military over airframes that are in fact ready and have already been test flown. 
Equally I’ve had a glimpse into the workings and mentality of the military industrial complex, and by extension the government.
For those of you wondering why the government is as much of a mess as it is, I suggest that you rent the movies Pentagon Wars it’s a comedy. 
Unfortunately it is far truer than anyone would like to admit. In particular the descriptions of the characters careers at the end of the movie is worth reading.

I once remarked that if what I was seeing at the company was occurring anywhere outside aerospace/defense industry there would have been heads rolling down the halls.

Of course I was told “this is how we do things…”

My retort was “Doesn’t make it right. “

I’ve learned my lesson, If something doesn’t seem right regardless of assurances like “We’ve always done it this way” I should stick to my guns… attempt to change the process or procedure for the better, and failing that… immediately look for a new job.

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A new day, A new chapter…

I relented. I decided that it was worth my while to divest myself of the company systems and close that door.

My desire to not show up to turn in my company equipment was nothing more than me wanting to inconvenience them as much as they have inconvenienced me over the past three months.

I made the 2 hour drive down to the office. I’m actually glad that I did, I got to see a couple of my favorite people one last time to say goodbye and good luck.

Of course the person doing the out-processing was for the most part winging it, and wasn’t entirely sure that the paperwork we were filling out was in fact the “Correct” paperwork.

I must say, I’m not surprised. Through all of this, the HR people have been notably absent and in fact left the final paperwork to a mid level manager who commented that there was no training. In my mind, this is a sad comment on the state of the company, and heralds what is to come.

It probably wont be tomorrow, or next year or even the year after that. But I foresee the company closing or being purchased then gutted for it’s patents or other assets. This assessment is based on my experience with other companies and what they were like as they got old and near their final death throes.

Happily I won’t be working for them as they implode and self destruct.

I received nothing in the way of information about my corporate savings account, 401K, COBRA, and I’m still waiting on my vacation payout. It looks like severance was deposited in my checking account.

Yet another aspect of how poorly implemented this whole layoff process has been.

I’ve been laid off enough times to pretty much know the process by heart.

In the layoffs where I was the manager, I had packets of information ready for each employee. Those packets covered every bit of information about the employees rights, their retirement accounts, how their medical was going to be handled, how to continue medical coverage under COBRA, who to contact with additional questions after they were laid off, and a FAQ sheet.

Any other questions not answered with the information on hand, and I’d get HR and / or Legal in my office or in a conference room to make sure everyone had the answers or knew that their questions were being researched.

But then again, I’m anal about such things and worked for companies that actually had a plan, clue, system, direction…. you get the picture.

So while I’m done with them mostly… I see that I’m going to have to be on the phone demanding an information packet and know that I’ll have to make that demand several times. I’ll start those phone calls on Monday.

I watched the sun rise over the mountain this morning. It’s a pretty day and I’m in a pretty good place.

I’ve got three books I’m trying to read. One of them is a study guide for HAM radio. I think it’s about time that I got my license. It’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for a number of years and well… It looks like I’m going to have a little time on my hands for learning something new.

I’m also thinking that learning something new, that’s fun for me will make it easier to get into a learning mode for any training that I may take for a new career or a new job.

After I was done with the company debacle, I treated myself to a $60 stop by Ham Radio Outlet in Anaheim.  I was studying for my license before the fire. I had the books, and a sweet little radio. All of that was destroyed with the house. The $60 was me picking up study guides for the Technician and General class tests.

Lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about disaster preparation and as part of that preparation, I think it would be a great idea to have a couple of small radios for local communication and a HAM rig for longer distance, so learning something new is a twofer…

Career choices are another matter I’m working on. I can continue on in the career path I’ve been in, or I could pick up some additional training and move into a slightly different and “new” direction. The problem is that the “new” direction may not provide many more opportunities for employment and could be pricey for the education. I’m still weighing that one out.

Alternatively I could leave technology behind altogether and go do something completely different.

Again, I’m weighing the options. I think a lot of it will boil down to a simple question.

What am I willing to give up?

Ahhhh…. there’s the rub.

It never ceases to amaze me how easily the lives we build for ourselves can become cages.

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As of today I’m unemployed

This is a mixed blessing, and a long time coming.

I wasn’t going to go in until next week. But I noted that a paper check had been cut paying me a lump sum for my vacation, and unused holiday time. So it’s convenient and profitable for me to drive down there to hand in my shit.

It’s also a nice form of closure I will no longer have anything that I have to be responsible for and with few exceptions the company and I will be done with each other.

In hindsight, I took the position for all the right reasons. There was no way I could have known just how screwed up the project would become. Bad management is as likely in one industry as it is in any other. That there is a concentration of crappy management in the aerospace industry shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

These people have existed within a culture of obscene overruns for decades. Most of them have the attitude that no matter what, they can always go back to the government for more money and in many cases they have built systems and procedures where that assumption is integral to any project they bid.

The movie Pentagon Wars was a comedy. Sadly, it is also surprisingly accurate in it’s depiction of how government projects work.

It’s a real pity that the bureaucratic red tape necessary to become a government contractor is so arduous that many companies simply refuse to even try. I think that it’s time for the government to reduce the bureaucracy in favor of better, more modern, less expensive goods and equipment.

The old guard contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop, Raytheon, and TRW need a good solid kick in the pants in terms of competition. Lessening the red tape and allowing new players and new ideas into contract bids would serve the nation well.

That’s just my opinion.