Laid off
Well its finally happened…I got laid off from Nortel. Luckily, its not a surprise. In fact, we have known it was going to happen since last year. Most of this year has been spent transitioning everything to China. I got a trip out of it to Beijing as well. That was cool.
The severance package was pretty generous. Its not really anything I can disclose, but since I’m single, and my only debt is a mortgage payment…if I really had to I could go for a year without a job fairly comfortably. (I might need to set the AC to 86 though in the summer).
I suppose technically…as of now I’m a professional musician.
The only thing I’m uneasy about it what its like in other jobs. I have heard from several Ex-Nortel folks that we have had it pretty good here. All the groups I have been have been extremely well managed. I don’t mind working the occasional 12 hour day. In fact…my idea week seems to be a 12 hour Monday where I get a LOT of stuff done. Still, all my projects have been WELL managed with plenty of time to make my milestones. I probably average a 45 hour week only because I tend to put in that extra 10% into anything I do. It worries me to hear about companies where software engineers put in 50-60 hours a week. I cant work for a manager that over-promises.
Ive been there for 13 years. It was my first job outta college. Ive seen the excesses of the dot com era. I still have options that are in the money at $400 a share (NT is below 6 now).
Still, things were getting a bit stale. There was not much room for growth. The project I was on was REALLY cool and was an opportunity to work with all kinds of great JAVA technologies and methodologies. Something foreign in a big company. I think hitting the wild workplace will help me become a better developer. I would love an Extreme or Agile environment. The waterfall method is crushing. Thats not to say it doesnt have a place. For MTX it was well suited. As a designer I could identify EVERY line of code and why it was changed for the past 20 years. Useful? For the DMS it was critical to know this. A one line fix could cause a 10 year old bug to resurface. I took pride in my code and inspections as an architect.
So..enough about that.
In other news…sadly Mojo took off for a walkabout. In July, my dear Mojo walked out the kitty door and has yet to come back. I hear stories about cats bailing for 6 months at a time. I hope thats the case. Im still hoping he will come back and find myself chasing down every black cat stray I see in a 5 mile radius. Mojo was a great cat!!!
Still, life goes on and it turns out that Barry Kooda has more kittens than he can handle. Barry has the rather dubious hobby of “urban exploration”. Generally it requires a camera and a crowbar as you explore the underbelly of the city and poke around in places where nobody cares to be nor wants to be. In the process, apparently you find lots of kittens.
I took one in. It was orginally a he but we are pretty sure she is a she. Pictures to follow.
She is so cute. I guess I do have one dependant but I have yet to hear her say “Get a JOB…baby needs her KMR!”