When I originally started this post, it was while sitting in the parking garage where I work during a fire drill, waiting for everyone to filter out of the building so they could sound the all clear, and I could get back to work. It struck me as a little ironic at the time, since work itself had been in the midst of a fire drill of sorts. It turns out I only knew the half of it then.

You see, not unlike other businesses, my company has been hit pretty hard by the economic downturn. The flow of customers has been significantly less than usual, and among those we are still engaged with, many have postponed projects we were bidding on – in some cases indefinitely. And, since America led this particular economic crash, we were among the earliest and hardest hit. As a consequence, the numbers for the Americas have been way off for several quarters and are continuing to slide a bit, even now. Unfortunately, the company is based corporately in Europe, and they call the shots. This Tuesday they exercised that power most auspiciously when the CEO arrived from Finland and set about having closed door meeting in the training room, rather than the much more centrally located conference room. When it was announced that we should make no lunch plans, as they would be bringing in lunch for an all hands meeting, the already high tension level in the office went off the charts. It is safe to say that pretty much no work got done that morning. And so it was that we all filed into the conference room around 1pm to learn that the president of the Americas – the head cheese here, and the guy who brought me on – had “resigned”. Resigned, of course, being nice speak for fired, but with a severance package for going quietly.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. The winds of change were still swirling, and pretty much everyone felt it. I heard a couple of people wonder aloud when “the other shoe was going to drop.” I should back up here and tell you that we’d already cut one of the two dedicated sales guys in the Atlanta office (where I work) a couple of months back. Unfortunately that left us with two supporting engineers – me being one of those – supporting one sales guy. Being a fairly savvy mathematician, I was able to work out the implications of that pretty quickly. And, where myself and my counterpart are concerned, there was a bit of a balancing act. I was the public speaker of the two of us, but – being that he married a Brazilian girl and learned Portuguese – he is the sole interface to our operations in Brazil. Unfortunately, we have another engineer out of our DC office who also can handle speaking engagements, leaving me at a decided disadvantage. Add to that the fact that am older and have been in this business longer than my counterpart, so I carry a higher price tag, and, well… You do the math.

So it was that I was feeling those winds of change perhaps more acutely than the others in the office. Today I got that tap on the shoulder that I’ve been anticipating for some time now. Just at quitting time the newly promoted acting president popped his head in and asked if he could talk to me in his office. The only upside of the long period of anticipation is that I’d had time to make peace with the situation so I wasn’t completely freaked out. The word I got from him wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but probably close enough. He told me that, before he left to go back to Finland, the CEO had told him to drop the engineering headcount – meaning me and perhaps one other engineer from another group. Given that training time for my position is something upward of six months before any new hire is truly useful, and that the newly minted president feels we are on the cusp of turning things around, he pushed back. It was still an open discussion with the CEO when he departed. The conclusion of that conversation will happen this Friday. My gut tells me that the CEO will not be swayed, but I’m hoping I am wrong. Just the same, mentally, I am already in job hunting mode.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone that this economy isn’t the best environment in which to find yourself looking for work; particularly in a highly specialized position, such as the one that I occupy. There are lots of good people who have lost their jobs and are available, so it is a buyers market. For years now, I’ve not gone “job hunting” as such. I get multiple calls a week from headhunters, and I keep a list of their names – just in case. My last four job changes were all orchestrated by those same recruiters. Unfortunately, this is such a buyer’s market that many companies have stopped using the outside recruiters at all. Why pay twenty to thirty thousand dollars to a recruiter for placing someone when you can have 300 resumes in a day from a free online job posting? Because of that, in addition to the recruiters – who I will still use – I will also have to start calling on companies directly – something I haven’t done in perhaps 15 years. That, and I will activate the social network that one inevitably builds over so many years in an industry. I’ve got a great resume, so I’m not worried that I won’t be able to find a job, but I am concerned that I won’t be able to find one with the same salary I’m making now. Again, it is a buyer’s market. Economics 101 tells you that, when supply exceeds demand, the price of goods drops.

Even in a good economy a job search for my type position generally stretches to six or eight weeks at a minimum; in this economy, I can easily see it being more like 6 months. So it is that we are battening the hatches at home. We’ve been very blessed, so we are well situated to weather that or more if needed, but it is still demoralizing. I’ll almost certainly have to cancel my planned photo trip to SE Utah the I had slated for this October. I will either be unemployed or newly employed, neither of which allow for luxury trips. I think the biggest blow was to my ego. Even given the very logical justification, the fact remains, I’m being laid off. Only once in my career have I left a position involuntarily, and that was over twenty years ago – and over a petty political battle, at that. Oh well, life goes on, I suppose and, truth be told, my ego could probably use a body blow or two. After Friday I’ll have a more clear direction and will figure out my game plan. Until then, I’ll just lay here on this block and stare up warily at the axe hanging precariously above me. Oh, and I’ll try to get at least some work done too.

/g