Draft

That foolish-looking satyr Pan,
god of the woods my book says,
but clearly not our quiet second-growth New England woods ...
and my book does not explain where
"panic" comes from.

I tell L to hurry;
tell him I need to get him to day care
so I can work, but once he is gone,
I turn back to the empty house.

I wish I smoked;
it's a good excuse to chat up a stranger -
ask for a ciggy or a light
and these days we'd get a private corner,
a camaraderie of the shunned.

I ask for informational meetings over lunch,
over coffee, though I only drink tea; I fill my calendar,
but it's harder to create community out of clean air ...
smoke weaves together into the clouds,
the shared smell of the pack.

I work hard, school my brain to success,
but underneath bits and pieces roil,
scream like bacchante and run in panic.

Careful, now, I put each consonant and vowel on my page legibly,
proof typed documents three times,
bent over like a penitent,
I send my words out in hope.

I sing the body electronic!
The e-mails and voice mails, the profiles and pages,
my code - C, C++, Java - and scripts.
Come, future manager, celebrate my self,
my uniqueness -- all that I can bring to a job.

Bitter smoke mixes with burnt coffee grounds,
the wind tickling the cut-short hairs on my neck,
the orange glow -- bright with each pull
on paper and leaf:
centuries of tradition more real and present
than the brightest resume.

I need a smoke.

On my own

Took a break and went to Houston with my family. J had a conference to go to, so the boy and I came along, since I didn't have any pressing appointments. It was nice to have a change of pace, although I found supervising L all day tiring.

And now I sit in my messy, disorganized home office and try to figure out what to do next. My afternoon appointment canceled, and I feel a bit unmoored.

It's not like I didn't have a lot to do.... e-mail, contacts, studying, coding. I better get back to it.

Friday was my last full day of working for IBM. I wore a company shirt, why not, last chance to wear it as an employee. I actually delivered some work that I had gotten approval for -- I don't have any idea what the Change Control Board was thinking of, but perhaps the majority wasn't aware that I was on my way out. That's the IBM way. Lay off people as quietly as possible, in the name of "employee privacy," but it turns out to be a divide and conquer strategy. Morale won't go down if you don't know when your co-workers are let go.

So I actually did some work, right up to my last day. I didn't have to, most people who are laid off don't, but, well, it's something to do between networking and I have a certain pride in saying that I worked, right up to the end. The condemned man keeping his dignity.

And I packed up my office. I hated that part, to pick up thirteen years of memory and put them in boxes. And I hated the between-ness, not quite unemployed and not quite an employee, just not anywhere.

I joined Atria when they were located in Natick. I worked in Natick one week; I remember a great sense of confusion as I tried to go through the ClearCase tutorials. No one was available to help and I began to understand the difference between a casual user of ClearCase and an administrator. Then Atria moved to Lexington, and after a year or so, I moved from the west side of the building to a south-facing double office. And by some miracle I never moved since.

So I have deep metaphorical roots in this office. A couple of years ago they replaced the carpeting, so there aren't stains that I can point at, but the roots are there, just the same. It was almost disappointing to find that my office packed up so easily. J had come by earlier in the week and boxed my books, and it just took an afternoon and two car trips -- the second one to get my floor lamp -- to get everything home. I almost feel cheated at the speed of it. Should it take longer to pull up these roots?

Atria hired a great bunch of people -- I'll miss the decade-long relationships. Sure, we all say we'll keep in touch, but it is different than walking down the hallway and nodding to everyone I pass. I feel very sad.

Somehow I don't -- not at the moment -- blame IBM for being ruthless and heartless. Business is business. I see that they have a right to cut costs as they see fit. And the stock price shows that the market agrees with them.

But it does feel like there is something, not just amoral, but immoral about breaking up our community, straining all of these long-term relationships. And it seems immoral to take a job away from a person who is meeting all the requirements of their job (at least). Isn't there another solution than to fire competant workers?

It feels like the company has broken a compact -- I provide servies and they provide money and benefits. But it does go both ways, I'd certainly defend my right to change employers at any time, otherwise it would be slavery. Still, it seemed that for my father, there was a different relationship between an employee and an employer, at least for the executives and professionals. My father took care of his company, and the company took care of him.

After 14 years, I have to pack up and take care of myself.

Finishing ... and Starting

Yesterday, I got all the tests working on my last major piece of work for IBM. I submitted the patch request, and have been in discussions with my colleagues in India Software Lab -- they reviewed it, and will maintain the code. I have one other patch request in process, but it's just a bit of cleaning now. And there are some other things I might do for IBM in the next week and a half, if I feel like it.
I'll probably feel like it. There was a long time where I felt that work was, well, work. A sucker's game; I looked forward to retirement. But these days, I want something to do. I like writing code. I like having customers.
With this last assignment, I wrote the tests after the code was finished, although it was in the back of my head that to be Agile, I should have written the tests first. However, I spent a lot of time on the first test, a run-through of the basic use case with confirmation that all of the pieces were there. For a while, I had to get the test code (Perl) right, then it was running and then it failed. My code was broken! Yet, it only took a few minutes before I smiled -- my test had taught me something, had shown me something that I had forgotten to implement. That's just what it is supposed to do. And everything gets improved. Cool.
Then, of course, I forgot to follow my Agile training, and I saved the most doubtful piece of code for the last test I implemented...so the last few days was a flurry of re-coding, re-checking and getting a new code review.

That was yesterday. Today J is out of town at a conference, so it is just L and me. L is OK, Mama comes up in his conversation a lot, so I know he misses her. "Did Mama give you a kiss for me?" he asked this morning; I said yes, and kissed him. On the way to day care, he was all "Papa, I love you. Papa, can I tell you something? I love you..." I can see that he's feeling nervous and upset about Mama being away.
After dropping him off ... I came back home. I could have packed up my laptop and headed into the office, but I can "work" from home. Coming home feels like a punishment. I'll get more laundry done and the breakfast dishes cleaned. I have a networking lunch with a former manager today -- it's easy to get to from home. But I feel like I've been sent home; it feels like the first day I haven't had work to do, that it hasn't mattered whether I'm on the computer or not.

I have a list of things to do -- prepare for the Career Assessment module with Right Management, tidy up my last assignment, neaten up my LinkedIn profile, set up more networking meetings, go have lunch. I'm just sad, as I get started.

Fast and Slow

I've been up, I've been down. I have a draft resume -- 3 pages. I think it's complete and I think it's no good. It's a starting place.

I took the "Getting Started" module with Right Management. This is the out-placement firm IBM hired. I suppose it could be worse -- it would be worse, not to have an out-placement firm. And the people there are unflaggingly cheerful. That's pretty discordant with the feelings of everyone in the classroom. There were two other IBM'ers there, but I hadn't met them before. That's part of what it means to work for such a large company.

They told us what we would be doing. I feel like I've been going fast, fast, and slow, too slow at the same time. I'd like to have a complete resume, but Right suggests that I go through their career assessment and then their resume development and editing classes. I can't wait, can't wait ....

Next career assessment is Wednesday. But that's erev pesach; I'm going to be busy preparing for our seder. Not that I've done much preparing -- usually I do a lot of cleaning the month before. And I feel guilty taking time for this holiday when I ought to be networking, looking for a job.

The next career assessment is next Monday. I feel like I'm in limbo, waiting for the next bus I can catch to get me on the trail. Festina Lente, as Augustus said.

And then I stop. I'm tired, I'm stressed. There are a lot of games of solitaire that go into finding a job.

It's nice to still have some work to finish up. It's the most fun thing I have to do today.

G-D Damned RoadRunner

From March 26th (a Blog -prequel)

The story is supposed to get less painful
I can't tell any more
my head stuffed full of cotton
the packet upside down on my desk,
my hand still feeling the weight of it
from when my boss handed it to me.
Our team lost 3 people in this layoff.
Instead of assuring me I was safe
I'm the coyote running over the edge,
my "separation packet" an anvil in my arms.
Separation, from "our" team, from "my" office
from the company that respects me and asks for loyalty.
The view up here is nice
once I stop pumping my feet
I'll relax
Until the furious ground stops me.

The 5 Stages...

Do they still talk about the 5 stages of Grief anymore?

IBM is having their second round of layoffs this year (this quarter, even!). After 14 years of working for Atria/PureAtria/Rational/IBM Rational, I have, as the English say, been "made redundant."

Anyone want a ClearCase/UCM expert?

Of the five companies that I've had on this job, IBM has been the least fun (PureAtria wasn't that much fun either, but it didn't last long). We had earlier layoffs, and I thought I was done for in the January layoff, so I guess I'm not exactly unprepared.

Yesterday I was depressed. Hard to do my work, hard to face looking for a job, and after L went to sleep, too tired to do anything I was supposed to do. My cohort of layoffs (there are 10 of us in my building) met to share our resources, and that wore me out.

This morning, driving to the office, as I wrote, furious. Coming into the office, it is an act of defiance -- make everyone uncomfortable, as they know I only have 3 weeks left. It's also an act of survival; keep a rhythm of coming into the office, so that I have a struck to "work" within.

I had a good call with the customer -- it's a special program to connect Engineers with customers, and I like having the link. I like taking care of "my" customer -- as long as it doesn't take over my job of building and testing code.

I actually like my job this year. I'd like to rant about the unfairness of IBM or the Economy or off-shoring or something ...

but what's the point.

I have work to do.