Thrice Spoken, Once Fulfilled
Oct. 2nd, 2008 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alfvaenAs some of you may know, my job is disappearing over the next little while. This is not because I'm getting fired, or laid off, or anything like that. Unless you could say that the company is "downsizing" all the way to a size of zero.
Last Monday they (the two co-owners) called us (the two other employees) into the boardroom for a meeting, where they announced they were shutting down the company. They cited a lack of profitability, though the fact that the CEO had a heart attack a year or two ago but had to return from retirement due to our perpetual staffing problems probably also contributed. So we were given our official notice. For Mark, the other employee, this was only a week, since he hadn't been here that long; for me, after ten and a half years, this was more like eight weeks, which takes us to mid-November.
It's not like I don't have things to do, either. There are of course calls coming in from a bunch of our customers trying to figure out what's going to happen, how long they'll be able to keep getting support, and whether they want this "source code" stuff that we're offering. Two of our biggest customers have some ongoing issues we want to settle if at all possible. Both of them have inquired into whether I'm interested in working for them. One is in Calgary, and other has an office, at least, in Sherwood Park, but I think I'd rather explore other options first. I'm also learning PHP in an attempt to either convert our existing Java/JSP/Struts stuff to something that can be put on a public server, or at least learn enough to teach our co-owners (who will be keeping some of the web stuff going) how to do it.
I'm feeling fairly upbeat despite the impending unemployment. Actually, I tend to enjoy unemployment, or "24-hour leisure time", apart from the lack of income, which tends to worry some people, like my wife and family. But apart from that, it's been over ten years since my last job hunt, and things have changed in my favour. For one thing, I have ten years more experience, am ten years wiser, and the like. Also, the Alberta economy is still booming, so it looks like there's a plethora of job opportunities out there. I may be able to pick and choose. I may not be forced to, say, uproot the family and move to Calgary just to be able to work. (The way that, eleven years ago, Nicole and I moved back down to Edmonton from Grande Prairie.)
I've redone my resume, and rediscovered (while sending off my first batch of job applications) how much I hate writing cover letters. Seriously, I have severe trouble not coming off sounding either stilted and awkward or overly familiar and unserious. I tend to err in the direction of the former, frankly. I don't have an interview suit right now, though, and probably will have to frantically go buy one in the near future. It's a bit of a waste, since I sincerely hope not to have to actually wear a suit at work if I can at all avoid it, and I don't even know anyone who's planning on getting married in the near future.
There are some things I will miss about this job. While not everyone got along with the co-owners, which is one reason for the perennial staffing problems, I was just fine. I also wrote a heck of a lot of code--I counted 123,000 lines in one project, and while a lot of that is shared with other projects, a lot of it has been rewritten multiple times, so it's not really a very useful metric...but still, a lot of code. I suppose some of it was written by other programmers, but not as much as we might have liked. One reason I anticipate some demand for my services from our former customers, and they haven't even seen my source code yet...
Anyway, there was also a casual working environment--I never got any kind of problem about dressing casually or skipping shaving for a few days. Admittedly, I never wore ripped blue jeans or pajamas to work, or spent a week without bathing, or anything like that. I also got to listen to music in my office (once again, it wasn't Opeth at top volume or anything like that), got a number of "raises" in hours so that I was working 31.5 hours/week by the end, and even underground parking for the last few years. I'm hoping that I will be able to find at least some of the same things at my next job. Oh, yeah, and a decent salary would be nice too. And maybe some things that Kakari didn't always come through on, like medical benefits, direct-deposit paycheques, and programming projects that I was genuinely interested in.
So any of y'all in the Edmonton area who know of software/IT type job openings, feel free to let me know. I've seen several on monster.ca already, and given a few more leads, so like I said, I'm feeling pretty good about this thing, but it'd be nice to have steady income. Though a few weeks off wouldn't go amiss either...
In other news, since I got Spore I've barely been playing Sims 2. We'll see which one wins out in the long run, but so far Spore is fun. I've got about ten games going right now, of which two are up to Space Stage. It already seems to me that Space Stage is the main point of the game, since it's much more open-ended and elaborate than the other four stages. Civilization Stage in particular seems almost vestigial, one reason why it's my least favourite of the stages. (The other being that it forces you to design all sorts of buildings and vehicles. Maybe some people consider this a selling point, but I don't. I either slap together something quick and stupid, or steal someone else's from the Internet. If that's supposed to be most of the fun of the Stage, then it's wasted on me.)
But more on that some other time, perhaps. Must job hunt. Yes.
Last Monday they (the two co-owners) called us (the two other employees) into the boardroom for a meeting, where they announced they were shutting down the company. They cited a lack of profitability, though the fact that the CEO had a heart attack a year or two ago but had to return from retirement due to our perpetual staffing problems probably also contributed. So we were given our official notice. For Mark, the other employee, this was only a week, since he hadn't been here that long; for me, after ten and a half years, this was more like eight weeks, which takes us to mid-November.
It's not like I don't have things to do, either. There are of course calls coming in from a bunch of our customers trying to figure out what's going to happen, how long they'll be able to keep getting support, and whether they want this "source code" stuff that we're offering. Two of our biggest customers have some ongoing issues we want to settle if at all possible. Both of them have inquired into whether I'm interested in working for them. One is in Calgary, and other has an office, at least, in Sherwood Park, but I think I'd rather explore other options first. I'm also learning PHP in an attempt to either convert our existing Java/JSP/Struts stuff to something that can be put on a public server, or at least learn enough to teach our co-owners (who will be keeping some of the web stuff going) how to do it.
I'm feeling fairly upbeat despite the impending unemployment. Actually, I tend to enjoy unemployment, or "24-hour leisure time", apart from the lack of income, which tends to worry some people, like my wife and family. But apart from that, it's been over ten years since my last job hunt, and things have changed in my favour. For one thing, I have ten years more experience, am ten years wiser, and the like. Also, the Alberta economy is still booming, so it looks like there's a plethora of job opportunities out there. I may be able to pick and choose. I may not be forced to, say, uproot the family and move to Calgary just to be able to work. (The way that, eleven years ago, Nicole and I moved back down to Edmonton from Grande Prairie.)
I've redone my resume, and rediscovered (while sending off my first batch of job applications) how much I hate writing cover letters. Seriously, I have severe trouble not coming off sounding either stilted and awkward or overly familiar and unserious. I tend to err in the direction of the former, frankly. I don't have an interview suit right now, though, and probably will have to frantically go buy one in the near future. It's a bit of a waste, since I sincerely hope not to have to actually wear a suit at work if I can at all avoid it, and I don't even know anyone who's planning on getting married in the near future.
There are some things I will miss about this job. While not everyone got along with the co-owners, which is one reason for the perennial staffing problems, I was just fine. I also wrote a heck of a lot of code--I counted 123,000 lines in one project, and while a lot of that is shared with other projects, a lot of it has been rewritten multiple times, so it's not really a very useful metric...but still, a lot of code. I suppose some of it was written by other programmers, but not as much as we might have liked. One reason I anticipate some demand for my services from our former customers, and they haven't even seen my source code yet...
Anyway, there was also a casual working environment--I never got any kind of problem about dressing casually or skipping shaving for a few days. Admittedly, I never wore ripped blue jeans or pajamas to work, or spent a week without bathing, or anything like that. I also got to listen to music in my office (once again, it wasn't Opeth at top volume or anything like that), got a number of "raises" in hours so that I was working 31.5 hours/week by the end, and even underground parking for the last few years. I'm hoping that I will be able to find at least some of the same things at my next job. Oh, yeah, and a decent salary would be nice too. And maybe some things that Kakari didn't always come through on, like medical benefits, direct-deposit paycheques, and programming projects that I was genuinely interested in.
So any of y'all in the Edmonton area who know of software/IT type job openings, feel free to let me know. I've seen several on monster.ca already, and given a few more leads, so like I said, I'm feeling pretty good about this thing, but it'd be nice to have steady income. Though a few weeks off wouldn't go amiss either...
In other news, since I got Spore I've barely been playing Sims 2. We'll see which one wins out in the long run, but so far Spore is fun. I've got about ten games going right now, of which two are up to Space Stage. It already seems to me that Space Stage is the main point of the game, since it's much more open-ended and elaborate than the other four stages. Civilization Stage in particular seems almost vestigial, one reason why it's my least favourite of the stages. (The other being that it forces you to design all sorts of buildings and vehicles. Maybe some people consider this a selling point, but I don't. I either slap together something quick and stupid, or steal someone else's from the Internet. If that's supposed to be most of the fun of the Stage, then it's wasted on me.)
But more on that some other time, perhaps. Must job hunt. Yes.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 01:52 pm (UTC)I haven't heard anything back yet, btw. Not that I'm impatient or anything, but if you could maybe confirm that they received my application, and it didn't get caught in a spam filter or something...
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 03:55 pm (UTC)I wouldn't say it would count against you, but it'll result in smirks of wry amusement.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 10:17 pm (UTC)I also heard it's not as awesome as one would expect, as far as creature interaction and stuff.
That time I told you I was going to go buy it, I couldn't get onto their web site, and then I heard the bad stories. So I haven't bought it. But I think I still want to.
Good luck with the job hunt!