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PFFT!
On the Job

March 12, 2001

Tech Tank Part 2
   by stacy <pfftnet@stacy.pfft.net>

Last week I told you how my company was enduring some lay-offs and reducing spending on many projects. I told you how I wasn't worried about my job because I'm the Unix desktop admin and they need someone to handle all that. I didn't tell you that I thought MIS would be ok overall, since we were pretty lean as it was, with the hiring freeze in place, and we hadn't been able to bring in some new people that we needed to get everything done in a timely manner, but that's what I thought.

Well, I do still have my job. For me personally, nothing really has changed. Oh, except one small little thing. They laid-off the senior Unix administrator. He was responsible for almost all of the Sun server issues, including backups and Veritas and replacing hardware on the servers. He was an experienced administrator who knew how to do that kind of stuff. He was the only one in MIS that was let go, and though my boss said his duties would be spread around, I can't imagine that most of his duties won't fall to me, since I have more Unix experience than anyone else in the department, and it's already 80% of my job.

So, here we are. I feel bad for that guy, but since he is an experienced Unix admin, he probably won't have a hard time finding another job. Not as hard as some of the other people who were laid off, many of whom were new and on H-1B visas, so they have real pressure. I was told there was a severence package, but I have no idea what it included. That guy had 2 small children, and 2 new trucks. I imagine it will be difficult for them for a while. I really didn't expect it to hit so close to home, even after I found out last week that 2 people I had considered friends were laid off, not including the Unix admin who I only found out about today.

It's rough out there. I can only hope that the economy recovers pretty soon and the tech companies adjust to where they need to be to get on with business as usual. The CEO swore that there would be no more lay-offs, but I'm not sure he really knows what the company will have to do in the future to keep costs down if our customers don't provide us with the kind of revenue we're used to having. PFFT! and *sigh*.

Published: March 12, 2001
Editor: stacy

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