Today was the day: Around 15% of our group was laid off en masse, and while I was not among the fatalities, some good friends were. The larger corporate entity which had eaten us 16 months ago had left us to our own devices for 14 glorious months, but come the new year decided enough was enough. Time to shape up.
As it often turns out, the cuts were made to a number, not to make a cost or revenue target as far as we could tell. All divisions had numbers to make: ours was 15%, but a sister group appears to have lost 25%. It could have been worse, I suppose.
So we the surviving are now in a position where sales are warming up, but we have no bench of people to sell. Several of the layoffs were new hires who we had worked hard to land, and I can only imagine this will speak poorly of us on the job boards, so recruiting will be difficult. Recruiting will be even harder since they laid off our two recruiters! So we're down 12, no viable incoming resources, and very little incentive for the current staff to stay, yet we have a 20% growth goal for our bonuses.
It's crazy. We're all trying to figure out what the year will look like. Hey, maybe it'll all come out fine in the end! Why not be optimistic? In truth, the past 15 years of my career have been a very smooth upward trajectory, with good things coming out of strange situations. I'm fully prepared to allow the next change to wash over me.
Fortunately, the rest of life is wonderful. Bella hand-made 27 valentines last night for her friends and teachers - each one slightly different, thought out for each kid's personality. It was an ambitious project! Isaac has been continuing his very two year old behavior, but remains adorable. His current quixotic quest is for Diet Coke: He's like the Trix Rabbit, coming up with schemes to trick mom out of her Diet Coke - sweetness, flirting, stealth, deception... it's all there. We do NOT want him to be drinking this stuff, but the sense of the forbidden is all the more alluring. "Can I some Diet Coke, Mama?" big eyes, big smile. That kid is TROUBLE.
I've finally turned the corner on the new Neal Stephenson book - Anathem has suddenly become a cannot-put-down page turner after a good 200 pages of "setup". Much more so than in my earlier update. It's ROCKING. The kindle accompanies me everywhere now. In other media, this weeks Fringe was an absolute brain opener... I'm so sucked into this series.... it's amazing.
Tonight we had a little birthday party for Darwin and Abe. Carrot Cake and Apple Cobbler. It was a wonderful little celebration!
It'll be an early night tonight: All the stress of work this week, plus I've taught a lot of classes and will teach again tomorrow at 6am, so this body needs some recoup time!
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1 comment:
Oh, that had to be so hard to lose the people you had such faith in - and who had such promise.
Sitting with brother in law over Thanksgiving, mr. know it all has softened - "there aren't any models for this time, these crises" he kept saying softly.
Were there models when Lincoln decided that people weren't property? When Darwin began to see patterns in species? I think there were models, it just wasn't what everyone else was doing or thinking.
Making hearts is a good thing to do in times like these. Celebrating is a good thing to do. Take care of what you can - with good cheer and great love.
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