Work Changes
What do you even say when someone you've worked closely alongside for nearly 20 years is being laid off? Most of what comes to mind feels lacking, and my mind has been a whirl of thoughts since I was told.
David started as a classified entry clerk a couple months before I started in the mail room. In the production department, he taught me classified pagination. When I was offered the chance to join him in our little IT department, I readily accepted, and have been working with him since. I've learned a lot from him and a lot with him. I consider him a friend even though we've never really done anything together outside of work.
I won't pitch him as perfect. There are some problems I grasp more readily than he does. I don't think he's bothered to install some of our major software packages for years, and may not remember the details of how. At times, he can procrastinate the hell out of things - to the point where I may delay some tasks for a week until I know I'll have time rather than asking him to do them. But I respect him. I've relied on him. He's certainly more adept with Active Directory management and router/internet configuration than I am.
So... there's the purely emotional blow. I'm losing the one person who can most sympathize with my position when it comes to work. No one else fully understand what I do. Few people have been with the company as long. And having someone close laid off naturally elicits a mix of personal relief (I still have my job) and worry (that could have been me/what if I'm next?).
But this is bound to have some direct ripple effects on my own life. Can I keep this place running myself*? Probably. But it means I can't just ignore work when David's on-shift, because he won't be. I'll probably be working days pretty much all the time, and fully on-call during evenings. I have no idea what's going to happen with the budget/contract aspects of the department, but I hope (and have at least a little reason to think) upper management won't drop that in my lap. It's a serious loss of redundancy. It'll make it much, much harder to move forward with projects (like the backup storage solution that's been on the back-burner for a year or more). And I dreadfully fear that there are bound to be little things he does/knows that I don't.
* Technically, not just myself. We have another IT person who's been with the company for years, but he's worked in a different office on a different branch of the company pretty much exclusively, with little cross-over. I imagine he's going to be expected to pick up some of the slack on this side, but I have no clear vision how that will work out.
I find the timing especially worrisome. For David, well, he just bought a car. While he mentioned he's getting some sort of severance pay, that seems like a rough time to become jobless. From the company standpoint, we're coming down to the wire on changing ISPs - something he has been doing all the work on and should theoretically be finishing out before he leaves at the end of the week. We were also discussing integrating two domains, which he probably would have taken the lead on. It feels like a couple weeks could make a massive difference from that angle.
I can understand, in a general sense, a desire to cut costs in a company that's losing money. I can see that "middle management" could be a ripe target. But from where I sit, while I don't know what he's been getting paid, I have trouble seeing this choice as worth it. It feels sort of like a betrayal, both because of how long he's been with the company and how the current management put him in his position after laying off the last IT manager. It worries me on many levels. It may work out in the long run and be "fine" but right now it's hard to comprehend what it all means.
David started as a classified entry clerk a couple months before I started in the mail room. In the production department, he taught me classified pagination. When I was offered the chance to join him in our little IT department, I readily accepted, and have been working with him since. I've learned a lot from him and a lot with him. I consider him a friend even though we've never really done anything together outside of work.
I won't pitch him as perfect. There are some problems I grasp more readily than he does. I don't think he's bothered to install some of our major software packages for years, and may not remember the details of how. At times, he can procrastinate the hell out of things - to the point where I may delay some tasks for a week until I know I'll have time rather than asking him to do them. But I respect him. I've relied on him. He's certainly more adept with Active Directory management and router/internet configuration than I am.
So... there's the purely emotional blow. I'm losing the one person who can most sympathize with my position when it comes to work. No one else fully understand what I do. Few people have been with the company as long. And having someone close laid off naturally elicits a mix of personal relief (I still have my job) and worry (that could have been me/what if I'm next?).
But this is bound to have some direct ripple effects on my own life. Can I keep this place running myself*? Probably. But it means I can't just ignore work when David's on-shift, because he won't be. I'll probably be working days pretty much all the time, and fully on-call during evenings. I have no idea what's going to happen with the budget/contract aspects of the department, but I hope (and have at least a little reason to think) upper management won't drop that in my lap. It's a serious loss of redundancy. It'll make it much, much harder to move forward with projects (like the backup storage solution that's been on the back-burner for a year or more). And I dreadfully fear that there are bound to be little things he does/knows that I don't.
* Technically, not just myself. We have another IT person who's been with the company for years, but he's worked in a different office on a different branch of the company pretty much exclusively, with little cross-over. I imagine he's going to be expected to pick up some of the slack on this side, but I have no clear vision how that will work out.
I find the timing especially worrisome. For David, well, he just bought a car. While he mentioned he's getting some sort of severance pay, that seems like a rough time to become jobless. From the company standpoint, we're coming down to the wire on changing ISPs - something he has been doing all the work on and should theoretically be finishing out before he leaves at the end of the week. We were also discussing integrating two domains, which he probably would have taken the lead on. It feels like a couple weeks could make a massive difference from that angle.
I can understand, in a general sense, a desire to cut costs in a company that's losing money. I can see that "middle management" could be a ripe target. But from where I sit, while I don't know what he's been getting paid, I have trouble seeing this choice as worth it. It feels sort of like a betrayal, both because of how long he's been with the company and how the current management put him in his position after laying off the last IT manager. It worries me on many levels. It may work out in the long run and be "fine" but right now it's hard to comprehend what it all means.
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