Work
So, yeah...
The meeting yesterday was about what I've been craving for the last week. Very little of it was surprising. I could have assumed pretty much everything. But hearing it directly is a good thing. It helps.
On the newspaper side of the business, we're keeping financially pretty flat, which is really the only company goal. The board sees newspapers as a community service of a sort, realizing they're not a big revenue source. Our phone book business is still profitable-but-declining, which is expected. The company is trying to push things more toward online, but advertisers aren't really willing to pay as much for online products as print. A couple company projects, one a local "free" weekly paper and another a regional "lifestyle" magazine, are profitable, but only just. And the company's major software project, which only reached maturity recently, still has a lot of potential, but hasn't actually sold yet - that's the biggest question mark, and management has plans to cut costs there if it doesn't catch on. So... overall, we're doing okay as a company, but the markets we're currently in are inevitably shrinking.
And when revenue declines and you're already pushing pretty much as hard as you can to generate more money, you're sort of faced with cutting costs. And when you're cutting costs, the middle management layer and support infrastructure is a prime target - people who may keep the company running and provide a safety net, but aren't actually making or selling a product. Several people, including our HR director, have been (or will soon be) reduced to part-time. David was laid off completely. There's also been talk about, but no decision on, actually closing down our office in Bodo Park and selling it off. I can see why Scott Yarbrough avoided it, since he's the only IT person familiar with some systems, but the only real remaining question there is why David and not me. I suspect it's because he had a manager title and was making (I don't know how much) more than I was.
I felt terrible about that initially. I found out last Tuesday at the end of the day, and was kind of stunned. I slept poorly that night and was generally miserable. It felt like a betrayal to have someone I'd worked so closely with for 20+ years let go. The biggest relief on the emotional side has been David himself saying he'd been feeling burned out, and this actually felt more like an opportunity for him. He's taking a couple weeks with his new car to take a road trip before looking for work, and he generally seems okay now.
It's been expressed that they want to hire someone back into the department and get us up to three again, but that's probably at least six months out and maybe longer, depending on how things go. That sounds silly in some ways, but business is business, as they say. Our now-direct manager, who is himself just under the CEO, also said he understands this is putting a whole lot on the two of us who remain. He's encouraging use of outside/contracted support as-needed. Part of the reasoning behind our recent ISP switch was so our router/firewall could be managed by them rather than us.
So, yeah, no more working nights with any regularity. Though we are still given flexibility in our schedules, so I could come in late and work late one day if there's something I need to do at night. Scott and I (that's weird to say) will have to coordinate time off and off-hour coverage. We'll have to learn more about the things we're unfamiliar with. I feel there's a crap-ton of knowledge I need to offload, so I'm not the only source of it, but I think a lot of that will just have to come out as we go forward. I can't think of everything to info-dump at once.
The change in dynamics is inevitably awkward, but I think we'll make do. In a way, it's actually exciting to have to deal with things being shaken up without a full-on crisis. I won't go so far as to say I feel "good" about it, but I'm okay. 'course, I will miss getting more rest when working nights. I sure hope my body adjusts and I don't feel compelled to head to bed at 10 every night.
The meeting yesterday was about what I've been craving for the last week. Very little of it was surprising. I could have assumed pretty much everything. But hearing it directly is a good thing. It helps.
On the newspaper side of the business, we're keeping financially pretty flat, which is really the only company goal. The board sees newspapers as a community service of a sort, realizing they're not a big revenue source. Our phone book business is still profitable-but-declining, which is expected. The company is trying to push things more toward online, but advertisers aren't really willing to pay as much for online products as print. A couple company projects, one a local "free" weekly paper and another a regional "lifestyle" magazine, are profitable, but only just. And the company's major software project, which only reached maturity recently, still has a lot of potential, but hasn't actually sold yet - that's the biggest question mark, and management has plans to cut costs there if it doesn't catch on. So... overall, we're doing okay as a company, but the markets we're currently in are inevitably shrinking.
And when revenue declines and you're already pushing pretty much as hard as you can to generate more money, you're sort of faced with cutting costs. And when you're cutting costs, the middle management layer and support infrastructure is a prime target - people who may keep the company running and provide a safety net, but aren't actually making or selling a product. Several people, including our HR director, have been (or will soon be) reduced to part-time. David was laid off completely. There's also been talk about, but no decision on, actually closing down our office in Bodo Park and selling it off. I can see why Scott Yarbrough avoided it, since he's the only IT person familiar with some systems, but the only real remaining question there is why David and not me. I suspect it's because he had a manager title and was making (I don't know how much) more than I was.
I felt terrible about that initially. I found out last Tuesday at the end of the day, and was kind of stunned. I slept poorly that night and was generally miserable. It felt like a betrayal to have someone I'd worked so closely with for 20+ years let go. The biggest relief on the emotional side has been David himself saying he'd been feeling burned out, and this actually felt more like an opportunity for him. He's taking a couple weeks with his new car to take a road trip before looking for work, and he generally seems okay now.
It's been expressed that they want to hire someone back into the department and get us up to three again, but that's probably at least six months out and maybe longer, depending on how things go. That sounds silly in some ways, but business is business, as they say. Our now-direct manager, who is himself just under the CEO, also said he understands this is putting a whole lot on the two of us who remain. He's encouraging use of outside/contracted support as-needed. Part of the reasoning behind our recent ISP switch was so our router/firewall could be managed by them rather than us.
So, yeah, no more working nights with any regularity. Though we are still given flexibility in our schedules, so I could come in late and work late one day if there's something I need to do at night. Scott and I (that's weird to say) will have to coordinate time off and off-hour coverage. We'll have to learn more about the things we're unfamiliar with. I feel there's a crap-ton of knowledge I need to offload, so I'm not the only source of it, but I think a lot of that will just have to come out as we go forward. I can't think of everything to info-dump at once.
The change in dynamics is inevitably awkward, but I think we'll make do. In a way, it's actually exciting to have to deal with things being shaken up without a full-on crisis. I won't go so far as to say I feel "good" about it, but I'm okay. 'course, I will miss getting more rest when working nights. I sure hope my body adjusts and I don't feel compelled to head to bed at 10 every night.
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