This has been a crazy week for the IT industry… My Company (Sun Microsystems) started letting people go yesterday (1st round was bout 1,400), Microsoft, IBM and others announced large reductions in staff as well. Yesterday morning I got up early to post some artwork and an Interview with a Sun collegue (David Van Couvering, you can read his Blog HERE) about some pretty cool MySQL database features being built into NetBeans, but instead of showcasing this, everything was pulled because David had a 30 minute 1:1 with his Manager and was let go, he has a pretty sweet article on his Blog about what it’s like being laid off and how he’s dealing with it.
Blog Post: The Emotional Stages of Being Laid Off
Another colleague of mine was very, well let’s be honest… PISSED OFF, DISGUSTED, ASHAMED, ALL OF THE ABOVE with Microsoft… (Blog Post: Microsoft, Shame on you) His argument was basically ‘HEY MS, DID YOU MISS OBAMA’S SPEECH ABOUT CHANGE? You made 4+ BILLION in revenues and are still letting go 5,000 people!’ I thought he had an excellent point overall, however I’m still not sure what to think about everything that is going down in the world lately.
I’ve been through many layoffs before and was effected by one in 2005, but they never get any easier. Watching all the ‘Good Bye’ emails come through and waiting for your manager’s name to pop up on the caller ID makes for a horrible and let’s face it an un-productive day. In the end it ussually works out for the best, you eventually find another job (most of the time better than the one you had), start down a new career path or retire and live out your days fly fishing in Alaska…
My point in writing this was to post the banners that would otherwise never see the light of day and to try and make sense of everything that is going on.
-Big A
MySQL & Sun - NetBeans Banner
MySQL & Sun - Glassfish Banner
