Been a while
Dec. 21st, 2004 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdsince I wrote anything here. I'd rather use email.
Most of my life revolves around work these days, because being on call a week out of every month puts the kibosh on theater.
The company is losing important people en masse. It feels like being in the Bush Administration. So far we have lost our CFO, Controller, a finance admin, VP of engineering, director of Professional Services (the guy who hired me) and one of our sales engineers. There was an all-hands meeting this morning which was attended by most of the 40 or so employees. The CEO and the new COO tried to put a good light on things, but they are operating on the assumption that we have a good solid product, and we're not quite there yet. We need more engineers, more QA people, a QA manager and some quality standards.
In their favor, they did tell us they will be hiring more support engineers and sales engineers, which is a Very Good Thing. They also presented a couple of spreadsheets of numbers which they think are conservative estimates, but I'm not so sure about that. But it's miles better than the smoke-and-mirrors games I saw at HP.
Since I'm your basic atheist who never has done the Jesus thing, I volunteered to work during the company shutdown, and be on call for the rest of the year starting Thursday. Then I volunteered to go to Utah the following week and install a couple of systems near SLC. Mostly to get more hands-on experience at customer sites, but also to collect brownie points. I'm generally allergic to winter, but there's some karma involved here. I used to work for this company back in 2001, and at about the same time that year there was a Delta flight with my name on it heading for Boulder, where I was supposed to co-teach a company class. That morning on the way back from my mailbox, I couldn't breathe, so stupidly I hopped into the car and took myself to the clinic. Should have called a tax or ambulance, but what the heck, I'm immortal, right?
So I get to see the doctor after 15 minutes or so, he takes one look at what he calls my swollen ankles and staples me to the next nurse on her way to the ER. I got hooked up to oxygen, blood sampled, and left there for a few hours. Somewhere during that ordeal I phoned the fellow I was supposed to be traveling with to Boulder, and told him I would not be making it.
Apparently he did fine without me. But as a result, my karma owes the company a business trip somewhere cold in the winter.
Most of my life revolves around work these days, because being on call a week out of every month puts the kibosh on theater.
The company is losing important people en masse. It feels like being in the Bush Administration. So far we have lost our CFO, Controller, a finance admin, VP of engineering, director of Professional Services (the guy who hired me) and one of our sales engineers. There was an all-hands meeting this morning which was attended by most of the 40 or so employees. The CEO and the new COO tried to put a good light on things, but they are operating on the assumption that we have a good solid product, and we're not quite there yet. We need more engineers, more QA people, a QA manager and some quality standards.
In their favor, they did tell us they will be hiring more support engineers and sales engineers, which is a Very Good Thing. They also presented a couple of spreadsheets of numbers which they think are conservative estimates, but I'm not so sure about that. But it's miles better than the smoke-and-mirrors games I saw at HP.
Since I'm your basic atheist who never has done the Jesus thing, I volunteered to work during the company shutdown, and be on call for the rest of the year starting Thursday. Then I volunteered to go to Utah the following week and install a couple of systems near SLC. Mostly to get more hands-on experience at customer sites, but also to collect brownie points. I'm generally allergic to winter, but there's some karma involved here. I used to work for this company back in 2001, and at about the same time that year there was a Delta flight with my name on it heading for Boulder, where I was supposed to co-teach a company class. That morning on the way back from my mailbox, I couldn't breathe, so stupidly I hopped into the car and took myself to the clinic. Should have called a tax or ambulance, but what the heck, I'm immortal, right?
So I get to see the doctor after 15 minutes or so, he takes one look at what he calls my swollen ankles and staples me to the next nurse on her way to the ER. I got hooked up to oxygen, blood sampled, and left there for a few hours. Somewhere during that ordeal I phoned the fellow I was supposed to be traveling with to Boulder, and told him I would not be making it.
Apparently he did fine without me. But as a result, my karma owes the company a business trip somewhere cold in the winter.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-22 07:09 pm (UTC)Like, if I had to miss being on a con panel because I was sick, I would volunteer for being on a panel the next time the con rolled around.