The Big Send-Off

Yesterday afternoon featured the big party for my old workplace, as they took over the outdoor patio of a downtown restaurant after lunch and well into the evening. I was invited to drop by, and so I spent a couple hours renewing old acquaintances and hearing what everyone is up to next. My arrival there, perhaps inspired by the beautiful Hawaiian shirt I had on, was greeted by probably the loudest welcome I've ever gotten anywhere! (And it included at least one vuvuzela horn blast, for those who've been following the FIFA World Cup on TV.)

From what I can tell, approximately half the people who will be put out of work by end of day tomorrow have already landed their next gig. For them, the severance money they're about to receive will be a bonus that they can do whatever they like with (my advice: RSP or paying down a mortgage... that sort of thinking is why Vicki and I are enjoying the life we are right now, after all). It's not at all surprising that so many landed on their feet so quickly, considering the work that the office's HR manager did to bring companies in for open houses as well as the level of talent present within those walls. For the rest, of course, those funds will tide them over as they continue to look for employment, which hopefully won't take until the money runs out. Here's hoping they fare as well over the course of the next several months as the first group has already.

Among the other topics being discussed yesterday was the popular question of, "Why did the office get shut down?" A variety of possibilities have been floated, ranging from conspiratorial ("They had it in for us!") to pragmatic ("We became too expensive once the Canadian dollar got to par with the U.S. dollar.") to resigned ("I guess we just didn't do a good enough job."). I don't know what the right answer is, and probably never will. But my theory, formed at the time I resigned - when the writing seemed to be on the wall that things were headed downhill - goes like this:

I think we simply didn't "play the game" well enough. What I mean is that we weren't very good at managing the relationship with our American ownership, and that hurt us in all kinds of ways. We didn't set expectations appropriately, and we weren't good at communicating the costs associated with ownership's inability to know what they really wanted from us. One of our development "partners" in this strange relationship, who more often than not were competitors rather than compatriots, ran circles around us when it came to playing the game. They knew how to provide large estimates on things they didn't want to do, how to shift blame from themselves (often onto us) whenever they failed to hold up their own end of the bargain, and they had the bosses' ears (due to both proximity and deftness at politics) in ways that we couldn't hope to match. Our leadership was really never up to that sort of a challenge, and it showed.

For all of those reasons, it was likely never going to work out. On the other hand, lots of us gained valuable experience, as well as collecting a fair-sized paycheque for a number of years. So all things considered, I think it turned out OK.