Seven years in the Nashua office, now it's time to go home.
Wednesday Nov 26, 2008
Seven and a half years ago, Sun opened a satellite office in Nashua, New Hampshire. This was particularly handy for me, because I lived in Nashua and I hated driving the 20 miles down to Burlington, Massachusetts each day. It was quite a change for me, because it meant giving up my desktop system and using a Sun Ray exclusively. That actually turned out to be easier than I thought.
In all that time, Sun has been undergoing some pretty hard times. Every time a new round of cut backs was announced, we were all sure that this time they were going to close the Nashua office. After all, it was benefiting only about 200 people. Then 150 people. Then 100 people. Now a days, there are regularly only about 70 people here. But still our luck help. Until now.
We thought we were still lucky. Last July, a scheme starting being worked out to consolidate the rented space of the Nashua office into one half of one floor. This would allow Sun to spend a lot less on the rental and allow the landlord to rent the other space to another tenant. The problem was that the telephone and server rooms were in the other half of the building, so to consolidate, we would have to re-wire the building. Despite this problem, it looked like the project was going to go ahead
Alas, it was not meant to be. Our last quarter results came out, and now Sun is committed to knocking about 600 million dollars off of its annual operating costs. The lease is up and Sun has decided not to renew at all, scraping the consolidation plan. On November 6th, we got the word that the office would close in January.
So, what to do? Luckily, Sun offers its employees the option of working from home. Faced with going back to that 45 minute commute and to start paying Massachusetts state income tax, it was pretty much a no brainer. Many of the people in the Nashua office already had home offices, so it was easy for them to switch over.
Unfortunately, I do not have a home office and there isn't any room for one at my house in the current living space. That leaves only the non-heated areas, namely the attic or the basement. The attic would be problematic, since it is essentially outdoors, with the temperature going below zero in the winter and up to a 115 in the summer. The basement is considerably more hospitable, ranging between 53 degrees in the winter to about 65 in the summer. The basement it is!
As things started progressing and we found out more about the shutdown of the office, we discovered that although Sun had to be out of the building in January, the removal of all of the Sun equipment would take a couple of weeks, so in reality, the last day I can work in the building is December 18th. Ouch, time is getting tight.
So, I plan to chronicle the process of building my office. My wife actually wants me to wait until the week of Christmas to do all of the building, since Sun is closed that week anyway, but I think that is a bad idea. That is exactly the week when it will be hardest to get equipment and approvals, and if I have to order any new equipment it might take a week or two to arrive. So, at this point I have ordered some of the equipment, and hope to get it going in earnest soon. Stay tuned!
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That is one great thing that Sun is really good at...