I don't know how to say goodbye

    I've been through a number of downsizings at Sun. I even ended up on the down side of one of the early ones, but found a new position just before taking a job elsewhere. I work with many fun, talented people, and I've shaken my head at some of the folks let go in the past. But I'm still getting over the number of people I knew well and worked with, and the number of really talented, top notch employees who got let go on Thursday. Some of these folks where in high demand, both by sales teams and customers. These same folks drove a lot of training in hot, important technology topics, like Solaris, virtualization, consolidation, ZFS, Zones, etc, and they are gone. I really hope that they find another opening at Sun, now or soon. I have no doubt that many of these folks will be in high demand, even in a tough market like this. And I wish I could tell them this personally.

    I guess this time I'm coming to the realization that through all the other rounds of layoffs, I didn't pay enough attention to how to gracefully and comfortably keep connections with the people I knew who were being let go. I'd keep my eyes open to openings, and let someone know if I thought they might be interested, but there usually weren't many such opportunities. I don't drink alcoholic beverages, and particularly these days many of them aren't local, so going out for a beer would have been awkward at best. Maybe some of the new crop of social networking technologies, like Twitter, IM, SecondLife, Facebook, will make it easier going forward, but I know friends on these who have left and haven't been on them much since. Commiserating with friends still here takes some of the shock away. I just need to find a way to stay connected with them if they go, by their choice or Sun's.

    This isn't how I really want to do this, but for the moment it's something. All my friends let go by Sun this week, not goodbye, but till we meet again.

Posted at 11:21PM Jul 11, 2008 by dragonfly in General  |  Comments[1]