250 pages of notes

My company had another round of retrenchments last week. It happens more often than not at this time of year. Management are charming like that. There were two of us left with similar skill sets – down from I think five. My colleague concentrated more on installations, and I focused on monitoring and supporting productive systems. My colleague was one of those let go.

If I heard right, and it would follow previous form, the local management was ordered by the international management to remove certain people so that the utilisation reports would look better for the shareholders.

It didn’t matter that my colleague was required for the company to put together demo systems for prospective clients, or setup the landscape for any new projects we might win. We must make the international CEO look – temporarily, better.

There was an article doing the newspaper rounds recently about the Japanese Billionaire Kazuo Inamori, who was quoted as saying focusing on shareholders was wrong. Management should ensure their staff were happy, and that would in turn lead to shareholder profits. If you want eggs, take care of the hen,” Inamori says. “If you bully or kill the hen, it’s not going to work.”

I’ve known for most of this year that there was no future at the company, and that staying was damaging my career. It was however convenient – and well, change is scary. I’ve decided however enough is enough, and I should be resigning tomorrow. I plan to take 3 months off, then decide what to do next. I might start my own business doing the same sort of role, or buy a business, or try to get one of the rare jobs advertised in my area of expertise, or even re-skill to do something completely different. I may be out of work for a while. If I had a different personality I would be excited by the possibilities.

Because I am feeling out of my comfort zone, I’ve been cleaning, sorting and ordering things, as it helps me mentally. One of those mini tasks was to clean up some of my Blogging notes, which hit 250 pages! I started at the bottom and managed to remove 30 pages of notes and half-finished posts, which were from early 2011.

It was interesting how many topics are still being bantered about – such as the relationship between CCP and the players, why nerfing Hi-Sec would not fix Null-Sec, why Hi-Sec should have development time spent on it. The list goes on. There was what appeared to be a completed post which I am not sure I ever uploaded. It outlined what ships my characters had and where they were located. I thought I would copy in what I had to say about my Main Character back in early 2011:

“My Main is in a player Corp. He is just about to hit 90M SP. He has assets in 9 systems. One is in low sec, and contains a Helios, Cyno Ship, and spare fuel for his carrier. One jump across into Empire is where he stores equipment to move into low sec when it is safe. He keeps a Falcon there. He has two PVE bases, although they have not seen much use for a while. He has a Tengu, Rattlesnake, Noctis and Iteron V at one, and a Nighthawk, Noctis and Badger Mk II at the second. Almost forgotten he has a collection of Cosmos items in a faraway corner of space. In his Corp’s Empire base, he has an Exequror, Occator, and an Orca for hauling. He has a Basilisk, Scimitar and Megathron set up for Incursions, and a Covetor, Mackinaw and Hulk for joining mining ops. There is also an Anathema, Noctis, Drake, Dramiel, Nighthawk and Retribution there in either PVE or PVP fit. At his Corp’s NPC 0.0 base is a mass of ships. A couple Cyno ships, a Viator for Hauling, and a Cyclone and Ishtar for PVE. For PVP there are 2 Battlecruisers, a Combat Recon, 2 Covert Ops, 5 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 7 Force Recon, 3 Interceptors, 4 Interdictors, 2 Logistics and 3 Stealth Bombers. He also keeps his Archon there. His final base is where he keeps a large collection of spares and odds and ends collected over years of playing. There is a Buzzard, Raptor and Badger Mk II there at the moment.”