Yes!
Another month of my life is gone, and one month closer to being out of a job.
We’ll start there, I guess. Ed Whitacre (CEO of AT&T) announced last week that he’ll be retiring next month. Along with Duane Ackerman (CEO of BellSouth). I think it’s wonderful that these two wizened gentlemen will both be able to hit the links and drink umbrella drinks on their verandas knowing that they were able to work together to forge a union between two of the largest companies on earth and screw 10K to 15K little people out of jobs. Good for them.
I’m not bitter.
Our affiliate’s president has been given his marching orders for the rest of the year. #1: Cut headcount by “double digits.” I don’t know why this has to be classified information. That just means it’s somewhere between 10 and 99, right? #2: Don’t spend any money.
Let’s go into a bit of detail here. One of the president’s direct reports is my boss’ boss. Due to a convoluted system of bureaucracy, she found herself in a position of working for two different bosses a few weeks ago – our president and a VP of a delivery (systems and apps – not packages) affiliate. She decided that this was too much for her and asked to choose just one boss. Logical enough, right? Certainly.
Amazingly, she decided that she wanted to work for our president – meaning that everyone under her also went to that side of things. When I was told this at a lunch by my boss, I asked, “Wouldn’t it be better for US if we went with delivery? Everyone knows that our affiliate won’t exist in a year, but delivery WILL.”
I got a straight answer from my boss. “Yes.”
Last week, when we were told about the headcount reductions, etc., my first response to my boss was, “So why don’t we get realigned with delivery and just “contract” back to BEI until it goes away – at which point, we’ll hopefully still have jobs somewhere else.” It took a few minutes for this to sink in, but once my boss got the idea, she took it to HER boss – who was somehow taken aback by it and asked, “Why would they want to do that? Where’s the loyalty?”
Loyalty? Are you JOKING?
My two directs are both contractors and both have expressed a desire to find work elsewhere. And my boss’ boss can’t understand why.
Am I really that dense? Am I missing something here?
On a related note, in spite of the headcount issue, we still have to keep a product going out the door for the next 6 or 7 months – meaning that more and more work is going to get dumped on a very small handful of people – and those people will probably NOT be allowed to transfer to another division of AT&T.
Let me rephrase that so everybody gets the picture here. We currently have two UNIX administrators and one Windows administrator. Take a guess at which three people are not going to be fired until the business is dead – and which three people are not going to be allowed to find work (within AT&T) elsewhere.
Loyalty? Are you freaking kidding me??
And don’t think that I’m over-reacting. I know of one programmer in my company who was ALREADY denied the right to leave after he found a great job in another affiliate.
I have no loyalty to this company. I haven’t for the last 5 years. What I have no is closer to emnity.
Enough ranting. I think I’ve gotten most of it out.
The GBB received the tapes with the judges’ comments from NABBA last week. Overall, they were all very complimentary; pointing out obvious mistakes but throwing in a large number of very positive comments. One in particular, made by Sheona White (without question the best tenor horn player in the world), made my day:
“Really some stunning tuba sound coming from this band.”
It is very immodest to say so, but we (the tuba section) know that we’re good. It’s just really nice to hear it from a person of Sheona’s stature.
I’ve got a rehearsal with the GBB tonight (the last before our concert next week), a rehearsal with a quartet tomorrow night, and a performance at the Atlanta Symphony Showhouse (with the quartet) on Thursday. Also had a rehearsal with the church “orchestra” this past Sunday (still an awful experience), so my chops are getting a workout this week. In the quartet, by the way, I’ll be playing euphonium. THAT will be an adventure. I haven’t played a Bb horn reading bass clef (other than bone) in about 6 years.
I think we’ve got two more gigs at the ASO Showhouse in the next few weeks, but I’ll be playing tuba on the rest of them.
Last Saturday, I finally learned how to read music on my electric bass. I’ve had the thing for about 5 years, but have always amused myself by just doodling on it and jamming with various CDs by ear. Last Easter, I played a really cool cantata at the church and I asked the librarian to pleeeeaaasssse give me copies of the percussion parts so that I could try to play the bass along with the practice recording (we get those from the church. I don’t actually use them to practice – I just listen to them).
So I got the scores last weekend and immediately took out the bass and spent a few hours actually playing. I know that most of you will not understand this, but it was SO DAMNED EXCITING to learn how to read music. Now, instead of thinking, “Play this note here on the 1st fret of the second string and it’ll sound neato,” I get to think, “Play a Bb – that’s what’s written.”
Just way cool to me. Cool enough, in fact, that I actually DID play the thing until my fingers were in a great deal of pain. And I wasn’t bad!
Keith and Dennis are now both moved in, and we’ve redecorated my piano room. It is now a music/playstation/futon room – complete with a lava lamp. Actually a pretty cool room, and it’s nice to be using all that space that was heretofore pretty empty.
Wow. I’ve typed a lot here. I guess I should go take a shower and get to work.
Loyalty and all that.
TWD