Grave Detail

Getting 1/3rd of the folks removed from your company’s IT systems is always quite a bit of work, especially when one of those folks had admin rights to your company network.  I was fortunate that IT only lost one person.  Every certificate and key the company had must be considered to be compromised, so there’s much re-keying and re-provisioning of certificates that needs to be done.  Not to mention cleaning everyone who got the axe out of all the groups.  The folks who got the chop often want personal files, contacts, and calendar information.  All that stuff has to be gone through to make sure it’s not company secrets.  This essentially means my projects are all on hold, and my schedule has just been shot up.

I’ve survived probably a dozen layoffs over my 11 year career, and I’ve always ended up wondering who really was on the wrong end of the deal.  But in this economy I’m happy to still have a job.  The key to surviving layoffs is to be indispensable.  One reason I’ve resisted taking paper pushing management jobs is because in my experience, those people tend to be expendible.  While I am at a management level on paper, I still get my hands dirty, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  The company I work for is still a listing vessel with a leaky hull trying to right herself in the Biotech Sea.  Now we’re operating with a skeleton crew.  We’re either going to get to port with the crew we have remaining, or the ship is going to sink.  The next few months will be critical.