The Day After
Many years ago, The Day After was a TV-movie about the aftermath of a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR. It was a wild movie about living with the effects of the radiation, etc. Well, I feel a little like I'm living that movie right now at work.
The 'bodies' are starting to be cleared and the work assumed to be taken up by those of us remaining. The final tally was that more than half of the developers were cut and about a third of the support staff. In all, half the IT force was cut. Incredible. I'm trying to pick up work of two others that are already being requested by other divisions in the Bank, so it's going to be a quick and rough hand-off and hope that things work out. Not a lot of time to make a smooth transition as the two I'm assuming are going to be out by Monday. That gives me a few precious days to get things in order.
Forget that these guys are my friends, and also forget that management is now interested in pushing things forward now that their hard part is done... this is a very high stress time to be here. But I have to admit that it's still nice to have a job and not be on the street.
I'm trying to keep focused on the Big Picture... things are tough, but they've decided to keep me - probably because they can get more out of me than the guys they are getting rid of. Maybe it's a good sign, maybe not. It's just like The Day After... who's the lucky one - the one that survives the blast, or the one that's at ground zero? Hard to tell...