Well that's it.....GET OUT !!

It was only meant to be a 6 month contract but in the end was just over two years, but now it's come to an end, mainly because I didn't want to move to Rotherham or Mumbai in India, so had to take redundancy, so I'm officially unemployed as of yesterday the 31st October, bit of a bummer but there you go that's business for you, somebody has to take the fall, and at least I wasn't sacked for incompetence or lack of performance, in fact my annual review was more than pretty damn good and I had glowing references and was recommended for a pay rise, due to the improvements I had made to the procedures, however it was more a case of last in, first out, as is usually the case, I feel sorry for some of them quite a few are VERY close to retirement and they have seen their pensions slashed by the trillions lopped off their investment fund pensions by the credit crunch and they have very little hope of being kept on to top it up.

The HR man who gave me the redundancy news even told me that he would be perfectly happy to give me a more than deserved verbal reference which is outside of the company policy of only supplying references through the HR department, which is unheard of, but he couldn't put anything in writing as he would be hung drawn and quartered if they found out, as did my old line manager, so I must have been doing something right whilst working there :).... plus I wasn't escorted off the premises by two security guards, which is the usual policy when somebody who has had access to an entire corporate network infrastructure, including all the passwords (well I set most if not all of them) it must be a worrying time for them though "hoping" their ex employee's don't go off the rails and bring their systems grinding to a halt, which is probably why I am gagged by a confidentiality agreement not to divulge sensitive information or bad mouth the company until 12 months have passed (weird ?)

Anyways I have no complaints about the company, they did ok by me :¬) plus I got a leaving present !! a bottle of Capt Morgan Rum and a card signed by the remainder of the office staff, after the "week of the long knives" they have been put through.... the lucky few or is that unlucky ? insomuch as they now have three times more work to do with the same pay !!! unlucky methinks :¬)

I've got to admit, the job was becoming a little stale, I had done all the improvements to the LAN and servers that could possibly be done, it was "tweaked for maximum smoke" I had automated most if not all of the mundane tasks whilst there, so things were becoming VERY routine and required very little thought to resolve the problems as they presented, so in a way I'm glad I was made redundant but it doesn't help on the cash front, but a man of my talents won't be sitting around for very long, I do have irons in the fire, and if push comes to a shove I will get a job wherever that might be, and not necessarily in IT, although I will have to dumb down my CV, it wouldn't look very good an "IT Guru" applying for a job sweeping floors at B&Q.... they might detect that I'm not really serious about staying employed there ;¬)

it's pretty hard though how do you explain away the last 18 or more so years of "high tech" employment ? and your motivation for taking a manual job ? "ohhhh I fancied a change !!" ..... GET OUT !!!

The only thing that concerns me is that with the current economic climate this isn't the best time to be made redundant, and employers are laying off rather than taking on, so we shall have to see.