Oct 16
Ray PiercePeople Lubbock, nieces, People, Photography, stress, visit, Work
My parents bought me a ticket to fly home so that I could see my nieces and visit the family for my birthday. Well I fly out tomorrow morning. I’m really excited to see how much Kennedy has changed in the past 5 months. I’m also really excited about see Mehkya, she changes so much every time I see her. It’s also nice to be the center of attention for a while.
This trip couldn’t come at a better time for me. Work has really been stressing me out. It seems like everything is coming to a head all at once, and everything is bursting from the seams. I’ve had so many unanticipated issues come up over the past few weeks. It will be nice to get to relax, spend time with my family, and not have to worry about the work.
While I’m hoping to take some photos of the kids, show my sister some of the ins and outs of what I’ve learned about photography, eat lunch with my oldest niece at her school, see my Dad’s new shop he built, have a big family fish fry, visit with my extended family, visit the Buddy Holly Museum, and just generally decompress.
Hopefully, I can come back into the office on Monday and be not so stressed and deal with everything.
Jul 01
Ray PierceWork aquire, Austin, bankruptcy, benefits, contract, job, Texas, Work
I thought it was time to write something up about my job situation. You may have read about the trial and tribulations I’ve had in the past few months here.
So how this all played out. My old company went bankrupt, filed Chapter 11, and while in bankruptcy decided to sell off all of it’s assets even though they didn’t file Chapter 7. In the process of doing all of this they lost the bid on the 10 year contract we were working on. That sort of wraps up the basics leading up to now.
At this point we were pretty much in limbo as to how things were going to turn out. Were we going to have positions? How long would we have them? How would we find new jobs in this economy? Would they start scaling back immediately? These are all questions that were running through all of our heads, plus many more. Our competitor on the rebid process ultimately became the lone company vying for that contract. Draw your own conclusion there.
So the fire sale at my old company continued. Our Public Services group, which includes all Federal, State, and Local Government contracts was sold to a large auditing and consulting firm. Hugely complex deal because there hadn’t been a company like ours go into bankruptcy before. So a lot of how things transpired in Bankruptcy court were happening for the first time for everyone. There are still some issues that need to be resolved with PTO, but that’s a completely different rant. Long story short the auditing/consulting firm that bought Public Services had audit conflicts with our particular contract. They weren’t allowed to own it. So they went shopping for a bidder for this contract.
What makes sense for a company about to win a 10 year contract with the remainder of the contract up for sale? Well of course you snatch up that contract and get the ball rolling to make a good impression to the clients you are about to be servicing. At this point the competitor in the rebid process buys the remainder of our contract. The problem with that is that there was a lot of negotiating between the audit/consulting firm and the buyer about who owns what Intellectual property, how to do charge backs, who’s going to work for who, etc. etc. The one thing that I left out was the the audit/consulting firm was also a subcontracting consulting for pieces of the rebid effort. Plain and simple that just made things complicated. It’s almost like a chicken and the egg scenario. A huge problem for myself and coworkers was that during this 4-6 process there was next to nothing being communicated to us. Everyone was pretty panicked, so they all went out and were looking for jobs. In the end everything was worked out for the two companies, at least theoretically. Nothing ever turns out to be the same in reality or logistically like it’s supposed to.
Neither company were obligated legally to hire the people that were working on the contracts, but it made sense for both of them to hire most of the current staff to work on it again. There were definitely some cuts made, but they were fairly limited and strategic from my point of view. Then again, I wasn’t the one getting laid off this time. Of course there were a few selections that I question and I think they would have been really valuable for the company. So as it turns out, I got my offer to work for the new company, same title and salary. They will more than likely be the winner of the new contract for the state portal. (again not official yet) They own the remainder of the current contract for the state portal (ends at the end of the year). Things are looking pretty rosy, I’ve still got a job.
During our on boarding meeting we found out a lot of information about the new company and how they operate. There’s no other way to describe their benefits other than “killer”. They are paying for out parking up to $150/mo., our insurance (health, dental, vision, life) for employee and dependents, and to top it off they put in free soft drinks and snacks in the break room. This almost sounds like the dot com days. I mean who wouldn’t want those benefits. So I essentially got a $5000 raise without doing anything. SWEET!!!
Granted there are a few growing pains involved. I had to give up my window view of down town Austin, and I’m now in the loudest part of the building. We will be moving again for a short duration to another floor in the building due to some bankruptcy issues with office lease still being owned by former company. Long term we will be moving yet again to another building that hopefully isn’t so drab. It’s still being worked out so we’ll see soon enough how it pans out.
Work wise, I’m doing exactly the same things I was doing before. I’m actually getting to work on some projects that I wanted to work on. I’ve got some upcoming projects now that I’m really excited about working on. I’m going to get to use some new technology that’s applicable to other job situations that I may encounter over my career. I’m still working with a great development team. All in all this has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It’s only been a month under the new company, but I hope that it lasts.
Apr 22
Ray PierceWork bankruptcy, job, misled, Work
Good pay, good benefits, good boss, good coworkers, career path and objectives, work that I was proud of, etc. I thought I had found it all neatly packaged up here, my dream job. Things were peachy.
In October the news started to roll in. My company was not doing well overall as a company. Our contract was doing well, but not enough to buoy such a massive company. With the way the economy was heading nothing seemed that alarming.
Then November rolls around and the news that my company was going to be delisted from the NYSE, and do a 1:50 reverse stock split. This raised some red flags as I’ve been through this before with previous companies. Again nothing that we couldn’t come out of, but something that I should have paid more attention to.
Then we find out in February/March time frame that my company (corporate) is going to be filing chapter 11 bankruptcy. With the economy the way it is going and the climate in which we are operating in, this seemed like a good idea. Or at least that’s what our Managing Director (MD) painted it as. Lots of other companies are doing it right now, and the stigma of filing it would be mitigated somewhat because of the amount of companies doing it. A little restructuring of our debt….in and out in a couple of months…no problem. This is where I feel that I drank the Kool-aid so to speak. I didn’t get that alarmed because the MD kept reassuring us that we wouldn’t have any problems winning the rebid on the State portal contract (our money maker), and that we would actually come out of chapter 11 a stronger company and better positioned. It all sounded good, it all made sense. We were even reassured that we had contingency plans in place.
Then the big bombs started dropping. We were told that my company was going to be selling off Public Services, of which the state portal contract is a part of, to a huge auditing/consulting company. This would have been great for us. A large stable company that was trying to grow in the government consulting space. But lo and behold the buyer has an auditing business. Come to find out, they can’t actually own our contract because of the auditing conflicts with our mutual clients. So we aren’t really sure how this is going to play out. Are contingency plans going to kick in, is my company going to sell us to someone else, is the state going to step in, etc. A little noticed point in all of this was that my company sure looked to be positioning themselves for chapter 7 bankruptcy as opposed to the chapter 11 they filed. They started selling off their core assests/business units.
So at this point we have yet another company meeting and we are again reassured that we have contingency plans in place and that we would start trying to get the ball rolling on those. Again, sounds good, made sense at the time, but what was downplayed was the inconceivable scenario where we don’t actually win the state portal contract rebid. Again another Kool-aid moment.
So the biggest of bombs is dropped on us Tuesday morning. We received a letter from the State’s contract department, basically stating that we were no longer in the running for the state portal contract rebid. So all of the reassuring that had been given to us was in fact in error. Right now the State can’t tell us anything about the bid process because they are still in the procurement process for the rebid, but there is a lot of educated speculation as to why we weren’t invited to continue in the process. It’s assumed that the State’s contract department couldn’t justify giving the contract to a company who essentially didn’t have any financial backing what so ever. Leading up the meeting we found out that our so called “contingency plan” was a no go, because the SEC had some issues with some of my companies accounting practices for the state portal contract. Way to do due diligence!
And even during this meeting the MD is trying to mitigate how bad this really is. For 3 company meetings straight now, he’s mitigated the downside of the scenarios. And after all 3 meetings the worst case scenario has happened. I’m not putting much stock into the rosy picture that he’s trying to paint. Also this meeting is the first time that he directly mentions that my company (corporate) will more than likely be filing chapter 7 bankruptcy. Again, he tried to reassure us that we as the state portal contract team would be purchased by someone else by the time they file that. (Yeah, and I’ve got a bridge in Arizona to sell you.)
So now it appears that my dream job has just disappeared from underneath my feet. I’m now starting a job search not of my own choosing, in a horrible economic climate. Yeah me! The only glimmer of hope is that I’ll have a small amount of job security while we transition our work over to the new TOL contract owner. But that is a fleeting amount of security at best.
My head is spinning with all the things that are going on and I’m still trying to figure out which way is up. I hope that I can just land on my feet.
Mar 10
Ray PierceWork goals, performance, stupid, Work
So it’s that time of year at my company when you set your performance goals for the year. I’ve been in the workforce long enough to know that no one likes doing these things, no one takes them serious, and no one ever holds anyone accountable for them.
I think one of the most frustrating things about the whole process is that you are spoon fed exactly what to put in the form so it makes you look like you are thinking solely of the company. Nothing ever directly relates to what you are really wanting to do. For example, in my own mind my #1 goal would be, “Don’t do anything to get fired”. But in reality my goal will be something like “Try to streamline our build process to shorten the time to live for our customer while saving oodles of cash”. While that may sound good odds are that is totally arbitrary and not attainable for me, because I’m at the mercy of my developers.
My top goals would be:
- don’t get fired
- do the best job that you can
- don’t piss off too many people
Those goals are generic and apply to just about any position. You don’t need anything more than that.
But alas, I’ll be trying to figure out the corporate lingo I need to use to make and my boss look better just to tow the company line. I feel so weak.
Sep 11
Ray PierceWork hurricane, Ike, rain, weather, Work
Well it looks like Austin might be affected by Ike this weekend. That’s not to say that we will have a hurricane 3 1/2 hours inland, but the storm is pretty massive. We (Austin) will probably have elevated winds and a lot of rain. Not that we don’t need the rain, but it would be nice to have it spread out over time instead of in a large bunches.
At my office, some of my work is going to get delayed it seems by the storm because of outside chances that we may lose electricity. Personally, I’m thinking that is a very remote possibility. But like they say, “Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.” Some of it is prudent planning for other places in the State that might be affected by the storm, it just delays some projects that I’m working on specifically.
As my wet finger weather indicator goes, I’ll bet that we have higher than normal winds and several inches of rain. Nothing that a thunderstorm wouldn’t throw at us. Hell I might be more accurate than some of the local weathermen. 
All in all, we aren’t really in harms way, we’ll just be wet.
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