It's been a ridiculously up and down week so far. The short story is, there were layoffs, I got reorganized into a different team underneath the manager I last had (last year).
The longer story: the new team is exciting, the new (old) manager is fantastic, and I'm looking forward to moving along. The bad thing? Well, initially they told me I'd have to commute down to San Jose (for those of you who aren't local and/or know where I live, that's about 40 miles) 4-5 days a week. This would, of course, more or less stomp down on a) any kind of hostess duty I normally do, having people over to my house, and b) any martial arts activity I could do during the weekday, since that's up in Berkeley, about a 1-1.5 hour drive up from SJ one way (and I live right in between).
Well, I told my new manager what I was concerned about, he said he'd check with his manager on it, and I went home, a bucket full of repressed emotion. I really wanted ot make this work, but seriously? That long of a commute, day in and day out? 3 hours of taking public transit minimum, if there's no traffic? 1.5 hours of driving a day if there's no traffic, and more if there is? My heart was basically being begged to be scooped out with a spork and stabbed repeatedly with a dull knitting needle.
And that's not saying anything about the relationships I've built there for the past four years. Well, I felt tighter and tighter, like a board about to break, and was basically just spinning myself into a corner. And then, finally, I got down to business and started to really examine issues of faith and trust, and ended up realizing that there could, after all, be a purpose to it all. And afterward, I just tossed in a prayer for being able to stay in SF or working from home twice a week.
Well, I got it in spades - turns out I'll only have to be in SJ 1-2 times a week. This is suboptimal but oh so much better. I signed my offer letter, turned it in, and got to the business of paying attention to everyone else.
It's ugly - really ugly. A lot of good people were let go, people who were longtime, faithful employees. It was really hard to see, and I'm guessing there will be a pall over many an office over the next couple of weeks. I know my current manager was going around trying to make sure people were okay. I'd only worked with some of my current coworkers for about a year, and it's just not the same as if you've been in the same group for eight years. You live your life together, trade pictures of your cats, your kids, your cars, share your passions, dreams, and frustrations with each other. And then in one day, unexpectedly, that camaraderie goes away. It's almost like having a death in the family.
We lost a number of people in my old team, some of whom were on my team when I started in 2005. Those, for the most part, were offered jobs within the company but decided not to take them. I guess I feel less sorry about them, because they made a choice to go, but I'm sad that it was pushed on them like this. I think a lot of my old team was pretty resentful after the successes of our products:
http://mobile.photoshop.com/android/http://mobile.photoshop.com/iphone/in the past couple of weeks. It's good to end on a happy note, but it's pretty rough on us all.
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