My Employment Stress

It's been a crazy and stressful month, to say the least. The ax fell two weeks ago and my worst fear was realized. I got laid off. The company 5% staff reduction (rumored to be much more than 5%) affected pretty much all of our office. Our corporate VP flew into Seattle two weeks ago to discuss "future business plans". In reality, she flew in with an entourage of HR staff to reduce her staff. Out of almost 100 employees in the office, only 23 were left after the reduction. Development, test, program management, and several other departments were all wiped out, completely. Although most of us saw this coming, it was still shocking to watch them "clean the house". All of a sudden, all that we had worked for was no longer relevant. The deadlines, the pressure, and the commitments all disappeared with one announcement.

I had never been laid off before, so all this was new experience to me. I had, however, watched former co-workers get laid off at Infowave when I was a co-op there. I have to say now that watching somebody get laid off is entirely different from being laid off myself. When the announcement was first made, when I first got the little purple folder which contained my severance information and whatnot, I was almost relieved to hear the news. Maybe I had been anticipating it for too long and it felt nice to finally know something concrete. At least now I knew I no longer had a job instead of not knowing whether I would have one tomorrow. It was satisfying just to know my fate, instead of waiting for it to unfold.

That satisfaction, however, did not last long. Motorola gave us two weeks of grace period to basically wrap things up and look for a new job. But I knew in two weeks I would be out of a job. The consequences were greater than having no income for me. I am in the U.S. on a work visa. Without employment, I technically cannot stay here. Suddenly, all these problems started to weigh in on me. Loss of a job, visa problems, mortgage payments...since when was I supposed to know how to solve these problems. I remember my mother solving these kinds of problems not long ago. When had the torch been passed on to me?

But in life, there is no time to ponder, no time to question, no time to doubt. There is only time to accomplish, to "do". Before the layoff announcement was official, I kind of saw the storm coming and started applying to some jobs already. After the official announcement, all I could do was keep applying and preparing myself for those dreaded technical interviews.

Perhaps the experience of applying for co-op jobs during the Dotcom bust is still haunting me, but I worried constantly that I wouldn't find a job, I wouldn't get my visa renewed, and I would leave the country. I don't know how my mother did it all these years, weathering all these setbacks and hardships in life, but now that I am getting a taste of it, I know it's not easy. Nevertheless, aside from the stress of unemployment, the search for new employment also brought about a sense of excitement. After working at Motorola for close to two years, I was growing a little bored of my job. It was exciting to think about working in different companies such as Amazon or Google, companies that I've also longed to work for.

To find out more, read the next post. :)