Another Memorial Day. I didn't really have a subject planned for this one. So maybe I'll just blather a bit, honoring the fallen by enjoying the freedom of speech our veterans gave us. And give myself some cheap therapy at the same time. I'll find a way to tie it all together in the end.
You are Redundant
The last year was an interesting up and down stretch in my life. The most significant event was that I got laid off just before the start of Q4 2025. It was honestly a tough shot to take. I've never been fired for performance-related issues before, and I'm not sure I was for this one, but I do think it was related to me not being the best me that I could be.
I've always been a hard worker. One of my mottos is that "I'm not the smartest, but I'm not the dumbest either, and I'll out work most." But in my last job there was a perfect storm of issues that made it easy for my employer to include me in a cost cutting wave.
First, I was transitioning from a contractor role to full-time. As a contractor you pretty much get a set group of tasks and just do your technical work to participate in a project or support team, then go home. That's it. No annual bullshit HR goal-setting meetings, no trepidation about another rung on the imaginary ladder of self-esteem, no haranguing over bonuses, no expectations of any promotion. Your promotion, bonus, and compensation area all wrapped up into your hourly rate, which is typically higher than the base salary of a full-time worker. So when I went full-time for the first time in over a decade, I had to contend with that shit and it didn't take me long to realize why I enjoyed contracting so much. As a contractor you get to focus on the one thing that matters to clients: work.
Then, and this is probably the most important change, the environment I was jumping into was very different than the previous ones I'd worked in. The way the networks were organized was different, there was a big push to go to the cloud, and security was heavy. I could not install software on my PC without an act of congress. It was also true in the application space; the version of the software we supported was highly customized. There were entire modules of the commercial application the company forewent entirely, instead channeling data to their own internal systems. Some of the internal systems were brilliant and powerful, others were noticeably clunky and behind the times, but nearly all were poorly documented and not intuitively designed. Often the development environment felt like a Frankenstein system, cobbled together from may disparate parts. So with regards to both the core app I supported, all the related custom systems, and the unfamiliar parts of the environment, I really struggled to get comfortable there.
Additionally, the company was highly globalized. My supervisor was located in a time zone where my time zone only overlapped with his for half a day, and he was often very busy and hard to get time with. And in my local office, there was no one on my team that had deep experience with my team's domain. I often felt that I was dumped into a task where there was little context or business analysis provided, and it became clear that either I still lacked deep understanding in some sectors of the space, and/or the proper tutelage in it.
Another factor: this was not the biggest issue, but it bears mentioning that despite a "no assholes" hiring policy at the company, some deviants slipped through the screening. Even with that, I admired that everybody (including the deviants) at the company was really smart and hard working, and I still do.
So, perfect storm. I was gradually learning and making progress, but it was hard going and after two years I felt stressed and uncomfortable there. That was probably a sign I needed a change in environment, but my default stance is to not be a quitter. I soldiered on, sometimes spinning my wheels when I got stuck and didn't know how to get help. When the company executed a large layoff, I'm sure they compared me to peers at the same level and felt I was a candidate for dismissal. They buried the action in corporate speak, but the whole thing felt to me like the old Enron "rank and yank." The timing was such that I got wrapped up in it, largely due to what appeared to be spotty productivity and a few honest mistakes I'd made.
I accept full responsibility for my part in the layoff. As I concede above, I was not comfortable and not delivering the best version of me that I could. I made a couple of mistakes, mostly with minor effects and all repairable; sometimes due to a carelessness on my part, but also aided by some of the clunky tools I noted that made some tasks more difficult. It is fair to also say that the company too needs to accept some of that responsibility.
The company likes technology, which is good, but in the rush to get there, it has left in its wake a mish mash of technologies that don't always connect smoothly. And nothing is given a good guidance to entry. It's my understanding that someone preceding me had voluntarily left, and now I begin to understand why. It's a difficult environment to manage and master. There's a person on the team that's doing well, but that individual started at the bottom and the expectations on the person are different. My predecessor and I came in as experienced resources, but there's no easy way to be experienced in this company's environment unless you were there from the beginning.
In the end, I still respect the company. It generally treats people well, though it's also quick to cut them. But the company was quite fair in separation. I can't give details as I'm under NDA, but overall I do think highly of the company and wish things could have gone differently.
Moving On
The fourth quarter is a tough time to be unemployed. I spent most of it also enduring a hit to my confidence. I'd been laid off before, but only as a contractor, where contracts ended prematurely due to funding issues or project cancelations, not because I wasn't at my best. The ensuing job search was one of the strangest I'd ever been through. The longest I was unemployed before was about five months. It was shortly after Ken Lay and his band of arrogant Enron knuckleheads had fallen and from the end of 2001 to April 2002, there simply wasn't much available in the energy industry and I really struggled. Thank goodness I'd saved and had an emergency fund to live on; I even kept making extra principle payments on my mortgage and didn't take a penny of unemployment (stupid, I realize now, as we employed pay into the unemployment fund so there should be no shame when we claim it).
This time around was just weird. Like 2002, the economy is subject to some strangeness, though this time was due to global events, not so much Houston specifically. So there were opportunities, and during this stretch I managed to get interviews every couple weeks. What was odd about it was that those interviews yielded so many close calls. The interviews went well and I thought for sure something would bear fruit, but something always pulled the opportunity away at the last moment. In some cases, it was that the company I interviewed with liked me but my hiring was contingent on them winning a project and the client ended up going somewhere else. In two others it was because the companies wanted someone with Azure Dev Ops, and unfortunately I hadn't much exposure to it when I was contracting or at my last company (another case where using their proprietary in-house systems hurt me).
In between all these false alarms was a small blessing. I was free to explore model building. And I did. And I learned why so many have claimed modeling works as therapy, helping people keep their hands busy in a creative task. I could burn days in a row focused on building and painting, and not worrying about when the next call for a job would come. Because why worry if it's coming anyway but you just don't know when? Fill that time with something beautiful.
I would find new work in Q1 2026, and what a revelation my new employer has been. For one, the new company has done a great job of implementing the "no assholes" hiring policy. For another, they take a totally different approach to employee support. If you ever run into any problems, there are multiple people that can help and they encourage people to help, to post on the company wikis, and to offer assistance enthusiastically with no shame. It's all about getting things done and furthering everyone's knowledge. They also use Azure Dev Ops, and my current supervisor takes into account my interest in it and is offering opportunities to do work in it. Already I built my first pipeline to roll a build to an environment and I'm learning about how to work with it and how powerful ADO can be. This won't be a resume roadblock if I have to go interviewing again.
But it is full-time. So at some point I will have to deal with those full-time positional expectations. I will have to evaluate is this company is worth sticking it out with to the end (it is) or if I want to shoot for one more stint in contracting. I've only got about four more years of work left if things go swimmingly well, five to seven if they go moderately well, or until I die if it all goes apeshit. Not helping matters is the onset of AI, a president that's trying to make America hated, and America's progression to a low-trust society. Interesting times ahead indeed.
But for now, here are the Memorial Day lessons I take from the last year. Competition still exists and makes for an environment where I was able to find new work. Freedom means I could do what I wanted with my free time, and say what I wanted, within reason. And we still have our veterans; if it gets bad, it won't be without a fight.
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