The Average White Guy

I think it’s wise to keep your personal life from your office, and keep your office life out of your personal affairs. While my blog falls under the personal side of my life, I tend to not talk too much about the office… Of course, I blog from work, but that doesn’t count. I’m going to break my own rule once, because something so profound happened on Friday of last week that I can’t not talk about it.

I won’t divulge the name of my company; that’s just asking for trouble. I will tell you though that I work for a subsidiary owned by a company in the Fortune 30 (it’s higher on the Fortune 500 list than 30, but I’m trying to conceal the company’s identity, so deal with it). I love my office, most of the people I work with, and the work that I do. I’m not crazy about the 75 mile round trip every day; neither is the Mustang, but I deal with it because I like my job a lot. I’ve been there about a year now, and I’ve got no complaints.

Over the past few months, there have been people in my office who were concerned about the future of our office. As a result, the rumors began to fly about our office closing. While at first I dismissed it as rumor, I couldn’t really trust my own instinct because I haven’t been there long enough to know what the rest in my office do about our parent company. I did listen intently and started to form my own opinions about whether or not they’d shut us down.

While the story unfolded, we began discussing it more and more and more. The rumors got bigger, and the grapevine got more and more fruitful. Finally, my boss decided she’d had enough and she asked us to submit a list of questions for our parent company’s senior vice-president of technology. We submitted questions ranging from “What is our 5-year plan?” to “What will our severance package be?” My boss cleaned up the questions list (because you can’t ask the latter of the two questions to your senior VP), and she submitted them to our VP. While I wasn’t sure about the fate of our office, I began to have my doubts about our future. My boss did too, but she was sure we’d be around for a while. Either way, having the main man come to the office and settle the score would go a long way.

If you know the “Hoy Factor”, you’re already aware that the Hoy factor is the identical twin to Murphy’s Law with one exception. Murphy’s law dictates: “What can go wrong, will go wrong.”, while the Hoy Factor dictates: “When anything can go wrong, everything will go wrong… for a Hoy.” So how does the Hoy Factor apply here? I’ve finally found a job I love, a boss I actually ENJOY working for, and a salary which is commensurate with my experience and education. What could go wrong? Yep, they’d close my office.

On Friday last week our senior VP of technology came in and delivered the blow. Our office is to close on March 31, of 2008. Now, we have five departments in our building: software engineering, hardware engineering/manufacturing, customer support, quality assurance testing, and documentation. Fortunately for the Average White Guy, the software engineering and customer support teams were spared the axe. The other groups were told they’d be phased out by the end of March, 2008.

The lease on our office space is up on March 31, 2008 and they’re not going to renew the lease. We’re not getting a new, smaller office. So, how was I spared? The software engineers will work from home. While our work is highly collaborative, what I do for my company I typically do with my managers via email and phone. I work on a specific product, and I don’t interact (on the project level) with the rest of my team. Shit, I could do that from prison. It’s great for me because I’ll drop the two hours a day commute, probably be more productive because I tend to work better later in the day than earlier. Also, when I decide to pick up my life and move, I can take my office and job with me!

Will I miss my colleagues? Yep. Will I miss the lunch hour? Of course, but that’s about all I’ll miss. So does this constitute a Hoy Factor? Nope… Will this lead to an inevitable Hoy Factor moment? Yep… Stay tuned…