So I had to "let someone go" a few weeks ago. It ammounted to me letting their vendor company know that their contract was going to expire on a certain date. I felt like I sort of cheated the system a little bit, because I didn't actually haveto do the entire "can I see you in my office?" bit, with the long hard talk about how their services were no longer needed. I just told the vendor company, and that was that. I felt relieved. :) I gave this guy a few weeks to ease his transition, find a new position, so on.
Enter today. This guy swung by my office about 30 minutes ago and asked if he could talk. Fortunately, I was a tad busy, and told him I'd come collect him in a few minutes (secretly hoping he had a work related question, and not seeking a question about why his employment was nearing it's end).
He swung by a few minutes later, and there was a lul in my work, so I invited him in. This guy is a diminuitive 4 foot 11 indian guy, maybe 90-100 pounds. When he got back from india a few weeks ago, he told me he had just secured enrollment for his children into the most prestigous school in all his city. So, he nervously asks me "My vendor company has come to inform me that my contract is ending soon. May I come to know why, what the reasoning is behind the contract being removed?"
Pretty articulate, for him, actually- one of the reasons we decided to let him go, was that no one really understood him very well. I want to hire someone to really strengthen and bolster my team's abilities and help me achieve some of my goals for my team.
So after he asked the question, I had to explain. Well, the application you work on doesn't have enough hours of work to justify a full headcount. My other two vendors are currently working on in-flight high profile projects with a full workload. I made a mistake here, and I told him that there were also budgetary issues, too, which isn't true. I regret saying it, but I was sort of stammering to provide him with answers that didn't make him feel bad. I don't want to lie like that, and I will try not to do it again. Just sort of slipped out when I was thinking of how else to let him down easy :( One of the issues was his vendor company only told him a week ago, which is unfortunate, because I wanted him to have several weeks of time to look for new positions and get ready for the change. I apologized to him about that, and told him his vendor company was responsible for helping him find a new position and place him correctly, and that his resume is strong enough that he shouldn't have too much of a tough time finding new work. I sort of believe it, but I honestly can't recommend him to any team asking me for info on him. He's just not strong enough technically and personally, and I haveto be a good steward of Microsoft's money.
Business is hard sometimes. It's these sorts of decisions, where I need to do the right thing for the company and my team, that cause all sorts of "companies are evil" type crap talking. I'm not an evil person, and I'm doing my best to have a great build team that does great work. I'm sure situations like this all over the world cause people to get angry and hate companies and not understand intentions. Such is life, I guess. The anti-business rhetoric is extremely high right now, and I guess I'm part of that big business machine now.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Friday, February 25, 2011
Friday, October 17, 2008
I'm seriously a little depressed about the whole election deal right now...
the thought of having a socialist president, AND democrat majority congress (no checks and balances) makes me really concerned. I mean, part of me thinks that if the majority of our country really wants Obama, then they deserve it. If we've fallen so far that we want the government to babysit us, after we've seen what the government does. Namely, waste our money, bicker over how much they waste, and use their power to line their pockets from special interest groups. Talk about an easy job, that's for sure- who else has aides to do all their paperwork and research, gets tons of cash from companies vying for attention, and gets more than 100 vacation days a year? heh.
Part of me says if I just keep my head down and keep doing a good job at work it won't affect me too much. And hey, America deserves the consequences. But the other half wants me to believe in accountability, smaller government, less spending, less laws instead of more laws, etc...
I don't really have any control it in anyways, so there's not much that fretting about it will help.
I guess the biggest concern is 20 years from now, when our deficit is even bigger with these Obama crazy spending plans, we're past the point of having a valid government, our dollar is worth nothing, and all banks are owned by the government and the stock market is frozen by so many laws designed to stop a recession that we're in a recession because no one can earn money any more. The truth is, 100% of doctorate level economists agreed that the "bailout" plan will NOT work, it will just patch the system for a short duration and delay the crash that it's supposed to stop. Great... So why do we have politicians making financial decisions? Do they have doctorates in economics? Why is Obama's or McCain's economic plan so great? Why don't we let the economists and free market guys deal with the economy, and let the president deal with presidential issues for gosh sakes!?
the thought of having a socialist president, AND democrat majority congress (no checks and balances) makes me really concerned. I mean, part of me thinks that if the majority of our country really wants Obama, then they deserve it. If we've fallen so far that we want the government to babysit us, after we've seen what the government does. Namely, waste our money, bicker over how much they waste, and use their power to line their pockets from special interest groups. Talk about an easy job, that's for sure- who else has aides to do all their paperwork and research, gets tons of cash from companies vying for attention, and gets more than 100 vacation days a year? heh.
Part of me says if I just keep my head down and keep doing a good job at work it won't affect me too much. And hey, America deserves the consequences. But the other half wants me to believe in accountability, smaller government, less spending, less laws instead of more laws, etc...
I don't really have any control it in anyways, so there's not much that fretting about it will help.
I guess the biggest concern is 20 years from now, when our deficit is even bigger with these Obama crazy spending plans, we're past the point of having a valid government, our dollar is worth nothing, and all banks are owned by the government and the stock market is frozen by so many laws designed to stop a recession that we're in a recession because no one can earn money any more. The truth is, 100% of doctorate level economists agreed that the "bailout" plan will NOT work, it will just patch the system for a short duration and delay the crash that it's supposed to stop. Great... So why do we have politicians making financial decisions? Do they have doctorates in economics? Why is Obama's or McCain's economic plan so great? Why don't we let the economists and free market guys deal with the economy, and let the president deal with presidential issues for gosh sakes!?
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Politics?!?!
This entire political process is crazy. I take conservative positions on most everything, and I realize our country is starting to lean a little more to the left, but the stuff I see is mind boggling, with the media very obviously being biased (just think about the recent debates- did gun control ever come up? What about abortion? does anyone even know that Obama supports live birth abortions and taking away our gun rights?)
I'm glad that theres only 30 something days left over. If the CNN/NBC crowd is to be believed, apparently Obama has already won, and he's the best candidate anyway (they keep saying he is better on the economy for some reason... not sure why). But if you look at the independent polls like zogby, etc, he's up by an average of 1-2 percent, well within the margin of error, something most legitimate news sources should be calling a tie right now. Same with the debate- for some reason people really think Obama knocked it out of the park. This REALLY confuses me - I watched the whole debate, and McCain continuously brought up plans and showed great understanding of how things work and ideas to fix things, and he answered most all of the questions, while Obama kept running over his time, interrupting the moderator, trying to rush to his own defense, and failed to answer about half of the questions. I just don't get it... is our country so biased that they don't even see through his rhetoric? I mean, he said a lot of stuff, but had very little substance overall. It seemed pretty clear to me. He is a great public speaker, and it appears he is such a good public speaker that he can make it appear that he is winning a debate when he is clearly not.
I just added a ton of new (read: old) friends from facebook today, and wow is it nostalgic to see some people I haven't thought about or heard from in a very long time. Some people I had crushes on, some people I had intense dislike for, some people I had lots of fun with. I wonder if those people miss the relationships the same way I do? Not that I'd ever want to go back to high school, but the excitement of that time in my life sure was fun. When was the last time I had a lan party?! Life changes, I suppose. :) For the better, if you've seen the latest rediculously cute Judah pictures.
Ricky
This entire political process is crazy. I take conservative positions on most everything, and I realize our country is starting to lean a little more to the left, but the stuff I see is mind boggling, with the media very obviously being biased (just think about the recent debates- did gun control ever come up? What about abortion? does anyone even know that Obama supports live birth abortions and taking away our gun rights?)
I'm glad that theres only 30 something days left over. If the CNN/NBC crowd is to be believed, apparently Obama has already won, and he's the best candidate anyway (they keep saying he is better on the economy for some reason... not sure why). But if you look at the independent polls like zogby, etc, he's up by an average of 1-2 percent, well within the margin of error, something most legitimate news sources should be calling a tie right now. Same with the debate- for some reason people really think Obama knocked it out of the park. This REALLY confuses me - I watched the whole debate, and McCain continuously brought up plans and showed great understanding of how things work and ideas to fix things, and he answered most all of the questions, while Obama kept running over his time, interrupting the moderator, trying to rush to his own defense, and failed to answer about half of the questions. I just don't get it... is our country so biased that they don't even see through his rhetoric? I mean, he said a lot of stuff, but had very little substance overall. It seemed pretty clear to me. He is a great public speaker, and it appears he is such a good public speaker that he can make it appear that he is winning a debate when he is clearly not.
I just added a ton of new (read: old) friends from facebook today, and wow is it nostalgic to see some people I haven't thought about or heard from in a very long time. Some people I had crushes on, some people I had intense dislike for, some people I had lots of fun with. I wonder if those people miss the relationships the same way I do? Not that I'd ever want to go back to high school, but the excitement of that time in my life sure was fun. When was the last time I had a lan party?! Life changes, I suppose. :) For the better, if you've seen the latest rediculously cute Judah pictures.
Ricky