It’s been a year? How is that possible?
It was one year ago today that I received my RIF notice from Sun (and started this blog). It seemed inconceivable that I could go a year or more without finding a new job, but here I am, still hunting.
IT jobs, and probably all jobs, were incredibly scarce in 2009. I’m beginning to see signs that the situation is improving. I’ve been getting more interviews in the past couple of months, but that doesn’t mean a lot until I can actually land a position somewhere.
While it is somewhat depressing, the experience hasn’t been all bad. I had the opportunity to get some up-to-date studio training and set up my Voice Over business, and have been doing some long-overdue work around the house.
Also, thanks to the very generous severance package from Sun, I’m still paying the bills, and I’m not desperate (yet).
Anybody need a slightly used Technology Evangelist?
Oracle Wins Unconditional EU Approval for Sun Acquisition
As reported by Reuters, the go-ahead has finally been given for Oracle to acquire Sun Microsystems.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I’m happy that the end of uncertainties stemming from over a year of this acquisition process (first with IBM, then with Oracle) will allow things to finally move ahead, and for customers to begin making forward-looking decisions for their computing hardware purchases.
On the other, the culture at Sun is about to be irreversibly changed, as Sun sinks below the horizon and becomes part of the largely-soulless software giant.
I will also miss the huge number of friends I made in my years at Sun (at the time of my RIF notice, I had been there almost precisely 1/3 of my life), and being part of a company where, as Scott McNealy said, we “Kicked Butt, Had Fun, Didn’t Cheat, Loved Our Customers, and Changed Computing Forever”.
Finally! SPARC gets a mention in the news!
OK, I’ll admit that I’m more sensitive to this than most, since in my last job I was a specialist in the SPARC microprocessor architecture.
Today, Oracle actually mentioned SPARC in an ad in the Wall Street Journal.
This might not seem like much, but it’s a huge change. There hasn’t been any marketing mention from Sun about SPARC systems in nearly a year (the newest SPARC server, the SPARC Enterprise T5440, was introduced in October of 2008).
While my little team travelled the Americas telling anyone who would listen why SPARC was still important, the Sun executives simply stopped mentioning SPARC, instead talking up the x64 products which are, let’s face it, almost identical to everybody else’s x64 products.
Even Jonathan Schwartz hasn’t blogged about SPARC in over two years!
Then, my whole SPARC team got torn apart, and most of us were laid off in May in preparation to sell Sun to IBM.
But IBM isn’t buying Sun. Oracle is (probably). And while Sun hasn’t mentioned SPARC in advertising in a year, suddenly Oracle has.
Makes me feel good.
Sun Ad from 15 Oct 2009 WSJ
Voice Actor for Hire
One of the big projects I’ve been working on since getting laid off is now done – I’m open for business as a Voice Actor and Narrator!
I actually had the idea to do this some time ago. When I have looked into getting work as a Voice Actor in the past, the biggest obstacle was that I didn’t have a Demo, and getting a Demo produced would mean spending quite a bit of time in the studio.
So, finding myself suddenly free from the daily grind, I almost immediately went up to Schenectady, NY to take some classes and record tracks with Voice Coaches (see my earlier blog entry here). After a couple of months of work, the production work on my demo was done, and as of today, my new web site is live.
Please go and visit the new site, listen to demos, and most importantly, tell your friends about me if they are doing anything that could use a professional Voice Over.
Officially Unemployed, Time to Find a Job
Yeah, I know, most of you thought I was already unemployed. Sun is being very generous, though…
I got my RIF notice on 31 March, but I’ve remained on payroll and benefits through yesterday.
This week, I can file the paperwork for my severance package, and start really looking for a new job.
The job market is pretty thin, at the moment. Over the past two months, I’ve only managed to get one interview (though I haven’t been trying very hard). Fortunately, I don’t have my heart set on doing the same job I’ve been doing. While I’ve really enjoyed being a technology guru, I’m ready to try something new, and if any of my dear readers have something in mind (or a job opening they would like to fill), I’m open to suggestions.
The biggest difference…
Is the (relative) lack of email.
It’s been a week now since I was laid off, but so far, things haven’t changed much. I still get up at about the same time, and my day is pretty full. After all, I need to get my resumé up to snuff, start looking for prospects, and I’m also studying for a couple of new things (which I’ll tell you about later).
Before going to Sun, I was considered by most to be a heavy user of email. But, even back in 1992, email was the way things were done internally at Sun. We never sent around paper memos. As a result, I developed processes for dealing with the fact that, on a typical day, I would receive between 200 and 400 emails. And that was after all of the spam filters had done their work.
Now, I’m not asking to start receiving a flood of email. I’m simply pointing out that the biggest change I’ve noticed in the past week is that, with only a few dozen emails a day, my entire way of dealing with my on-line life is now very different from what from what it had been.
Cleaning Up an Online Life…
Since Sun didn’t turn my email account off immediately, I spent most of yesterday frantically trying to identify any web sites where I might have used my sun.com email address as my login and get it changed before it was too late.
Thankfully, the practice of using an email address as a userid isn’t as common as it once was, but I’ve been active on the web since 1993, and have a lot of registrations scattered about.
As I feared, a number of these sites allow changing your email address, but only after sending a confirmation message to the original address, with no clear way of making changes should that address become unavailable. I’m sure I didn’t catch them all, but at least the ones I still use regularly seem to be done. Now, I’ll have to make a habit of checking the settings every time I log in to a site to be sure that they’re not sending stuff to the old address.
It feels a bit strange, but after almost 17 years of having the same primary email address, I suppose there is bound to be confusion and cruft left behind for quite some time.
Of course, I have seldom used my work address for non-work stuff in recent years, but not too long ago, it was uncommon to have more than one email address. Today, I have seven email accounts going to my iPhone, and there are several more on top of that which I only check on occasionally.
While I was trying to do all of that clean-up, I installed WordPress and got my first blog entry published, and packed up gear I had at home. After taking the gear back to the office, I met with a couple of ex-Sun friends for dinner and a few beers.
My RIF package just arrived via FedEx, so I’m going to spend some time figuring out what my benefits are. Looks like Sun is being very generous, so I should have some time to reflect on what I would like to do going forward.
I don’t need to rush around for anything today, so I think I’ll take in a movie (probably Watchmen) this afternoon.
Hello world!
Well, as you can see, this is a brand new blog.
My first ever, in fact, so bear with me while I flesh this out.
It seems like the right time to do this, since I was laid off today from Sun Microsystems, where I have been working for nearly 17 years. I’m still coming to terms with it, but I think this is not as bad as it might seem. I’m going to treat this as an an opportunity to try something new, hence the initial name of this blog.
And I have experience to help me. I was (very nearly) laid off in 2004, but was called back at the last moment. If you’re interested, you can find an email I sent out about that experience here.
The link in that message is very old and won’t work, but it referred to the announcement that Sun was going to develop the world’s first publicly-available Grid Computing Utility. I worked as Lead Engineer on the project, and we did it. It was kind of cool. Anybody could use our Compute Grid for $1 per CPU/hour.
So, it begins again. Thanks for taking this ride with me.
Curt Harpold
Posted from Rockville, Maryland, United States.
