Brief Update

I'd sent email to several of you whose email addresses I had handy at the time (I set all recipients to blind copy, so if we've emailed recently and you didn't get it, check your Junk folder). For those I couldn't immediately contact, you may have heard the news secondhand: last week the mass layoffs at my company took effect, and I was amongst those to receive the axe. Some of you may have heard about the looming layoffs in the news this past several weeks. It has been a tense couple of months since the initial announcements, but now that the dust has settled, it's a relief to know who's leaving and who's staying, and be able to move forward.

Anyway, I got the news on Wednesday morning and spent much of the day packing up, cleaning up the work I'd been doing up till then, and backing up my personal files off my computer. I intended to come back on Thursday and finish up. To my (and everyone else's) utter surprise, when I arrived in the morning, my computer and telephone were gone! Apparently there was much miscommunication and confusion surrounding who was staying until Friday and who was leaving immediately, so it seems that they just swiped EVERYONE's computers. They even took the computer of one guy who DIDN'T get laid off! Fortunately I'd already taken care of everything important I wanted to on my computer, so all I had to do was get phone numbers of a few colleagues I had intended to email, from another co-worker.

This coming week(s) brings a lot of miscellany-- making sure I turn in the proper paperwork for my severance package, and meeting with the career consultants that have contracted with Amgen to provide free services for all of us who got laid off. There is a job fair specifically for us in November. In the meantime, I'm busy re-tooling my resume and continuing the job search.

Before I left on Thursday, I said good-bye to the manager who had hired me at the onset over 2 years ago. He asked if I saw this as a new opportunity or devastating news. Frankly, I see it as more of the former than the latter. Hopefully this gives me a chance to pursue another career besides IT/IS. Maybe I'll be able to find something where my love of spreadsheets, organization and attention to detail will come in handy ;-)

Yesterday was a busy day, continuing the apartment search. Now that my job location is variable, it increases the number of possibilities for places to live. So now we're a little more flexible in not only where we want to relocate, but also when we can actually move in. And hey-- I got plenty of packing boxes (for a small cubicle, I sure had amassed a lot of stuff and took SIX boxes to cart it all away!) that will come in handy when it comes time to move! No shortage of silver linings in this cloud :-D

Back to the job hunt and resume-rewriting I go. Wish me luck!

p.s. I still owe a few of you emails. I haven't forgotten them, and will get to them as soon as I am able, I promise! Meanwhile, thanks for the emails of love and support :-)

(originally posted at: http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/319031227)