Must Make Money to Surf

. Diary of Generation D .

. Net Casualty

I used to work for The World's Largest Media Conglomerate (TWLMC). It didn't start out that way. About six years ago I was working for an Internet start-up firm. Do you know what six years ago was in the Internet industry? It was the period during which dinosaurs realized they didn't have opposable thumbs and fingers as they tried to use clay tablets and chisels.

About three years into the start-up, TWLMC gobbled us up. At that time, they weren't actually TWLMC, but just A Large ISP/Content Provider (ALI/CP). It was unusual for ALI/CP to leave us in Southern California, as The Mothership was on the East Coast. But there we were: fat, dumb and happy in SoCal. No more worrying about the venture capital running out.

Fast forward to 2001. That huge dot-com balloon that buoyed a giddy generation of Starbuck-sipping nouveau geek? It hit a huge power line called "reality" and blew up.

So one day I got a message from a Senior VP of TWLMC that he was going to be in our area and that he wanted to have dinner with another director and me. I didn't think much of it. I'd broken bread with him before so this didn't seem entirely out of line. So we show up at the assigned location at the assigned time and what frightening thing did we see? Yes...the HR person was sitting at the table. I see some of you are nodding your head. You know fully well why HR people show up when they do: they are third party eyewitness working on behalf of The Company. This means they're expecting possible problems. This means somebody's going to break some bad news.

We started out with light chit-chat. The topic of discussion somehow turned to my racing and I explained that after having raced, after hurling one's meagerly protected body through space at outrageous speeds, nothing else in life could really disturb me. That was the open door the VP needed. He said something to the effect of, "Interesting you should say that, because I have some disturbing news for you..."

Before we even ordered our dinners, we got the news about our company being shut down. Admittedly, I was a tiny bit shocked. We built useful online utilities...but I guess not useful enough. Because the division of which we were a part of wanted to acquire other start-ups in the current no-growth climate, something had to give. And that something was our unit in SoCal.

Over dinner we outlined the course of action that had to be taken. We had one week of preparation before the lay-offs would occur. Out of the 45 people in the company, seven of us would remain behind to "transition" the technology to another division in Northern California. The "survivors" would also be given the option to relocate if we wanted to. Over the course of the week we choose the remaining crew that would comprise the skeleton staff.

D-Day: Dooms Day, Doh! Day, Didn't-You-Want-The-Summer-Off-Anyways? Day. Thankfully, I didn't have to deliver the bad news. The VP came down and broke the news to the gathered group. Some cried. Others sat slack-jawed. A few even smirked, as if they knew this would eventually happen. After a long day of packing up and saying good-byes, the place eventually emptied out.

The remaining crew fell into two camps: software and production. Being the former Director of Production and perhaps being the most in touch with all aspects of the business, I took over all the unwanted tasks, including that of office manager. I had to figure out the mundane but critical tasks like how to fedex a package. I didn't particularly mind. As the newly self-appointed mailroom clerk, I got to read other people's unclaimed magazines.

At first, the impact of the layoffs was tremendous. Our business contacts back East were demanding that one thing or another get done ASAP. I repeated the same statement for a month: "We're down to a skeleton crew. Feel free to 'escalate' the problem to the appropriate authorities." Sure enough, we'd get a call from someone higher up in the food chain (someone with a huffy VP odor) requesting that something be done. To that the answer would be the same. People we worked with were frustrated, but not having been the ones to choose our destiny, we did our best to convey the facts.

Over time, the calls started to subside as word got out that we were a mere husk of our former selves. A few service providers hounded me for payment on bills, but I could only forward them to someone in the geographically removed accounts payable department, who in turn seemed to let the information disappear into the vapor. The people looking for their money would contact me sporadically, and all I could do was resend the contact information. I realized how useless I was becoming.

Of all the remaining staff, I was the most serious about relocating to Northern California. I'm from up there so it wasn't as if I'd be moving to a place I knew nothing about. Chris and I took a trip up to the Bay Area to do some reconnaisance work on houses. What we had heard about the outrageous prices was every bit true. $400k got you a dump with oil stains in the driveway. $600k got you something you weren't in love with, but you probably wouldn't get knifed while walking the dog around the block. $800k bought you residential happiness, but with it came crushing financial pressure. And this was all supposedly in a housing market that was cooling! We decided to stay in our current home, one that we could conceivably pay off just by collecting aluminum cans...a far cry from the Silicon Valley nightmare of having to whore yourself out until you were 80-years-old just to put a roof over your head.

The months passed. Those of us who remained did our best to stay focused. It was like being on the Titanic except that all the guests had already abandoned ship and those of us left steering knew the iceberg was exactly 120 days out. We updated some projects. We surfed the internet. We had conference calls. We played ping-pong. We distributed documents. We scratched our bums. And so the days dragged on.

The worst of all tasks was dealing with selling off the remaining assets. People schlepped in and out of the building, poking into the recesses of the offices, pulling open file cabinets, snooping through drawers. While I was still seated at my desk, someone came up and stuck a sold sign to the corner of it. The meat was rotting (me) and the buzzards were circling (start-ups looking for cheap furniture...themselves likely to suffer our fate sometime in the near future). Although this process was intellectually easily to comprehend, it was hard not to let one's emotions step in and say, "Bastards! Come any closer to this desk and I'll disembowel you with a ballpoint pen!"

When the final day came, I put on a dress to represent this milestone in my life. I rarely wear a dress, and I've never been laid off...it seemed reasonable to link the scarcity of these events. When I got into work, the HR rep and the VP from up north were already there. They had probably arrived at 5:00 a.m. to make sure none of us had the chance to load the huge copier into our car.

We reviewed some final issues and then signed the paperwork in our severance package. I hugged my co-workers and then sighed deeply as I left the building. I had worked with this company for six years. That's longer than I had been in college, been married, been at any other job...it was the end of some serious history for me.

But from death comes rebirth. I've been lucky enough to find work with Ducati.com. Although I am currently the world's oldest intern, I'm hoping that this will parlay into a real job in which I'm paid with anything but pasta and red wine. As it is with riding a motorcycle, you don't want to force your moves. Things eventually work out...one way or another.