Re: Help in Tough Times

[Anonymous Monk]

in reply to Help in Tough Times

It's timely that this post appears tonight on Perlmonks, and is also the Best Node of the day. A couple of people at the company I work at were 'cut' recently, and I'm beginning to feel more than a little paranoid about the security of my own job.

I've been working hard recently on a project with a vague, changing specification and an impossible deadline. The first part's almost done, and another guy is going to be taking over for the second part while I get up to speed on his stuff (which is similar -- there are only two of us familiar with this collection of code). And I smell a fish, because once he's up to speed on my stuff (not that I've been hoarding information), I'm expendable.

Thanks lots for your post -- I hope I don't need it any time soon. I've tagged it for a more complete read later on.

[planetscape]

The first part's almost done, and another guy is going to be taking over for the second part while I get up to speed on his stuff (which is similar -- there are only two of us familiar with this collection of code). And I smell a fish, because once he's up to speed on my stuff (not that I've been hoarding information), I'm expendable. [emphasis added]

Or he is. And he probably realizes this, too, and is feeling just as paranoid.

Best of luck to both of you.

[sundialsvc4]

It's pretty obvious that:   “one shall be taken, the other shall be left.”

If the project is “vague and impossible,” it might be “a wart on the project plan.” In other words, it has become a task that (a) may no longer have a (pressing) business requirement, and (b) at least represents a lot of sunk-cost until someone can figure out how either to defer it or to get rid of it altogether. “But the good news is,” as someone is surely saying in a high-level meeting, “at least we know there is a sure-fire way to cut costs by 50%.”   .. .. ..  :-/

As an aside:   this is one of the best threads I have read anywhere in a very long time, and it's a link to a great many other older threads that I never knew existed.