Layoffs

I'm a consultant at a major financial services company. Today I had the unfortunate experience of watching an entire division suffer through a layoff that was 3 months in the making. These poor people have been waiting for the other shoe to drop for weeks, and as the end of the month grew closer, the environment just got more tense. Forget productivity - the company was lucky that folks even showed up.

The area I worked in lost 6 people, including a manager with whom I had become good friends. He was a good person, who truly cared about his team and his co-workers, truly a man of integrity. He was one of the first to be let go, and surprisingly, this really hit me hard - I was as upset as those team members who worked with him for years. This was the second time in my career that I had seen a manager with such character let go. Why doesn't corporate America value these qualities? Does a person have to be coldblooded, robotic and without emotion to succeed?

This layoff, along with a dozen other reasons, led me to decide not to renew my contract. I'll be home this summer, doing the stay-at-home mom thing, and looking for a contract in the fall. My daughters are 7 and 4, entering 3rd grade and kindergarten, so I want to spend more time with them - they're only this small once. I'll pick up a new contract this fall when they're back in school.

So I'm looking forward to sunshine and lazy days .... can't wait!

Doing the Stay At Home Thing ... Or Why I Started This Blog

I quit my job (career?) in February, 2004, to stay home with my daughters (who were then 6 and 3), re-evaluate my life and basically figure out whoI wanted to be when I grew up. I was facing the big 4-0, had risen to the higher echelons of middle management at a major financial services company, only to try and cope with a work environment that was so dysfunctional that I actually emailed Dr. Phil for help (he didn't write back), while figuring out snowday coverage so I could keep the backstabbers at bay. So I quit to stay home and rediscover who I was. Am I a mom? A career woman/manager/lawyer (or else why am I making those student loan payments)? Both? Do I need to choose or why should I have to?

As my final working days wound down, I would hear from so many people, especially women: "You are so lucky - I wish I could just stay home." At the same time, major news outlets were reporting a growing trend in America, successful working women who were walking away from their jobs to stay with their families. I've never been accused of being a trendsetter, so I appreciated CBS saying that I was part of a new movement in American society. But why was this such a big deal?

So I'll be writing about my day to day issues and observations about trying to do it all. I love my family, and I love my working life. It's just staying sane that's the challenge ...