Expendable !!

Who is Expendable ??
Were the words I heard as I walked past the conference room at work.
It was the company's CEO's voice and he was waving a printout of an excel sheet in front of a senior manager.

The glass door of the room was closed, so I couldn't hear the rest of the conversation. But those two words had quite a chilling effect. I had been hearing about the firm's financial troubles, but I didn't know it had gotten this serious.

I've known several people who at one time were trapped in companies in the middle of layoffs or acquisitions and I remember them displaying helplessness about everything happening around them. Some of them worked their butts off hoping that the 'Recency Effect' would work in their favor while others updated their resumes and chatted up their LinkedIn contacts in search for a new job.

Since this was now happening to me, I decided to tap into the internal grapevine and went out for lunch with the director of my department who is coincidentally the only other Pakistani in the firm. He confirmed that the layoffs and/or salary reductions were the only course of action left for the firm to stay in business. But he did mention that I didn't have to worry about it as I was not within the axe range 'SO FAR' (his words). He said I was too underpaid anyway to be of any significance to the bottom line :P

Gee -- as much scary this situation might be, the optimist in me is already looking at the possible opportunities. With my move to Pakistan only a month away I think the time is ripe to push even more within my organization to think about outsourcing their menial IT tasks overseas.

So bear with me folks as I gear up for the choppy seas ahead. I'm going to try and keep this blog updated so that I can have some outlet for all the pent up energy.

Cheers