Probably by September....
About three weeks ago my Director, who lives in Massachusets and my Manager, who lives in Louisiana decided to make a surprise unannounced visit to Atlanta to have a mandatory meeting with the 5 remaining members of the Atlanta Team.....we got like 12 hours notice.
Those kind of visits are never good, right?
So I went in on my day off expecting to be RIF'd....what they told us was only a little bit better. Started out telling us the Atlanta Ops Team was being shuttered but they value us as critical employees, YaDa YaDa Yada (insert more platitudes here). My heart skipped a few beats but it wasn't really a surprise. The writing has been on the wall since my current employer bought our company and even though management had said time and again that Atlanta would always be a core location for Ops, it was clear that the business model would not support three core locations. Corporate lackeys lie all the time..... So between the three core locations it was inevitable that one would be shuttered. Then they gave the five of us three options.
Last week my current employer paid for us to go and check out Denver. Well they covered the hotel and rental car for the week, we had to spring for air fare. We liked it but housing is CRAZY expensive out there. Mrs. Monos and I discussed checking out the Louisiana swamps as an alternative but aside from my current employer there is no other supporting industry for me to fall back on should they still choose to RIF me down the line. Denver, at least, has many employment options other than my current employer. We decided the Louisiana swamps were out as an option.
We have to make our decision final on July 11th so unless a miracle happens in the next few days, it looks like the Monos clan will probably be moving to Denver at the end of August or shortly thereafter.
This kinda sux BUT it could also be really good. I mentioned that there are only 2 job listings for the Atlanta office....well as of this posting there are 187 job listings in Denver for various groups within my current employer so the potential for eventually changing departments or moving up to an engineering role is greatly enhanced out there. There are two offices to choose to work from. One is in the north and one is in the south of Denver. In the last week we drove around 500 miles checking out Denver proper and the surrounding suburbs near those offices, with a side trip to Colorado Springs on the fourth to relax, decompress, see Pikes Peak and be tourists. I think we will choose the southern area but we can't be sure until we sell our condo here and see what is on the market out there. That writing on the wall I was talking about earlier told us to go ahead and sell our rental property in Paulding County in April so we got ahead of that one.
Mrs. Monos will be moving away from her parents just as her Father starts dealing with early onset Alzheimer's and well,,,,My Mom turns 90 this year and is no spring chicken herself. She's slowing down, and my brother is no real support mechanism for her. Southern boys and their Mama's, this is not an ideal solution...I will worry about her, and she will not even consider moving.
Cheers! It could be worse, right???
About three weeks ago my Director, who lives in Massachusets and my Manager, who lives in Louisiana decided to make a surprise unannounced visit to Atlanta to have a mandatory meeting with the 5 remaining members of the Atlanta Team.....we got like 12 hours notice.
Those kind of visits are never good, right?
So I went in on my day off expecting to be RIF'd....what they told us was only a little bit better. Started out telling us the Atlanta Ops Team was being shuttered but they value us as critical employees, YaDa YaDa Yada (insert more platitudes here). My heart skipped a few beats but it wasn't really a surprise. The writing has been on the wall since my current employer bought our company and even though management had said time and again that Atlanta would always be a core location for Ops, it was clear that the business model would not support three core locations. Corporate lackeys lie all the time..... So between the three core locations it was inevitable that one would be shuttered. Then they gave the five of us three options.
- Find a position inside my current employer in the Atlanta office on another team (there are only 2 jobs listed here, sales or customer service, and I would not be happy doing either)
- Take a relocation package and choose to remain on the team but move to either one of the other two core locations.....either a swamp in Louisiana or to Denver 1500 miles away from family. The relo package includes a paltry sum to move...
- Accept the standard RIF package which for me would be 30 weeks pay (based on my 15 years time in title) and a hearty pat on the back for a job well done (here's the door, don't let it hit ya on the way out).
Last week my current employer paid for us to go and check out Denver. Well they covered the hotel and rental car for the week, we had to spring for air fare. We liked it but housing is CRAZY expensive out there. Mrs. Monos and I discussed checking out the Louisiana swamps as an alternative but aside from my current employer there is no other supporting industry for me to fall back on should they still choose to RIF me down the line. Denver, at least, has many employment options other than my current employer. We decided the Louisiana swamps were out as an option.
We have to make our decision final on July 11th so unless a miracle happens in the next few days, it looks like the Monos clan will probably be moving to Denver at the end of August or shortly thereafter.
This kinda sux BUT it could also be really good. I mentioned that there are only 2 job listings for the Atlanta office....well as of this posting there are 187 job listings in Denver for various groups within my current employer so the potential for eventually changing departments or moving up to an engineering role is greatly enhanced out there. There are two offices to choose to work from. One is in the north and one is in the south of Denver. In the last week we drove around 500 miles checking out Denver proper and the surrounding suburbs near those offices, with a side trip to Colorado Springs on the fourth to relax, decompress, see Pikes Peak and be tourists. I think we will choose the southern area but we can't be sure until we sell our condo here and see what is on the market out there. That writing on the wall I was talking about earlier told us to go ahead and sell our rental property in Paulding County in April so we got ahead of that one.
Mrs. Monos will be moving away from her parents just as her Father starts dealing with early onset Alzheimer's and well,,,,My Mom turns 90 this year and is no spring chicken herself. She's slowing down, and my brother is no real support mechanism for her. Southern boys and their Mama's, this is not an ideal solution...I will worry about her, and she will not even consider moving.
Cheers! It could be worse, right???
