Lay off , Live Show!

We all have heard about it , read about , experienced or witnessed. Well , I witnessed it . Live show , I would put it as. Reality in current corporate world , considering slow down of US economy. Well this post will describe one such lay off which happened dramatically.

I am currently doing an Internship in company called NextWave Wireless. It looked like a normal day , where I was just doing my low priority work. After all Intern does that, in most cases at least. Our team had a normal meeting at 2 , just briefing about status. Outside the room , through the window , I could see people with tense look , moving around here and there. I hardly gave it a thought , was kind of lost after heavy lunch. I returned to desk around 3pm to continue my routine work , and was chatting with a friend regarding full time opportunity here . Call it a coincidence , an High Importance mail popped up which described about need for force reduction (or lay off) of about 10% to protect companies financial security. Then I thought , well full time chances is almost ruled out , have to look for a new one. So , had not much worries. Yes , I was kind of disappointed. Well , the whole point of doing an internship is convert into full time job. So , I went to cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. On my way , I could see petty groups of people here and there with a concerned look. Well , I thought people are just thinking who might actually get fired. Sadly that wasn't !!!.


I returned to my desk , one of the manager came to cubicle of another manager near to my desk and said he will do some hand off , and said he will chill out for next 2 weeks and start all over looking for a job again!!. Then I realized , people actually are fired. Then I went to desk of another intern whom I know , he wasn't there at his desk . But he was in around group of 6-7 Desis who were just talking lightly. Then I came to know everything . In that Desi group , 4 of them actually got layed off.

It seems people who got fired , got a mail to attend all hands meet around 2:30 pm in the afternoon and they cant afford to miss. Believe it or not , at 2pm their systems where locked by IT department , to protect Company data. When they attended the meeting , they were told one of the groups (Network group) was not performing well , So they are forced to lay off. They took their systems away , badges everything. And they were handed over HR bundle for exit process. It seems there was even stack of cardboard boxes to help fired employees take their stuff. One positive thing though is that they were in payroll for next 2 months.


What a dramatic day it was , even though I was not involved , it was quite a shocker to witness such a thing. This episode clearly explained how unpredictable life could be. You came in the morning and without warning you are asked to leave. Even the most feared or pessimistic person wouldn't have thought about it.


I guess in life , you have to be prepared for the worst. If you are then it is easy to digest such shocks. If we are not ready to face the reality then its always difficult to get over such events in life. Having said that , one should not be to pessimistic as well, always hoping for the worst. One should be optimistic in life and think that what ever happens , happens for good. Even though it is hard to visualize the positive aspects of a bad event , who knows that could be blessing in disguise. After all every cloud has a silver lining. If this is difficult , at least we should never give up hope. Well I end this blog from my favorite movie Shawshank Redemption "Hope is a good thing , may be best of things , and no good thing ever dies".