Altan Khendup

Through my long career losing one's job is a very traumatic experience to anyone the first time around. It actually gets easier subsequent times since much of the initial shock and pain found in the first layoff has taught a professional how to be better prepared for it.

In the recent economic turmoil many more professionals have found themselves on different paths than what they thought they would experience. For many it is their first time or so long since they have gone through the experience that their pain, confusion and angst is understandably high. Even the most seasoned professional looks at the situation with some degree of frustration and confusion. After all they were doing fairly important work and now suddenly they are out of an organization they have given so much of their efforts to.

I often find myself giving advice to many professionals in these situations from my own personal perspective in that I have gone through it myself several times. Many have found my advice useful so I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the subject:

• Why is a company laying off? Answer - economic reality bites. Let's face it, many companies are not necessarily well prepared for change especially rapid, downward changes. So when they do take actions, it is often more of a reaction than any truly planned action. This is not to say that any organization releases employees lightly. Quite to the contrary they are loathe to do so. However it is not something that they adequately prepare for nor practice until times call for it. Quite simply it is beyond an organization's control on when they lay people off. It just happens.
• So why am I being laid off? Answer - it's nothing personal, it's just business. Most companies view their employees as valuable resources not necessarily as individuals. Even in the most individual-oriented company, everyone has a value that has to be weighed by the company process in terms of being retained or released. For example younger more agile individuals even those who have contributed significantly to a company can find themselves released while others are retained. Why? The company weighs their value to the company. If a person only contributes in a certain way that can be more or less valuable to a company versus others who do more. To be honest there is no real "formula" or "scientific process" being applied. It is matter of perception by decision makers beyond an individuals control.
• Was it something that "I" did to get laid off? Answer - Plain and simply no. In almost all instances of being laid off I can personally recall every "mishap" that might have caused my being released. From personal experience that is the wrong avenue to take. While it is true that one might have made mistakes, if they had been heinous enough to cause a layoff more than likely one would have been released due to disciplinary actions prior to being laid off. One of the biggest wastes of energy is looking at a company and imagining any number of scenarios as to why one was laid off. It ranges from "so-and-so was out to get me", "I should have explained my value more", "I should have done more tasks", etc. I have seen executives of profitable divisions who did outstanding work, engineers with PhDs and patents, and sales personnel who brought large deals to an organization released in the same wave as other professionals who were not as well known. It is never one's fault for being affected by a layoff in such dire economic times. 
• What do I do now? Answer - Simple. Find a new opportunity. Note how I always call it an opportunity and not a job? This is an important distinction. An opportunity is something that interests you whereas a job is something that does not. It is the passion driven by interest that attracts employers. If you are interested in doing something it shows.

One of the major perspectives someone being laid off tends to forget is how their departure among the number of their fellow employees impacts their organization. I am not merely talking about immediate work efforts but rather morale as a whole. How an organization deals with a layoff is not only important to those leaving, but those staying as well. While it is true that many employees will react out of fear of losing their positions, energy that is fear-based lasts only a short while. Employees will become resentful, fearful and stressed resulting in any number of issues to an organization ranging from late projects, to health-related absences, to a poisoning of the company culture - just to name a few. Essentially when a lay off occurs, it erodes the goodwill between employee and employer. How well the transition is managed determines how much erosion occurs and how soon the healing process begins. I often advise those who are let go that their worries are over and their course of action is clear. Those that remain behind are the ones that need sympathy and support as their turmoil will take a long time to settle down.

One of the greatest lessons being laid off teaches a professional is how to be entrepreneurial - to find opportunities, to network, to grow, to find business own their own, to face repeated rejection with optimism and enthusiasm, and to ultimately believe in themselves. As companies continue to lower their costs by letting employees go, they are in my opinion inadvertantly creating a newer, better workfoce that will have several traits:

• More self-reliant and self-motivated.
• More focused on doing what they themselves are capable of doing for others both inside and outside of an organization.
• More confidant in their capabilities and values in delivering quality, affordable and effective solutions to customers.
• More capable of making significant decisions that affect their lives with greater clarity and determination than before.
• More unwilling to "settle" for something as opposed to going out and "making" it happen.

These are not bad traits to have in any employee. It is just that employers will find a more mindful, independent workforce than they previously thought. This workforce will not only have the talent but the the motivation to focus on what interests them. For any professional going through a transition focus on the future, not the past. Trust me, it helps.

 

In an earlier post about being innovative everyday, I  used some examples of how some simple problems could become catalysts for innovation. Often in many shops a change of perspective and team work can get a lot accomplished.

However another thing to keep in mind is the power of perspective. Often times what technical folks consider "not a very big thing" is actually quite innovative. Generally speaking I find that less experienced technical professionals tend to overlook or downplay their achievements. A couple of cases that I have seen that illustrate my point:

• In an all Java shop, an engineer creates outside of Java a framework that allows for dynamic provisioning of services complete with versioning, tracking, dashboards, automation, and self-service in an automated fashion that is cross platform and fast. Initially the engineer did not think much of their solution, however their solution so impressed with the framework and the architectural vision behind that approach such that it became a key component for the company's offering.
• In a large enterprise that favored purchasing vendor solutions, a group of young and eager college students created a Java-based server that handled hundreds of millions of transactions a day with larger ordering and provisioning systems with minimal cost in terms of hardware. Their solution included custom tools such as telnet clients and queue maintenance screens, workflow, customizable parameters via xml, prioritization and scheduling, as well as failover and recovery. They even honed their deliverable to include some great screens, reports, dashboards, and performance monitors. Not bad for a group of 2-3 programmers from college. Their entire server was very scalable capable of handling significant growth starting from a mere 10M requests a week and growing in 3yrs to handling over 200M a day. All of it ran on only 4 quad-core Intel-based Linux servers. To the several business and internal technology leaders their product was quite inspirational. Yet to these programmers, they thought of their solution in a more humble manner often times referring to their achievement as "no big thing". 

In both cases the technical professionals noticed problems, determined how to tackle them, implemented them, had tremendous impacts to their organizations, and were ultimately very humble about their results.

I am certain many organizations have at least several individuals that fit this category. Often times such achievements are recognized not by the individuals who actually delivered them, but rather the business that relies on them.

What I tend to find is that such a trait of humility is both a blessing and curse. Such talented individuals tend to find themselves in challenging roles but not necessarily fulfilling ones. After all even the most talented individual wants the freedom to grow and expand, which may or may not be alignment with their current organization. However it is during transitions that such talent finds challenges since they are not always presenting their accomplishments in the best light. Sometimes they appear potentially too arrogant, other times too timid.

In the long run, such talented individuals will always find their way not because they necessarily the value or not in their innovative ideas, rather that from their perspective being innovative in their solutions is the only way they operate.

Everyone winds down in their spare time. They spend time with friends, family and pursuing what they enjoy such as sports, art, music, or any other number of things. When people enjoy what they do you can see it in how they act. They make the time to do it. They work at it very hard and any chance they can get.

In my case that passion is technology. All sorts of technology. This is reflected in my own personal lab space:

 

• My own personal lab consisting of 6 linux (Ubuntu/CentOS) servers, 3 windows (XP, Vista, 7) workstations, and 2 laptops (1 macbook and 1 linux). I also maintain 1 Android handset, and all 3 versions of the iPhone (2g, 3g and 3gs).
• Virtualization to create on-demand resources on my servers for private clouds and to test dynamic allocations.
• Oracle databases both in standalone and RAC modes used for administration, development and testing. 
• MySQL databases used for administration, development and testing.
• Hadoop instances used for administration, development and testing. 
• Comparison of how the various data solutions (i.e. Oracle, MySQL, Hadoop) stand up and compare to one another for various tasks.
• Search engine technologies using Lucene and Solr on large amounts of data to create new ways to view information and find new insights.
• Create and maintain web browsing and cataloging robots and application servers on data that I like which also serve as a growing test data set for various tasks.
• Creating my own application and request servers using Java, C++, Scala, Python and Ruby. Mostly to see what the strengths and weaknesses of the languages are in terms of their development, maintenance and performance.
• Creating small web applications using PHP and AJAX to produce interfaces to various data sets.
• Create small applications for Android and iPhone to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the various SDKs. 
• Create examples of using incremental innovations based on newer technologies and approaches on typical corporate approaches. This builds on my experience in the field whereby technical staffs can start to tackle some of the newer approaches in an incremental style for themselves.
• Keep basic skills such as administration, scripting, programming, etc. up to date.
• Install, learn and apply new open source projects that sound interesting to me and how they might benefit a company if adopted.

Most of my friends and professional colleagues are always amazed at how much I have and how I apply it. I explain it my passion is the same as any other pursuit. It is constructed over time and in pieces and applied on a consistent basis. It interests me which is the bottom line. In truth creating a small lab like mine is actually pretty inexpensive and can be done quite easily if you know what you are doing. 

So what specifically interests me in technology is how it can help solve problems that have nagged people for a long time whether in a company or not. What is the most frustrating for most people is what I call the domain specific language which confuses everyone. This is the same hurdle encountered in every pursuit; sports has it's own language, so does running, bicycling, martial arts, collecting, etc. Once you decide to commit to something the language and terms should become secondary since you have to explain to the average person what you are doing and why it is important or interesting.

Like anyone who is passionate about anything that interests them, they will find a way to pursue it and excel.