Law #6 - When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
“Behind me is infinite power. Before me is endless possibility, around me is boundless opportunity. My strength is mental, physical, and spiritual.“
As you probably noticed...
I took a break from posting for a while. The reason is simple, but the explanation is complicated.
Long story short, I got fired. You can stop reading now if you don’t want the long story.
Long story below:
Another company bought the project I was working on, and my employer obviously couldn’t keep us on the payroll. So that brought some pain points.
The first and most time-consuming one was that I needed to hand over all my work to the people who would (and now, as I publish this, did) take over the project. This is the main reason I wasn’t able to write anything for the past months, as since September 18th I have been involved in a handover process that was tedious and complex, to say the least, so the priority for personal projects took a step back. A big one, as at the end of each day I was so tired I didn’t even have time for my usual pastimes, like gaming, reading, or watching an episode of whatever TV series I was watching at that point.
I had to explain in full detail how everything works to a set of people who not only did not know a clue about the business at that point but had never worked in telecommunications before. It was a big challenge, doubled up by the fact that I knew I was being fired, so there would normally be little motivation to do it. However, I am not the kind of person who drops things and leaves, and out of both concern regarding some of my (now previous) customers, as well as my (now previous) system (might or might not have referred to it as “My baby” from time to time), not to mention the fact that I consider myself a reliable guy - and a reliable guy never leaves things messed up when he can help - I chose to do my job until the end and made sure the new people had at their disposal everything they need to do their job from now on, in my stead. It was a lot of effort, but I am content with the outcome.
The second one was the administrative tasks during this time. It raised a lot of concerns at the beginning, as due to new tax laws being discussed in Romania (and subsequently, on Nov 1st, actually implemented), we were not clear on what net amount we would be left with at the end of the day.
Oh, did I mention it? There were around 50 people involved in this project who were (technically) laid off at this point. So many people were affected in their day-to-day lives and tried to address this situation to the best of their possibilities, that the tension could be felt in the air everywhere around the office.
You might be wondering why I keep using the word “technically” whenever I mention being laid off. The reason is that at the beginning, it looked like we were being laid off with a severance package assigned to this circumstance. However, our employer, in their generosity, offered two extra salaries on top of the severance package, if we would agree to mutual termination. I did, and so did many of my colleagues (with few exceptions, which I fail to understand, but they must have had their own reason for refusing the deal and getting themselves fired three weeks later than us anyway), so in the end, the severance package was more consistent than I expected and it helped at this very problematic moment in which we are living.
By the way, Romania is basically tax hell. There, I’ve said it.
Back to my story, because it does not end there. As luck would have it, prior to the announcement in mid-September that we would be out of a job by mid-November, I was getting tired.
I was getting tired of all the effort I was putting in and all the very little acknowledgment lately on my employer’s side in regard to it.
I was getting tired of constant work for the past 8 years and of problematic customers from other time zones who didn’t understand how the business worked and raised critical incidents instead of low ones at 4 AM in the morning in my time zone because, in their eyes, it was an emergency, while in reality, it was nothing of the sort.
I was getting tired of overtime, working both night and day, and I felt that I was very close to burnout.
And let’s be realistic here, I was, and am, also getting old. And the lifestyle with 24/7 on-call and a lot of night overtime isn’t doing me any favors. I considered I was long overdue for a change in my lifestyle.
So in late August, three weeks prior to finding out we would be out of a job, I created a LinkedIn account and started looking for a job.
In the beginning, I went to a couple of interviews and it didn’t go well, companies would usually reject me because I was overqualified (they forgot to mention the word “junior” in the job posting, in one instance they actually deleted the job offer and re-posted it using the word “junior” right after I had the meeting with them) or I was above their budget (Newsflash: senior billing expert is way above junior budget!).
At the very moment the announcement was made, September 18th, I was involved in another recruiting process, but this one was different. Based on the job posting, it was my dream job. Based on LinkedIn statistics, 278 people had applied for that one opening. Most likely because the job sounded very good and the benefits were out-of-this-world (full remote, literally unlimited holidays, flexible hours, no overtime).
Lo and behold, stars align and they love me! And I can say the same, so we shook hands and agreed I could start soon after I become available (the date being December 4th). So I not only got fired, but I was also set for a new job before the firing process had time to even begin properly.
But that was not all. The story doesn’t end here, because there is much of the story that also happened in between. Bear in mind, my fate was sealed (in a good way) come early October when I agreed to the move. However, I had to wait until my employment ended with my original employer so that I could properly hand over the procedures and everything. During this handover process, the company that bought the project noticed something about me: this guy really knows his shit. They concluded that maybe I was useful to them, so they made me multiple offers to stay and continue working on the project on their side.
The money was good, but if I learned something in life, there are things more important than money, like well-being, health, happiness, and so on. Also, I had already agreed to the new job, and when I give my word, I really give my word. And my mindset was on an upgrade, not on stagnation.
So I said no and moved on.
When life gives you lemons, make sure you make the correct choice. Otherwise, they rot.
I made sure the lemons won’t rot.
Not this time.
This time I’ll paint that shit gold.
“Behind me is infinite power. Before me is endless possibility, around me is boundless opportunity. My strength is mental, physical, and spiritual.“ - 50 Cent