Dom Barnes’s Blog

Today marks the final day of my working life in Financial Services. Today I had a trip to Manchester to demo a database, little knowing that I would probably not see most of my colleagues again. So Tuesday seems to be the last day for that. As of 15th May I’ll be unemployed (well 16th really). Its (hopefull) the end of an era.

I’ve been working in FS for about 5 years now, starting originally at Norwich Union in 2003 and working there until 2006, when I moved up to Birmingham, and then went into FS again just as a temporary job. As often happens I settled and put a new job on the back burner, and then over the past year, I have been slowly working toward my IT qualifications, hoping to move over.

Well that time came upon me quicker than I planned, and I also got a little pay out to go with it. Without mentioning the company name, we have been going through some changes, and found out a few months back our office was going to close. After hearing that it just became an issue of when.

Today on my train journey I was listening to Leo Laporte talk on TWiT about the Yahoo/Microsoft business and in particular, some of the comments about Yahoo sounded all to familiar. Jerry Yang and other Yahoo bods made comments about now that the Microsoft deal deadline passed, they can move on and focus on being  more efficient business. And that is literally what the bosses at my work were saying.

My worry is for the company that they are already too far down that path, and that for years they have been hiding failure behind small successes, and of course that means for the current employees, a tough time, uncertainty and risk of redundancy too.

But I’ve been through it now and have to look foward to a new job. I’m looking at starting off as some sort of technician, doing installation and repairs or hardware and network stuff, hopefully in a full time position, but I’m also looking at contract work so we’ll see how we get on.

Either way, I’ve got some time to myself which I will spend making music, tidying the house and seeing a variety of films, and probably blog a fair bit too!

Today I received a bit of bad news. My company has decided to close all its sales offices in the UK, and centralise the work in Manchester. This, as you can guess from the title, means bad news for me. My office, along with a few more from around the country will be closing in the next few months. We’ve entered a consultation period at the moment, and that will finish on 5th March. Then notice periods will be issued, or at least begin to be issued.

For me, this means that I will get my 1 month notice either in March or April. During that time, we’ll have to pass on our group schemes to Manchester as they all get centralised up there. And then we will probably have to clear out the office, so relocate files, remove the literature supplies we have, the desks, computers, switches and servers, phones, chairs, and everything else. Everyone else in the office is in the same boat, so we’ll all be looking for new jobs.

I guess I’m in a slightly better position as I’m already looking for new jobs in IT. But everyone else will have to adjust to the fact that we’re being fired, and then get into job searching mode.

In terms of redundancy pay, since I’ve been there for 19 months, I should get about 5 weeks pay, which isn’t fab, but its better than nothing and it should tide me over till I can get another job.

In the mean time, I’m sure business will dry up, and the attitude in the office will be low. No one is going to have the spirit to work particularly hard, which will make things more difficult.

So over the next few months I’ll be blogging a bit more about my job, and keeping you reader(s) up to date with the comings and goings of my job. And of course my hunt for a new job. For now, I’m just dealing with it, and thinking about my trip to Athens that I will probably never get.