Sunday, December 14, 2003
Quote from my Christmas letter dated 12/14/03
In last year's Epiphany letter, I wrote I had made it through another round of layoffs. I joked that I feel like a survivor on a reality show, and I was glad they didn't vote me off the island. This year, my turn came to be banished. No joke.
On 11/12/03, I was told that I was being laid off "because Sun is adjusting its business priorities." Ten of us laid-off writers had to scramble for clues to try to make sense of our dismissal. Only one of the writing staff that was in the Network Storage division when I joined still has a job. We hear that in the division, writing is going to be done by contractors from now on, who are willing to work for less than half of what we got paid-with no benefits.
Outsourcing and off-shoring (which is the removal of jobs to other countries) are becoming prevalent in the computer industry— so much so that Liberty was asked by his boss at Cisco systems to go to India next month to train writers. Many of Cisco's engineering work is already done being in India, so it seems inevitable that writing jobs will soon follow.
I am thinking of tagging along to India and trying to pitch an article to Atlantic Monthly or the Wall Street Journal about the trend and our personal experiences . . ..
OK, the severance package I'll be getting is nice, but I can't help having hurt feelings. One week after I got the news, I woke up crying from a dream in which I was telling off Scott McNealy, Sun's CEO. I was telling him that for the company to cast me out into the bad job market after 14 years, and at my age, just wasn't right. Scott is always exhorting employees to go out and kick butt. The day after the layoff, I'd written Scott an email saying that I felt my butt had been kicked! When I had that dream, I guess my subconscious was reacting to my not getting a reply from McNealy.
Being of two minds (if not more), I am at the same time euphoric and trusting that the change will be for the better.
For one thing, I will be able to do more free-lance writing. About three weeks before the layoffs, I published an article for $500. But working on that deadline was tough, since I had other deadlines to meet at work. I also had deadlines for papers for the Institute for Leadership in Ministry (I'm in the second year of a three year program at ILM). Because it was all too much, I had reluctantly decided not to continue writing articles and to drop out of ILM. After I got the layoff news, I was relieved that I could take on those other things again without having to get up at three a.m. to write articles and study before I left for work.
For another thing, before I became a technical writer my training and desire had always been to be a creative writer. I got an M.A. in writing and won prizes in a few writing competitions. I have a lot of stories to tell and thoughts to share and now I might have the time to share them.
Another possible source of future income might be tutoring. My friend Christina Fu is an engineer at Netscape/AOL, and she has told me in the past that lots of Chinese parents are looking for tutors. She hired me to tutor her daughter once a week and will tell other parents about me if I like the work and I'm good at it. Yesterday, my first day tutoring 10 year old Carolyn Fu was fun. I'll have to see how that goes too.
And I might be able to go back to Sun as a technical writer after all. A former boss at Sun thinks she may be able to hire me again sometime this Spring.
