No doubt by my total absence of 'bloggage' recently you may have assumed that I've been somewhat busy, and you would have been spot on with that assumption too.
Work is a little crazy right now and it's beginning to get through to me, uncharacteristically rattling the normal calm and poise of yours truly.
With the announcement of more redundancies a few weeks back, I was somewhat buoyed by the possibility that my position appeared to be secured by the fact I was working on some urgent development chips for our Dutch cousins over in Nijmegen, their project team being happy to keep us employed, paid for through their office, to continue their work. The Dutch team we work with came over for a few days last week to meet the Southampton team and 'chat' with the engineers. This was viewed as a 'faces to names' exercise and to cement the team as one unit and confirm all the lines of communication. My 'chat' lasted 90 minutes and went pretty well I thought.
Imagine my dismay last Friday when we were all informed that Nijmegen have decided to pull the plug on the project in Southampton and take back the work to Nijmegen despite them not having the staff or the facilities to complete the work on schedule !! Crazy ??
It turns out that they were making scurrilous efforts to 'cherry pick' certain test engineers from here in Southampton to move over to Holland enabling them to continue the work over there.
So, we're all back in the pot for possible redundancy once again.
Southampton have got rid of so many staff over the last few years that it's difficult to single out any 'weaker' team members for the chop, so it's going to be a close decision, and to be honest, it is making me feel very vulnerable to say the least. I've been in this position far too many times before to think I'm in any way safe from the chop.
I hadn't realised it but the current situation had changed me, for the worse too, my wife politely informing me at the weekend that I'd been a really miserable git and incredibly grumpy recently and that I had appeared to have stopped talking altogether. Something I've not been aware of, I must say, although I admit to having been feeling a little distracted by all the political machinations here at work.
So... time to turn over a new leaf and employ that 'whatever will be, will be' type ethos... After all, it's only a job and I'll be sure to find something else, somewhere, if the worst does come to the worst.
Ciao for now.... (a slightly less screwed up BluePixel)
