|
|
11.3.2002
"Lesson Fourteen: How to Know Your Company Is Going Under (NASDAQ Jungle Mix)
by Steve Gilliard
1) Your boss spends a lot of time on the phone.
If you hear pleading and shrieking, your boss is either on the phone with his wife or the VC folks. If he's crying, it's the VC folks.
2) The "cool" people start disappearing.
Rats always leave a sinking ship. Rats with connections leave as soon as the first leak springs. Yeah, naval history is filled with heroic struggles to save damaged ships, but the choice is either imprisonment by the Japanese with an almost 30 percent chance of death, swimming in the deep blue with an 80 percent chance of death or saving your ship. Luckily, you have more options. None of which involve being sent to Manchuria to dig coal.
3) The clients start making new demands.
If you have to start getting clients' laundry, your company is in trouble.
4) The Coke fridge is replaced with a Coke machine. At street prices.
Oh yeah, you can forget about client lunches at Nobu. Or Teriyaki Boy.
5) The boss's secretary comes in and is extremely calm.
One word. Begins with a P and kills your sex life.
Prozac.
And when she's on the Prozac train, things are not well. Especially when she seemed normal last week.
6) Everyone is told that they need to complete their projects soon, because they'll be "reassigned."
Hmmm. Is that what they call it now? Reassigned into the street, that is.
7) The coders start stealing and copying s***.
When they offer you a copy of Office 2000 and 100 MP3's on CD, when they never talked to you before... resume time has arrived.
8) The boss announces an "all-staff meeting."
9) At the meeting they talk about consolidation and deferring raises to keep the company afloat.
10) Then, people are called into private meetings.
At this point, take home everything you like in the office. Empty the files and protect anything you like. Ask out anyone you were afraid to in the past, because you "worked" with them. It won't be a problem.
The German Army in WWII called being captured, "going to Canada." Because that's where many of the big POW camps were.
You might want to call this "going to Monster.com" because you'll be looking for a job there soon enough.
Why not stay to the end?
Well, if you want to be the last man in the bunker and get captured by the Russians and go to Siberia for 10 years, go ahead. But the smart people wanted to go to Canada.
Loyalty is fine. But it has its limits, usually at the loss of your paycheck."
True.
|
|
|
