With the economy being what it is, things have been shaken up in my personal life. Since I started working at my current place of employment, the economy has slowly…well, not so slowly, gone down hill. The pipeline has shrunk and I’ve been spending more and more time sitting around waiting for the Directors and VP’s to sell some OBIEE based projects so that I can get back to work. Knowing how consulting is based on utilization, I knew that if I didn’t get on some projects I would be destined for the local unemployment office.
As things turned out, last Thursday, I got “the call”, letting me know that I wasn’t being let go, but being put on a business conditional leave. What this means is that I get a 70% salary reduction and am free to go and do whatever I want. Although the “whatever I want”comes with some conditions, mainly that I can’t contract myself out to do consulting work. After much time and calculating, I have determined that I am not going to accept the leave and simply accept the severance package that was offered as an alternative. It’s unfortunate that things have come to this, but as it stands, I have an issue with having certain employees take the burden of being put on leave because of the ineffective sales by upper management. Had the company done company wide pay cuts (5%-10%), then determined that it was time to put people on leave, I would probably been in more of a position to believe that I could wait things out. Since that is not the case, it’s looking like I am going out in the open markets again.
That Thursday, I made some calls around to contacts that I have in the industry to determine what my best course of action would be. Awhile back, I had worked with these two brothers, Steven and David, who own a small BI boutique firm. They work solo, but hire outside contractors to help them with the work. I called up David to see if they had anything in their pipeline.
As it turns out, they are practically swamped with work. So much so, that it was a foregone conclusion that I would be welcomed onto their team. There are positives and negatives to working for them. The upside is that I am going to be working for myself, no longer tied to a company, no longer bound to call into tedious conference calls and attend mandatory training classes. I’ll be able to pick what projects I work on, how long I work during a day and will be able to negotiate a wage accordingly. Contractors also make 60%-70% more money for the work that they do and get paid for every hour they work, so I’ll no longer be working 12 hour days for the same rate.
Along with those positives, I’m also not given any matching 401k, no paid vacation, no insurance and none of the support that a large company gives. These are all real issues and real things to consider.
I spend the past week thinking about what was going on, how I could maximize my income and generally what was my best course of action. Leaving my employer was not something that I wanted to do and frankly, had this leave situation not come about, I would have had little interest in doing so, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.
In light of all this, I will be taking my whopping 6 weeks severance, and starting on a contract job on Monday. I am excited and worried all at the same time. The risk is substantial, but the rewards are just as great. The project is slated to last 12 weeks, so I have a solid 3 months to figure out where I want to go from here. I don’t know what’s going to happen after those 12 weeks pass, but at least I have some time to start to look for a new job, see what’s in the area and hope for the best. Only time will tell.