Effective Immediately….

When I worked at a previous consulting firm, first job out of college, back in the day… we all used outlook and exchange… so when you would be sitting there, at your desk, and an email would go out to all the people in the company, you would hear the ‘new mail beep’ chime out across the room, all at once.

When someone was fired/laid off (mostly almost always fired) an email would come across to everyone… the person’s name would be the subject line, and the body would have the phrase “Effectively immediately is no longer employed by ABC Consulting”. I swear he had that as a template saved and ready to rock.

Well, I assume that such an email was sent when I was let go from that job, and such an email would have been sent yesterday provided that was common practice at every job. I had been the IT Manager of a small real estate developer based out of chicago. They did primarily residential stuff, and they had made a few decisions that perhaps weren’t the best for the markets that they were in. Thus we had buildings built, condos and townhouses, that were done but not sold. Combine that with the current down turn in the residential market and the lack of a light at the end of the tunnel, it was decided that my position, as well as that of a project manager, had to be eliminated in a cost cutting measure. So I was called into the boss’s office yesterday at 4pm and told it was my last day, pack up my stuff, etc. I was paid out what I was owed in both hours worked and vacation, which was fine. Obviously a fancy severance package would have been nice, but I have never received one in the past, so I am ok with that.

So with that, that chapter of my resume is complete. But before you go feeling bad for me, let me fill you in on some details that partially explain the blog drought that I have been in… I have obviously made web pages in the past, and for the last 2 years or so I have been making sites together as individual consultants, and we decided that we work quite well together, as he likes the front end CSS/JS stuff and I like the backend PHP/DB stuff. Obviously, we both can do all aspects, but it is a good match of our likes and dislikes.

So a little while ago, we decided that we should form our own web development firm and migrate from our respective full time jobs into our own company. I had been leaving that off this blog in case it was read by any of my then coworkers. Thus I had exciting things going on, but I wasn’t quite ready to make them general public knowledge.

So not that long ago, we actually formed an LLC, mk2 development, opened a bank account, credit card, etc The plan of course was to ramp up so as to avoid a financial crunch. Obviously, that isn’t really what is happening, and I will have a financial dip in the near future, but I think overall, this is good timing. I had been aware, especially in the last week or so, that it is hard to find the time to get a new venture off the ground when a large chunk of your day is spent elsewhere, and you have a pregnant wife, and a 2 year old, etc… it is just hard to find time to schedule client meetings, work on marketing materials, set up the structure of the business, learn accounting, etc. All while not doing it during the 40 hours I was at my day job.

So while it is unfortunate, and I certainly could have waited until the baby was born, or gotten a severance package, or whatever, I can’t complain. I a client meeting today at 10am, so we’ll see where that ends up. I need to do some work for my dad on his website and the computers in his office, and we have a couple pro bona sites that we have been talking about.

It is time to step up the game and make this company my full time job. It needs to start paying me. And man, we need to finish our website….