ABOUT RAY
On July 11, 2009 I was what Hewlett Packard (HP) refers to as WFR’d (Work Force Reduction). By more normal terminology I was terminated, discharged or perhaps fired but not laid off because people WFR’d from HP are not going to return to work (they are as a part of policy permanently removed from the work force and not allowed to return when more normal economic times return). After 44 years of employment with 9 companies through good economic times and bad I had never lost my job. It took HP’s self-centered anti-employee policies to end the streak.
Although I am saddened by the callous operations of HP and others that hold the value and lives of their workforce so casually I took the news that I was losing my job very well. In fact, I was relieved. For the first eight years that I worked at HP I loved the job and proud to work at HP. During MBA classes years ago I learned of the “HP Way” and I was tickled to see it in action. But, alas, I was witness to the last of the best years at HP. Changes in senior management and with it changes in the very core of the values of HP destroyed the wonderful relationship between management and the employees and more important the way the employees felt about their jobs and place in the company. There was a unifying bond that ran throughout the company that I had never seen before. It was obvious that the employees loved their work, loved the responsibility they were given and loved the respect that was apparent from management. That is all gone now. The much more normal management style found in most US corporations finally found HP and the employees of HP have become expendable components of the corporate balance sheet.
When I joined HP I was in my third career and I had never been formally trained in the high-tech area (in computer science, for example). I came to high-tech in the years approaching Y2K when employment in these companies was easy and demands for background were easy. I came to HP with a background in clinical chemistry and medicine and I was just glad to be there. I never really expected to stay for 10 years. Many of the friends and coworkers that I came to know that had been WFR’d during the years I spent at HP had much more time with the company than I did. Over and over I lost friends, saw their lives disrupted and relationships lost solely due to HP’s new found need to kiss the ass of analysts and stockholders. Throughout most of HP’s long history HP weathered economic downturns by banding together and cooperative co-sacrifice – but no longer; now it’s them against us, and we lose.
I may sound bitter but I am not. I thoroughly enjoyed most of my time at HP and met and enjoyed most of the people I worked with. And now, 62 it is time to move on – to my next career. It is this prospect that this site is all about – the discovery and life redesign that I will now take on. I don’t know where this is going to end up, and I am writing this and all the following posts to chronicle the trip and give myself an opportunity to think the step through. It is this contemplation that makes the site of value – mostly to me and a place to record these thoughts. So I am not writing this for you but for myself. This is a process I accept readily for I love change and projects. I will look at what I have done so far, what I enjoy, and what I am good at and in doing, so I will redesign the next chapter of my life. I am in good health, I have enough money to not worry about bills for now, I have a loving, supportive wife, and I love a challenge.
The idea of retirement is somewhat out of place – more of a distraction from the real goal at hand. So although some people may think that what I am doing is a form of retirement or that retirement is what I should be looking at – it is not. It is, at least, not what I choose to consider it. This is a journey no different than the ones I have take in years gone by. In my “Life Resume” I have chronicled a brief summary of the major highlights of my life. It includes family and children, formal education, building a 34’ sailboat, day trading futures markets, traveling in Asia for three years, building a 3400 square foot home in Oregon and 35 years of work experience with nine different companies. To me the idea of retirement is a distraction from of job at hand – to figure out what to do in the next chapter for my life – so off I go.
So enjoy, stay awhile. Please leave a comment or contact me: