A belated ringing of the changes took place today as I along with 330 of my colleagues at Barclays Global Investors was told my position was being eliminated.
A first wave of redundancies had taken place in the San Francisco office in November and this second phase was expected.
A large group of us had suffered the same fate so it didn’t feel personal. Still my emotions were up and down throughout the day as a new and uncertain, and interesting future opened up ahead. After a consolatory coffee at Starbucks with ‘the newly freed’ we met our remaining work colleagues for a goodbye lunchtime drink at the Prohibition Bar. When they left to back to the ghostly office they looked glummer than we did. (Thank you for that!).
Having exchanged telephone numbers and email addresses (as my company Blackberry has been reset and wiped of all contact details) I headed home on the train with a thousand half formed plans in my head.
Four hours later, I arrived home with a strategy and in a much improved mood.
The drinks lasted till 11:00 pm. We went over to Chamberlain to catch up with the rest of the BGIers.
I went for my HR consultation yesterday. I caught with quite a few faces I knew. Apparently they had all been asked to go. But the good thing was almost all of them had a plan.