canyonwalker | Entries tagged with job

One aspect of New Year celebrations, both secular and religious, is reflecting upon the year past. For several years now I've shared my annual retrospective on my blog. It's time to do that with my retrospective on 2025. As usual I've spent a few days composing my thoughts for this retrospective. That's why I'm posting it now, on January 4, instead of at 12:17am on the 1st. 😅

One of the things I've pondered over the past few days is what's an appropriate title for 2025. A few years ago I looked back at the malaise that hung over 2023 like a cloud of impending doom that shrouded all the good things that happened; I called it 2023: The Year that Was. When 2024 continued that trend as another year of constant worry that a downtown that never actually came was always only a few months away I titled it 2024: Another Year that Was.

I considered using the same moniker again for 2025— because it feels like it was another "Meh" year— but I really dislike the trilogy naming. It makes it seem like some completely uncreative Hollywood movie sequel slop. Instead I'm giving 2025 a name that reflects a related but different gloom. 2025: A Year of Waiting.

Waiting meme - from the TV show Narcos

Waiting for Illness to End

A lot of the waiting I did this year was waiting for illness (or its relative, inability) to end. Indeed, I almost chose 2025: Being Sick Sucks as the theme for this retrospective. That name was only runner-up because being sick was more my spouse's story than mine. Though I spent time sick, too— or standing by or supporting her while she was sick.

We were both sick to start the year in January after our star-crossed trip to Panama in Dec. 2024. While my sickness really only kicked in on the very last day of the trip as we were flying home and lasted a bit over a week into January, Hawk's sickness started during the trip and lasted into February. And it wasn't just one health issue but at least two.

One of those sicknesses was what I believe was a case of Norovirus Hawk's doctors refused to test for. They hand-waved it off as "traveler's diarrhea". But it lasted for 6 weeks! And at the same time she had a 2nd degree burn that took several weeks to heal. We lost 2 months to no travel because of these.

In May Hawk had food poisoning. And I don't mean an "Oh, I got sick after eating something and then slept it off" case of food poisoning. I mean, "Vomiting uncontrollably for 12 hours and then too weak and in pain to leave bed for days" level of food poisoning.

In June I had bronchitis and a cold that lasted almost two weeks. Hawk caught it, too, from me. We canceled a four-day holiday trip because of it.

In September Hawk broke one of her toes. Thankfully it was a small toe and a small/simple break, but still: it meant more trips canceled.

In October Hawk had a planned surgery on her foot. We hoped she might be ready for light adventure travel by the end of the year. Multiple complications during her recovery put the kibosh on that.

So, to total up time lost to sickness, it was: All of January, most of February, a week in May, half of June, half of September, half of October, and all of November and December. That's half the fucking year.

At least nobody died.

You want a second opinion on how shitty of a year 2025 was, health-wise? That's it, right there. 2025: At Least Nobody Died.

To be continued....

Today was another workday for me. I mention that because a lot of my peers at other companies in the industry are off until Monday, 5 Jan. For me this week has been a workweek. ...Though Jan. 1 was a holiday, and I used a vacation day on Dec. 31. So it was a workweek of just 3 workdays.

Shortening the week to just three working days made it an easy ramp back in to working after having a week-plus off around Christmas. Also making it easy is the fact that things are slow. Lots of people in the industry being off this week means a lot of my customers are off, too. Or only part of their staff is back so they're moving slowly on things.

Next week will be the start of the new year in earnest, work-wise. It's unclear right now whether I'll be slammed right away as people pile back in to the office and want updates on everything, or ramps up slowly because people returning after 2 weeks away will need time to sort things out from their end first. I'll see next week. For now... it's a weekend already!

Today it's back to work after a week-plus off. My last regular workday was Friday the 19th. Now it's the 29th. I was off for 9 days. Well, 8¾ if you count the bit of work I did last Monday. 😅

Coming back to work after a hiatus like this is a bit disorienting. One full week isn't long by European time-off standards, where taking a whole month at a time to travel or just relax is common, but it's still enough to get out of the habit of working. Today it's like, "Oh, I've got to sit down at my desk at 8am? And work? All day? And tomorrow, too?" 😭

And it's not like I even did much with my time off. I didn't even get the memo I had the week off until the week before. By then it was too late to plan anything.... Not that we would have planned much, anyway, with Hawk's recovery from surgery. And things went from "not great" to way worse early in the week, so even if we had planned to go somewhere, we'd have been rushing back home. So I spent most of the week off sitting at home. It was like working from home, just minus the work. 😞

This week's a slow one at work. Many of my colleagues are off until Friday (the day after New Year's) or next Monday. Many of our customers are out, too. My company's holiday break of Dec 22-26 was a bit weird because most companies that are giving holiday breaks this year are scheduling them Dec 24 - Jan 2. The short of it is, there's not a lot of meetings or calls this week. I might take a day off on the 31st just so I don't feel guilty sitting here doing nothing.

One of my sales colleagues has given me gifts each of the past few years. I've helped him make a lot of money, so it's understandable. (It's a professional custom in enterprise sales that the account executive, the one who makes big bucks on big deals, gives gifts to technical staff who were key to winning the deals.) The past few years the gifts have been bottles of liquor— which is fine, because I enjoy liquor! This year's gift was another bottle of whiskey.

Christmas gift from a colleague - Yamazaki Legent (Dec 2025)

Christmas gift from a colleague - Yamazaki Legent (Dec 2025)

This one's a bit different because, unlike the past few years' gifts, it's not a Scotch whisky. Yamazaki is a Japanese distiller, and this particular variety, Legent Cask Finish Blend Bourbon Whiskey, is distilled in Kentucky from American grains and aged for 8 years then sent to Japan for secondary aging and blending.

Yamazaki Legent comes in a nice gift/display box (Dec 2025)

Yamazaki Legent comes in a nice gift/display box (Dec 2025)

I was surprised to learn this is a $200+ bottle of bourbon. No, I didn't go rummaging through the box for a receipt. I'm not the kind of person who checks the price tag when receiving a gift. But when I searched online to learn more about this liquor, well, there was the price, right there.

I haven't opened the bottle yet. I will, soon. I'm certainly not going to make the mistake my grandmother did in saving beautiful gifts for a special-enough special occasion that never came. Perhaps I'll enjoy a drink, tomorrow, on Christmas, since this is a Christmas gift. I haven't celebrated Christmas in over 30 years... but at least I can raise a glass to good friends.

Today's my first day of vacation. Yeah, I wrote over the weekend about starting vacation, but that was the weekend. Weekends don't count as vacation. Today, Monday, is my first real day of vacation. And today, on my first real day of vacation... I worked. 🤣

Oh, I didn't work a full day. Good grief, I'd never do that. Not unless I was getting a day comped somewhere else— which I have done before. Twice this year, even! Once in March and once again later in March. 😅 But this time it was just 1 hour of work. I figured I can give the company an hour on my day off in exchange for all the flexibility I enjoy during regular workweeks.

Me feeling charitable, or reciprocal with flexibility, isn't the only reason I took a meeting and did some followup work today. It's that, as I've pointed out many times before, work doesn't stop just because I'm on vacation. Especially in sales, work doesn't stop. Customer projects keep moving forward, and frequently the deadlines are set without regard to my availability.

When that presents a big problem I push back and/or call for backup. Indeed, there was another customer meeting today I let my boss handle for me. So he's working a bit today, too— which absolutely factors in to my charitableness / reciprocity calculus. A colleague was even willing to cover this meeting for me. But I volunteered to do it myself even on a day off because, honestly, the alternative is worse.

You see, the alternative if I let this going a week or longer without touching it is not "I'll do it later, when I return," but rather, "While I'm out for a week, other people will try to do it, and they'll do something wrong and break it, so when I return I'll have to spend 3x as long fixing what's broken. Oh, and when it broke someone pressed the panic button, so now I have to join multiple status calls with managers who are demanding explanations." 😣

"Global Bonus Holidays for [Company] Employees" read an email that was sent out 2 months ago.

I didn't get it.

I literally didn't get it.

I only learned about it today when a few colleagues and I were making smalltalk at the start of a meeting. "Are you going anywhere next week when we have the whole week off?" they asked.

"WhAt WhOlE nExT wEeK oFf?!?" was all I could reply.

Goddammit.

God DAMMIT.

I could have planned a vacation if I'd known about this TWO FUCKING MONTHS AGO. Instead I learn about it with less than a week to go. After Hawk made a conflicting plan... and even if we change that conflict, travel is 2x - 3x as expensive to book now as TWO FUCKING MONTHS AGO.

Things feel like they're spinning out of control at work. No, it's not related to my personal desire to quit though it's possibly for similar reasons. There have been a rash of departures recently— so many that I'm concerned we're losing the ability to get things done.

The recent spate of departures began a few weeks ago. Two members of a team adjacent to my function announced their departures. While they're just 2 from among a team of 15 worldwide they were working with a significant number of my customers. At least two of these customers are asking us "WTF?" right now as the team struggles to fill the gaps.

The reason it's a struggle to fill those gaps is that the team was already cut down to being a skeleton crew. There's no spare bandwidth for other team members to jump in and help. And, in fact, the two employees' reasons for leaving were directly related to the overaggressive cuts a few months ago. They lost trust in management and moved on to jobs at new companies that seemed more stable and offered them career growth.

The next departure that affected my work came right before Thanksgiving. "West", a technical field leader, announced he was leaving. Because West has an executive title I wondered how much of his departure was due to the C-suite and board making cuts, versus West leaving for his own reasons. Some scuttlebutt I've picked up argues West left for his own reasons— though among those were hum not being offered career growth by the C-suite. Either way, his departure is a huge loss to us in technical sales.

Now, these departures were already enough of a struggle to handle, particularly in the customer-facing work I do. But then yesterday a small avalanche of high-level departures hit:

Our Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), the head of sales, is leaving. Unusually, he's leaving before the fiscal year is over. Typically when an account manager or sales leader leaves they finish out a quarter or the fiscal year. That really makes me wonder how much of this decision was his vs. the CEO's and board's. My best hypothesis given underlying sales data is that he was told he'll be dismissed after the FY is over, and he chose instead to leave on his own schedule.

Also, the head of HR is leaving. I'm not sure anybody cares about that, other than her underling who's getting promoted. 🤣 But it's always concerning when members of the C-suite and the next level down start leaving at the same time. What do they see that the rest of us don't?

Minutes after the message announcing the CRO's departure arrived, the CRO sent a message announcing the departure of several people underneath him. We're losing a technical VP— my grandboss— and two Senior Directors. Again, when multiple leaders are leaving at the same time, the rest of us are left to wonder: What risk do they see that we don't? What do they lack confidence in that they've asked us to believe?

So, with all these departures there are problems on two levels. First, execution. With so many people leaving a levels from individual contributors to senior leaders it will be harder to get critical things done for the next several months until new people can be brought onboard and gotten up to speed. Second, strategy. What do all these leadership departure portend? How many were driven by the board of directors— and are their cuts going from overly aggressive to just plain nuts? How many departures are because leaders don't believe the future they've asked the rest of us to buy into?

Texas Trip log #2
41,000' over Nevada · Tue, 11 Nov 2025. 7pm.

I'm not even halfway to Texas yet and already my plans for the rest of the week have changed. The customer I intended to visit in San Antonio on Friday couldn't get all of their people together on the same day. Instead we'll meet with them virtually, and probably next week. That means I should go home Thursday instead of Friday, and I don't need a rental car to drive to San Antonio.

Unfortunately this is the way enterprise selling is in 2025. Face-to-face meetings are rare anymore. Scheduling them with customers and prospects is like pulling teeth, and even once they agree to a meeting date they often renege on it. It's like nobody can commit anymore.

Fortunately I know it's 2025, not 1995 unlike a certain senior politician who seems to think "Bring back Johnny Carson [to host the Tonight Show]" is a reasonable demand. (Johnny Carson stepped down from hosting that show in 1992 and retired to private life. He died in 2005.) I anticipated that the customer in San Antonio had at least a 50/50 chance of flaking on us, so I held onto two homeward flight reservations: one on Thursday and one on Friday. I simply canceled the one on Friday. And, as I got the news of them flaking out just before boarding the flight, I was able to do that from my phone while sitting in my seat while the aircraft was still parked at the gate.

Cancelling my rental car reservation took a bit longer. I waited until I could take out my laptop computer for that. Though by the time we were 41,000' feet above Nevada I couldn't get my computer to connect to Southwest's flaky wifi. So I went through "Sorry, that username or password couldn't be found" purgatory on my mobile phone trying to pull up the booking site to cancel the car.

Tonight is Halloween. Or as I've called it recently, Hallow-whatnow?

I don't celebrate. And not only don't I celebrate, but fewer and fewer people around me celebrate. Oh, the stores are all festooned with "PLeAsE GiVe uS MoNeY!11!" holiday decorations as early as August. But as I do less and less shopping in stores I'm visually assaulted with such things less and less. Plus, by the start of October Christmas decorations are already displacing Halloween decorations even as Halloween is still 4 weeks away. 🤣

Like I said, though, fewer people in my orbit celebrate. Halloween is a nonevent in our neighborhood. We're a townhouse community, so few people living here have kids, and those who do have kids have mostly younger kids— mostly too young to go trick-or-treating. And those who do have kids also tend to bundle them into their luxury SUVs and take them to carefully controlled parties. Most of them never play in the community any of the other 364 days of the year... why would their parents suddenly feel it's safe to let them walk around in the dark and knock on doors tonight?

Even my company hasn't done anything for Halloween the past few years. In the past we'd have a small costume contest. Small, as in only a few people would participate. But at least there was something. Or a few people would act on their own to dress in costumes, and it would be amuse to see them on videoconferences. This year there was nothing. No contests, no announcements, no funny surprises on camera.

I've always been a bit "Bah, humbug!" about holiday celebrations but this year it's disappointing there's been basically nothing.

Yesterday my boss suggested a plan to help me reach elite status. At first I thought he might be joking because he brought it up in a laughing manner, but as he explained it there's a real there there.

His idea was that our AE (account executive) counterparts often seek to "protect" us from having to travel as we head into the end of the year. Except those of us who do travel as part of our jobs are concerned about reaching elite status. And as we head toward the end of the year we're keeping an eye on how many more miles/points/trips we need to qualify. He talked about getting his team together to discuss how much more each person needed for the year then telling the AEs, "Hey, you need someone to help you cover a meeting? Reach out to Chris, he needs 4 more trips this year for elite status!"

"I need just 1 more trip, possibly 2 if it's a short/cheap one," I said right away. I needed no delay to think about it because I've already been tracking it. I explained to my boss how I created a spreadsheet years ago, modeling it kind of like a sales forecast, to track progress toward elite status.

I also told him about how hardcore frequent flyers do Mileage Runs (MRs)— trips they take purely to earn status. I did an MR, just once, years ago.

I gently pushed back, though, on the idea of telling AEs to help book work trips for us. I did that because I don't want to create or perpetuate a notion that we're arranging business trips for personal benefit. I do push for meeting customers and prospects face-to-face, by traveling to visit them, instead of meeting via videoconference. I do that because it makes business sense, because it's more valuable for the company, not because it's a boondoggle or for status bragging rights.

Something weird is happening with spam and spam filtering at work this week. The volume of spam we're receiving is way up. Whereas I used to see maybe 10 spam messages a day that got through our filters I'm now seeing 50. At the same time a lot of my colleagues are seeing their outgoing messages throttled. Messages are being queued for hours at a time or bounced back to us, undelivered.

The last time I saw a major uptick in incoming spam like this was several years ago, at a different company. And there it was the result of a willful change we'd made. Execs said, "Hmm, spam isn't too bad, deleting 10 a day is manageable, we don't need to pay to renew spam filtering." The very first day after the filtering contract expired we were inundated. Within hours employees from across the company were complaining that email was rendered unusable. And while ICs were contending with several dozen spam messages per day, some senior managers were getting multiple hundreds. Execs restored the budget for spam filtering post-haste.

The situation this week is not due to deliberate change on our side. No exec went the penny wise and pound foolish route of trying to save money on email. Instead, it's a situation that has been thrust upon us.

Google (our email provider) says that we're being throttled because their algorithms see we're the target of a huge uptick in spam. Yeah, we noticed that, too— incoming spam. Why are they treating us like it's our problem? We pay them to fix it; so the fact it's broken is their problem! And why TF are our outgoing emails, legitimate business emails sent by actual people, being throttled? It's like they're punishing us for being victims of their own failing filters.

This week, since returning to work on Wednesday morning after a relaxing long weekend in Phoenix, I've been developing a customer workshop. The deadline was short... It was decided early last week ago that I'd have to deliver it today. And not only that but I was on the road for 3 days last week with a business trip and then had 2 days of PTO planned this week. Thus the work in earnest on the creating the workshop began Wednesday morning. To run it for an audience of 6-8 devops engineers today at 9am. 😳

TBH I could have started before Wednesday. Although at the same time, not really. Mon-Tue were out because I was on vacation. Last week Thursday afternoon I'd just gotten back from a business trip and was tired out. And Friday I was both still tired out and had at least half a day of regular work to do. So I started this week Wednesday.

At first I was kicking myself for not starting until Wednesday. Despite the reasons above I kept scolding myself, "This would be so much easier if I'd done even 1 hour per day of it last Thu-Fri." That made me feel down. But at least I got going Wednesday. And I made steady progress at it, ultimately working until after 6pm because I was in the zone on it. That made me feel good.

Thursday was another "in the zone" day— at least up through lunch. After lunch I paused working on the workshop because I had a few important meetings to attend. When I got back to the workshop development work around 3pm I found that my infrastructure had gotten borked. 😰

My systems were wedged. About 95% of what I'd built was unusable. It wasn't anything I'd done; I hadn't touched it for 3 hours. And it seemed like it wasn't somebody else's fault, either; nobody else was using my infrastructure. Something had just failed on its own. And while I know enough about the infrastructure underpinnings to figure out, in broad strokes, what was wrong, I'm not expert enough in the details to have fixed it. Fortunately I still have one colleague— I used to have three, until the layoffs of a few weeks ago— who is familiar with the infra. Unfortunately it was already after 6pm for him and he was offline.

I messaged my boss to let him know. He was understanding of the predicament. He encouraged me to do as much as I could the rest of the day, and he'd help get my east-coast colleague involved at 9am EDT (6am my time) today. I finished the day Thursday pleased with how much I'd built in 2 days but crestfallen that a system snafu at the 11th hour might force us to push the seminar off to next week.

Well, I woke up at 5:40am today. It's not that frustration made me unable to sleep; just the heat. But the frustration was definitely there so I decided I might as well put on a shirt and log in to see if my colleagues were active. They'd just logged in a few minutes earlier. Logan, the guy who setup the infra originally, had just messaged that he was starting to take a look. Within 10 minutes he'd diagnosed the problem. It was basically what I'd figured out, but at a more granular level. He knew the specifics I didn't, so he knew which part had failed and how to reset it. He reset it, and within another 10 minutes everything was back up and running. The path was clear for me to deliver the workshop seminar today at 9am!

The seminar went well. We had a good number of attendees at the start, though half were called away less than 15 minutes later when part of their infrastructure went down. Oh, the irony! I even joked with them about my infra outage. But their infrastructure runs the e-commerce site for a small retail brand you might have heard of, so "down" for them means it's all-hands-on-deck for their infra team.

Their infra team was about half the attendees. The other half were apps people whose app was behaving just fine, so they could stay. I ran the workshop with them. It went really well. We ran until just after 12pm. The customer appreciated it, my sales counterpart said I did a fantastic job, and my boss really liked it, too. Good times!

I've been busy-busy since we got back from our Phoenix trip. I'm glad we came home Tuesday afternoon instead of Tuesday night. Leaving in the afternoon meant we were home by 6pm, which afforded me the evening to unpack, relax, and reset body and mind for work. And I needed that reset because, come 8am on Wednesday, it was work-work-work. I was at my keyboard until almost 6:30pm Wednesday. Today, I started at 7:30am and finished at 5:30pm.

What's got me so busy? I'm preparing a hands-on workshop for a customer. We're using it as a Proof of Value (POV) exercise for them to gain confidence & familiarity with one of our products so they're confident enough in its technical suitability to buy it. POVs, POCs, pilots, evaluations; these are (almost) synonymous terms for such projects. I've done them quite a lot in the past but not so much in the past few years. Now I'm back on the stick. And this one is short notice. I've been rushing to build a new workshop in time to deliver it on Friday. Tomorrow.

I've been pretty sanguine about the layoffs at my company this past week. I'm surprised how sanguine I've been about it. That makes me wonder, why am I so sanguine, this time? And yes, it's "this time" because this isn't the first layoff we've had this year. We had one in January that also impacted my team heavily. And while there were none in 2024, there were two in 2023 and one in 2022.

I think an obvious dimension of the answer for why I'm so sanguine is that, after all of these rounds of layoffs, I've become numb to it. Each one of them has hit my department, along with others. Each one has resulted in the dismissal of decent workers who were getting the job done, along with some who weren't. It's always when good people get whacked that I take it harder. This time there were more good people whacked, as a proportion of those dismissed, than last time. That tells me I should be taking it harder. And that's where the numbing effect comes in.

It's possible I'll be less sanguine about this layoff as take more time to think about it. The effects of January's layoff got worse and worse for weeks as flawed planning and execution became clearer and smart, capable people chose to quit because they lost faith in Management. (In the tech industry we call the latter brightsizing, a play on words against the euphemism "right-sizing" that Corporate America created to put a positive spin on the term "downsizing".) Within two weeks every seasoned manager in my department quit.

Indeed I already see reason for growing alarm over this layoff. This layoff hit the sales team hard. Cutting sales people is a pretty extreme thing in business. Sales people generate the revenue! I mean, cutting development staff has consequences, too, but those consequences often take 12-18 months to materialize. Cutting sales staff means a hit to the company's numbers next quarter.

And it's not like Management was just "trimming the fat". We were already running lean. When you make significant cuts to a team that's lean, you're not just trimming fat— or excess capacity. You're trimming muscle. You're dismissing good people who were doing work that counted. And the people left can't just "pick up the slack". They weren't slacking.

Management even acknowledges that they cut people doing real work. They've told us to think in the coming days and weeks about what we won't do because it's just not high priority enough. And while they've phrased that with empathetic words and intonation, and framed it to imply that we individual contributors have agency, it's starting to stink like 5 day old fish.... Why are they asking us to figure out what work gets cut? That should have been part of their strategy in planning the layoff!

I've written in several recent blogs that my company had a layoff this week. As I was working a trade show at the time the news dropped my colleagues and I were reading tea leaves to glean details. Now that I'm back at my desk, and have attended a series of management meetings about it, I know more about the structure of it.

Within my job function, within North America, 3 of 7 colleagues were dismissed. That's almost half my team.

In my job function outside NA, 1 of 6 colleagues plus their manager were dismissed.

Among the account executives (AEs) in my region, 2 of 5 were dismissed. Other regions saw cuts, too, and at least one regional VP is being dismissed.

In the neighboring professional services (PS) department, both of the liaisons we had for selling PS and related stuff to customers were dismissed.

How do I feel about it? Aligning a few thoughts to the bullet points above:

Nearly half my US department was cut. That's a HUGE loss of capability. Among those dismissed were two veteran teammates who, in my estimation, were doing solid work. This was not a "trim the low performers" type of layoff. It was also not a "trim excess capacity" layoff. Recently I've been overloaded and had just gotten my boss to shift some of my responsibilities to a veteran colleague— one of the experienced guys who now has been let go! Now I'm way overloaded again.

Huh. Again the European team gets cut lightly while the US gets put through a bandsaw. Corporate leaders occasionally state it's because the Euro team is so high-functioning compared to the US— but last quarter the Euro team lost a major client. Like, literally the company's biggest client. Why not more cuts there? It's hard not to believe it's because the EU has such stronger labor laws making it expensive for companies to fire workers. So in a global economy US jobs get cut first. But hey, that's "freedom"!

I'm glad to see some management trimmed along with the ICs. With all the IC cuts, though, the sales organization is even more top-heavy than it was before. First level managers have a lot of reports but there's now IMO a redundant level of VPs.

The cuts to PS sales are going to hurt. I don't know about the Euro team person, but the PS sales person in the US was an excellent helper at explaining to customers and prospects the value of our services offerings. Could AEs pick up the slack? In a perfect world, yes, perfect AEs would be able to do that. It's not a perfect world, though. And with these cuts the remaining AEs are even more heavily loaded. That's because while we cut 1/3 to 1/2 the sales professionals we didn't cut any of the customers.

More thoughts to come.

Update: Feeling More Sanguine than Expected

Napa Trade Show blog #8
Back home - Wed, 10 Sep 2025, 5:30pm.

I'm back home from the trade show in Napa. It's earlier than expected. Booth visits were slow again today, tapering off to nearly nil by 2pm, so our event coordinator encourage those of us not already booked to stay overnight to head home early. I left at 3, which was just an hour before the official closing time, and used that early start to mostly beat traffic on the way home. Still, there was some traffic, making it a 2 hour drive. I got home at 5pm. That's 48 hours + 3 hours after I left on Monday.

It's just as well most of us left early. Our team spirit was close to nil as we spent most of the day trying to figure out what's going on with a layoff today. Oh, we totally put on game faces for talking to customers and prospects. Selling was the one thing we all could be positive about. But the moment it was just us coworkers again, the dismal "WTF is going on?" discussions started back up.

Speaking of those dismal discussions, it looks like tomorrow morning is going to be back-to-back-to-back meetings with various levels of leadership "explaining" the layoffs to us. I quote explaining because do we really need 3 hours of meetings on the topic, with each layer of executive management needing to have their own say? That says to me we have too many layers of executives. Maybe they should have laid off one of them. But of course they didn't.

Update: Assembling Details about this Layoff

Napa Trade Show blog #7
On lunch break - Wed, 10 Sep 2025, 1pm.

Almost immediately after I arrived at the trade show booth today the mellow mood I started the morning with burst. "What have you seen about the layoff announced today?" one of my sales colleagues asked. "WhAt LaYoFf?!" I responded. 🤯

Over the course of a few hours my colleagues and I were piecing together bits of information we gleaned to understand the full picture of what was occurring. "I know Kevin and Kevin were dismissed," one colleague said as a starting point. Apparently both Kevins had been notified early in the morning of their termination. They're both account executives (AEs) and apparently texted their AE colleagues immediately about it.

Other than the de-Kevining of the AE team we were left reading tea leaves to figure out the rest. We noticed that Kevinses' Slack accounts were marked (deactivated) so we started checking the Slack status of dozens of colleagues one at a time. That confirmed or revealed a few other departures. Then we observed that one of the Kevins was supposed to staff this trade show but was instructed by his boss at the last minute to stay home. Well, one of my colleagues, Chris, was also asked, by a different boss, to do the same. Was Chris laid off? His Slack wasn't deactivated— yet— but his calendar showed a meeting with his boss, his VP, and HR later in the day. Yeah, that's the kiss of death right there. ☠️

In between casting bones and reading tea leaves we've been doing the work of the trade show. It's been a bit slow again today. Not quite as bad as most of yesterday but also not plenty-busy like during the late afternoon reception yesterday when I dressed as Jenkins and was talking to people left and right.

Right now I'm finishing up a quick lunch break. There's a meeting on the calendar with my immediate sales team— those of us left standing, that is— for 2pm today. Those of us here at the show are looking forward to hearing it straight from our managers.

Update: Layoffs Hanging Heavy in the Air

Napa Trade Show blog #5
Wrapping up Day 1 - Tue, 9 Sep 2025, 7:30pm.

This afternoon I did a costume change at the trade show. During my off-shift time between 1-3pm I shaved my beard down to a mustache, ironed my arm-towel, and donned my tuxedo to become Jenkins.

Portraying Jenkins the Butler at an industry trade show (Sep 2025)

Portraying Jenkins the Butler at an industry trade show (Sep 2025)

The show had been extremely quiet up 'til lunch. It was busier, but not busy, at 3pm when I returned. Though right away I started commanding attention in my butler guise. People noticed me and came into the booth to talk. Or they stopped and stared from 20' away, trying furtively to take pictures with their phones, and my colleagues and I beckoned them to come in and talk to us. We even helped them take pictures posing with Jenkins.

Late in the afternoon the conference's technical sessions wound down and there was a reception in the vendors area. There were free drinks offered there— and attendees had to walk past us vendors to get to them! That's part of the logistical strategy of supporting vendors I wrote about in my previous blog.

Throughout the rest of the day, until several minutes after the 7pm closing time, Jenkins continued to be a draw. My cosplay brought people into the booth, people who work at companies we want to turn into customers, who otherwise wouldn't have come talk to us. That is why I rushed out to a fine men's wear shop yesterday afternoon and dropped $50 on a new bow tie and shirt studs.

My company has a split opinion on whether Jenkins should be part of our branding. Our marketing department, virtually all of whom have been hired in the past 2 years, are against it. To them Jenkins represents the past— even though it's the source of 90% of our revenues— and they don't want to associate the company's messaging with it.

I point out, and some of our sales leaders support me strongly on this, that not only is Jenkins the source of 90% of our revenues but it's a strong brand that people recognize. People in the DevOps industry who've never heard of our company have virtually all heard of Jenkins. They recognize the butler on site, they are entertained by seeing a real-life Jenkins the Butler, and they're way more willing to come talk to us. Then, once we get the opportunity to talk to them, we can build on our industry bona fides with Jenkins and then pivot to talking about our newer products— the products we believe represent our future. But to talk about that future we first need people willing to listen. Jenkins creates that willingness.

I emphasize this here because I worry that I am risking my job by dressing up as Jenkins. I'm literally going against the desires of at least one of our C-level executives, the CMO. And quite possibly the CEO as well! But you know what... if they want to fire me over it, it'll be their own colossal mistake.

Napa Trade Show blog #3
At the hotel - Tue, 9 Sep 2025, 6:45am.

There are two things I often say about working at trade shows. One, trade shows are a marathon, not a sprint. They're multiple days, generally multiple long days, so you've got to pace yourself. And two, you especially have got to avoid hitting it too hard on the first day. Or in cases like this, the first night. That's after the team arrives in town, everyone's spirits are high, and none of the tiredness of long days on the show floor has set in yet.

After I arrived on Monday afternoon things seemed set for a reasonable evening on Day 0 of the show. I mean, even my need to rush out to buy missing hardware for my tuxedo was resolved with a minimum of fuss... and $50.

I got back from my emergency shopping trip in time to catch the second half of the late-afternoon reception and hob-nob with my colleagues over a few glasses of wine. I would've hob-nobbed with customers and prospects but, frankly, there were barely any present today. In fact the reception was about 80% employees of the host company, identifiable by their green shirts with a cheeky slogan on the back.

After the reception my colleagues and I went into town for a fancy dinner. Regional VP Alan is back on the crew for this show (he'd tagged out over a health problem then tagged back in when he recovered much faster than expected) so you know we went out to a good steak-and-wine restaurant. That's Alan's way. And the steak house was just 2 doors down from the suit shop I'd been at 90 minutes earlier. "If anyone needs an emergency bow tie," I said loudly to the group, "There's a shop right next door!" 🤣

Over the course of dinner I was careful not to hit it too hard. For example, I stuck to drinking wine, no cocktails. And I alternated glasses of wine with glasses of water. I still enjoyed it all, of course. The point was when we went home I had a light buzz going instead of a drunken stagger. But something I ate or drank (or both) disagreed with me. I'll spare the unpleasant details and skip to the result: I was awake, in discomfort, until 2am.

Even worse than being unable to fall asleep until 2am, my morning alarm was at 6:15. 😖 I've got a sales forecast meeting with my boss at 7. Then after that, a full day at the show. Yeah, I'll catch a break of about 2 hours after lunch. But then it's showtime again through this evening's reception ending at 7pm.

I expect tonight is going to be an early night. We'll see if my stomach problems stay gone. I'm not 100% sure because right now I'm not sure I'm back to 100% yer.

I'm back to work today after being away for 10 days. It turns out 10 days is enough not just to "clear my head" but to be so refreshed that everything seems a bit new again. And I don't mean that in a good way. 😨 Many things are unfamiliar new. Like, "Is this going to be on the test?" new.

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Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Entries tagged with job

2025: A Year of Waiting

Waiting for Illness to End

Easing into the New Year at Work

Back to Work after a Week-Plus Off

Christmas Gift from a Colleague

On My First Day of Vacation... I Worked

Company Holidays All Next Week. I Didn't Get The Memo!

It Feels Like It's Spinning Out Of Control

Rebooking My Trip at 41,000 Feet

Hallow-Whatnow?

Boss Offers to Help Me Reach Elite Status

Spam on Blast at Work

Downs & Ups Delivering a Customer Workshop

Busy, Busy. Preparing a Customer Workshop.

Why so Sanguine about this Layoff?

Details About This Layoff

Back from the Trade Show. Layoffs Hanging Heavy in the Air.

Trade Show Day 2: Reading the Tea Leaves of a Layoff!

Day 1 at the Trade Show: The Butler is In Tha House!

Trade Show Day 0: Late to Bed, Early to Rise

Back to Work After 10 Days