A swiftly falling ax

Last week, Design Associates laid off ten people in one day. Before now, we'd laid off a couple people here and there, mostly people who weren't being terribly helpful or had had performance issues. But last week, it was ten fairly decent people, including my pal Ethel and longtime pal and CAD manager Sarge. Wanda was also sent away, much later than she should have been in my opinion, but alas....

The people were laid off just before lunch, and then we had a staff meeting after lunch so that the partners of the firm could explain what was going on. They said they lamented having to do it, and they'd put it off for almost two months. To DA's credit, they tend to be among the last people to lay folks off. I think us and another firm had big layoffs last week, but that's all I've heard. Most other firms in town did their layoffs in the spring or even summer. It blew me away to hear of Sarge's layoff--he's really the only person who can answer the tough CAD and Revit questions, and I can guarantee you that there's going to be more problems in the office with software now that this happened. Sarge emailed me today to ask if I could get him some images of projects that he'd worked on, and Ethel already sent me her resume to look at and help her tweak.

Guy's office just got really busy. His office of his firm (they have offices in other cities) has gotten the job to do the construction documents for part of a big hospital back east, so they may need to hire another person, maybe two, but there's no way that his company can absorb DA's loss. Meanwhile, Ethel emailed me part of a wanted ad online; it was for a healthcare architect with 7-10 years experience (just like me) in an office south of town...with a starting salary of $80K. That's a sight more than I make now. I wish she hadn't sent it to me. I know I'm underpaid at DA but I hate being reminded of how underpaid I am. I really like the people I work with, and to an extent that makes up for a certain amount of money, but still.....