So I have some slight idea what some of you have heard about my last job, or at least what impression you got. Jan. 18 was a confusing day, in which a lot of stuff happened, and it seems some people can't keep straight what order things happened in, or which people did what.

What went down and why

First thing we need to get straight is that I wasn't fired. I was laid off. This is a different thing entirely. Laid off means the company can't afford to keep you on right now, but wants the option of bringing you back on when things improve. I was one of 14 people laid off from T8 on January 18; at least three others besides myself were programmers.

The layoffs were necessary because a lot of clients that the company was expecting to get started on projects for suddenly cancelled their contracts. That occurrence was related to a shakeup in the upper management over the company's direction, that resulted in the CEO and co-founder actually being fired.

How I reacted

I also didn't throw a fit when the layoffs were announced. In fact, I wasn't even present at the office when the announcement was made. I know of one employee who did throw a fit. I won't name names but he was a recent hire who had been an intern before that, and he and I were good friends at work, but he's a bit on the angry side -- sort of reminds me of myself when I was younger. Smart kid, but kinda tightly wound. So perhaps the person telling you stories has somehow confused me with him, though that seems odd since our desks were in different rooms. But the other possibility is that he's lying and making up shit, and it's hard to have to think such things about someone you liked.

I did throw my headphones at my desk much earlier that afternoon, which startled a couple people, but that well before anyone knew anything about anyone being laid off. At that time I left the office and headed home. My reason for doing so was that a co-worker in the desk next to me had been persistently ill and coughing very loudly, and the noise was causing me serious trouble concentrating. So I decided to try to work from home because I felt I'd be more productive there. While at home, I received a call from one of the managers in my department, not the one you guys would know, and I explained to him what I was frustrated about. He seemed understanding about it.

So when the layoff announcement was made, I wasn't even at the office. I didn't find out about the situation until about 8:00 pm that evening, when Wade Arnold, now CEO (previously CTO), called me himself, on my cell phone, to give me the news. At the time I was at the Flowerama warehouse, helping Leah with some car trouble. After we got Leah's car running, I went to the T8 office to pick up my stuff from my desk and talk with Wade a bit about the situation.

I think it really tore Wade up to have to lay people off. Actually he told me this. So I wanted to ease his mind that I wasn't angry with him. Business is business and personal is personal, and in business you have to do what you have to do. I have much sincere respect for Wade Arnold. He knows web tech, and he also knows business, and it's damned hard to find people to work for who get both. He gave me a chance when I was just starting out and rough around the edges, and he not only put up with my opinionated ranting, but really listened. He's the best guy I ever had the pleasure to call my boss. If offered another job reporting directly to him, I would probably take it without a second thought. He has asked me a couple times if I'd be willing to do some stuff on contract, and I told him I definitely would.

Who was affected and why

So in the end, I was chosen along with several others to be laid off. It's common in these situations that the people who are cut are the oldest/most experienced, and the newest: the oldest because they have the highest salaries, and the whole reason to lay off employees is to save money, and of the programmers with the company at the time, I had been there longest; and the newest because they're still learning and aren't producing as much. Of the other programmers laid off who I can call to mind, most came into the company with considerable previous experience at other companies, and I know for a fact that one had a much higher salary then my own (I accidentally saw a page of her contract once), and two were wrapping up a pretty major project and had yet to be fully transitioned into a new one. With a few exceptions, those who stayed on were working on ongoing, hourly projects at the time, so their hours could be billed out immediately; I was working entirely on internal stuff. So in other words, the programmers chosen for the layoff were chosen, to my understanding, based on money, not personal factors.

But since I don't know who actually made the call, it's also possible that my technical skill and relatively long history with the company were factors. When it was announced a while back that T8 was looking to promote somebody from the programming department into a management position between Wade and the rest of the programmers, I believe that there may have been a lot of expectation that I would end up getting the job. Besides having been with the company the longest, I was known for having written a lot of valuable internal documentation of importance to T8's development process. I think many were surprised at who eventually got the nod for the position, but I was not surprised that it wasn't me; I had been very upfront that whatever my qualifications, the actual kind of work entailed by such a position doesn't interest me much. I'm a programmer, not a manager; I don't much care for managing, probably because I don't much care for being managed. Also, while I don't have direct knowledge with respect to certain people's skills, it's a common joke in my line of work that certain programmers get promoted to management so that they won't be programming any more -- because they're terrible at it.

Where my head had been at

There are things you may have heard about me that can be traced to facts. It's true that I don't like being interrupted/distracted a lot when I'm working on programming. Most good programmers don't (For insights on best kinds of work conditions for programmers see http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html along with any of several blog artiicles by the likes of Reg Braithwaite, Jeff Atwood, Martin Fowler, and Joel Spolsky. It's a popular subject among people who actually have a passion for this kind of work.) It isn't that I don't collaborate well with people, it's that I don't collaborate well with people who need their little hands held to the degree that they're in my face every ten minutes with another stupid question of tidbit of information that I don't need right now. I'm hardly an oddball in this regard. Programming is mental work requiring concentration, if you're doing it right. (If it's just "typing weird stuff" you're doing it wrong.) A noisy environment with people tapping you on the shoulder constantly is not conducive to programming. This is a very widespread opinion among many very respected people in the industry, but most companies, T8 unfortunately included, either don't quite get it, or can't do anything about it. Any programmer as hopelessly ADD-ridden as myself is going to be especially sensitive in this area.

Also I've been known to get into heated arguments with other programmers I work with. This isn't because I'm a nasty person; it's because I'm passionate about software development and have strong opinions about it. Again, this isn't at all weird or unusual in my line of work. In fact, I prefer to work with people who'll engage me in a good argument to defend something. I've been fortunate to collaborate with some very good programmers at T8. Just to name a few names: Alex Stevenson, Judah Frangipane, JJ Phillip, Brandon June, Ivan Erickson, Dan Jackson, and the other Daniel whose last name slips my mind right now, the quiet one. Not to mention Wade Arnold himself, who besides being a very good programmer in his own right, was smart enough to hire all those other guys I just mentioned.

Still, my own attitude toward my work had been suffering of late. The rapid growth of the company had brought in many cultural changes that I didn't keep up with well, and this caused me some stress. When I came on at T8, it was a dozen people crammed into one tiny, dark room. It was a heady startup kind of environment, and we all felt like we were part of something big and possibly utterly crazy, that we each had a direct personal stake in, and it was exciting. By the past few months though, I felt like a bit of a dinosaur, and like the T8 that hired me was gone. The work I was doing was also feeling less interesting -- it seemed like I was getting the same role in project after project, rather than have the opportunity to branch out and learn new things. This definitely affected my work; overall, I think my personality is best suited to either working in a small company, or having my own.

How I feel about it now, and what's next for me

Overall, T8DESIGN is a great company, and my experience there has been mostly great. It isn't my perfect company, because my perfect company doesn't exist (perhaps I should create it). I'm rooting for T8 to pull out of whatever troubles they've had recently, because I think they deserve to succeed. I believe that Wade's leadership, and the talent of their programming team, are big advantages for them. As for me personally, I think it was a good time for me to get out, and I had been contemplating doing so for some time. The layoff, unfortunate though it may be, was just the shakeup I needed to move on and get into some new things.

And finally, I have news about the job front. The week after next, I'll be starting a new job at another smallish local web development company, an outfit called Edgecore. They have exactly one programmer now, and soon they will have two. I will be working on fairly basic web development stuff much of the time, including CSS layout and design, an area in which I could certainly stand to learn a thing or two (front-end design has long been a roadblock for me when it comes to my own personal web projects), while also working on some CMS-like tools. In addition, I'll be doing some remote contracting for a company in Los Angeles called Ontometrics, who have a variety of clients; it sounds like the position will involve a fair amount of enterprise Jave. And I'll be putting in a little bit of support and maintenance on some Adobe Flex components developed by my friend and another former T8er, Judah Frangipage, and his company Drumbeat Insight. I welcome the extra contract stuff because frankly, I need the money. I need to fix my van up and get rid of some old debt. But just so my friends know, I'm probably going to be very busy and putting in some pretty heavy hours for a little while. I'm excited to be working on such an interesting variety of things.