I have a work reunion thing coming up. I don’t really like reunions, particularly coworker ones. I don’t really see the point. If it’s a high school reunion, it’s remembering a shared misery with the people you grew up with.
Sometimes it’s a pretty good way to see karma do its job.
With work reunions, what’s the point? Yay, we did a thing for a rich guy? In this case the rich guy was some dude in Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond. The TL;DR, is that I worked for a video game start-up, Microsoft bought us, then canned us all three years later.
I don’t need to celebrate that. When things are over, they should stay over. For them, my ex-coworkers, honestly I couldn’t tell what they think. Maybe their time was a highlight of their life, and it’s like a high school 2.0, or college 2.0. I didn’t keep in touch, so I don’t know.
Keeping in touch, isn’t the right phrase. I slowly disconnected. I just stopped trying, and eventually I drifted away and so did they. It took a while though, my time at Microsoft was a sore spot for years. Then, I don’t know how or when, I realized that I was looking at it as if I had Stockholm syndrome. It wasn’t a great place to work, and if anything it was an extremely toxic environment. When I came to that conclusion, I was able to put it behind me.
During my four years there, I ended up working 50 to 60 hour weeks for months on end. How we treated each other, from the execs down to the temps and testers was awful. It was so cliquey, and there was a class thing going on. If you didn’t live in the “cool” neighborhoods (because you didn’t make enough), you heard about it. A lot.
It’s fair to say that I wasn’t exactly a saint either. There was definitely people that I hurt, and should have treated better. I’m ashamed that I didn’t. I should have been better. That shame, is one of the many reasons I’m not enthused.
However, I keep thinking about the actual layoffs. It was on May 5th 2009, and it was like getting shot in a Soviet underground prison. You’d be sitting with your other victims, until you’re pulled into a room — then blammo. Your life at Microsoft is over.
You’d leave, some of us were in tears. At least I was. I was there for the start-up era, before Microsoft bought us and I was so proud to be working on video games, and building new tech — and it was just… done. All that work and effort, gone. Like it didn’t matter. All the hours I spent there, getting sicker and sicker, and more and more manic from not sleeping and ingesting huge amounts of caffeine and sugar, and all of it was for nothing.
A few people survived that layoff, until a year later Microsoft finished the job. Everything from our office was put into boxes and was sent to God knows where.
Anyway, during the first round of layoffs people just grabbed anything that wasn’t nailed down. Someone snagged an Apple G4 Cube (or was it a Mac Mini?), people grabbed games, controllers, and whatever else.
I took an electric pencil sharpener, which I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.
All the games, even the ones I worked on aren’t playable anymore. The Xbox 360s, are probably red ringed. The controllers, if they’re functional have nothing to connect to. The Macintosh that was taken, nothing can run on it anymore — even Linux would struggle with it. The organization I was in, is dead.
But the pencil sharpener, the goddamned pencil sharpener, is still on my desk helping me write drafts, edit, and draw.
I’m sure there’s some sort of symbolism there, but it’s a good pencil sharpener though.