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03/31/2004: "out of Egypt"
Today is the last day for our current CEO. Tomorrow he's repatriating, and our COO takes over his position. Friday is my last day here as well, and there are a few other people that will be repatriating themselves in the next couple of weeks. How appropriate that the employee meeting this morning started off with a joke about Moses.
The meeting was supposed to be a videoconference with our facility in the US. Technical difficulties delayed the start, so our HR manager was asked to stall a bit. He told a joke about Moses and the Commandments, which simply wasn't funny at all, but was nonetheless entirely appropriate for this company's circumstances. After all, we have a small exodus of our own going on here, of which I'm a part.
Since I came here, three people (that I know about) have repatriated themselves back to the parent company. Additionally, our CEO returns tomorrow, my boss' boss does so in a couple of weeks, and at least two or three others will do the same over the same time period. Then there's me, the one guy that's not leaving the country, only leaving the company. It's a small exodus, but it still looks ominous in my eyes.
Turns out that the state of the company is not as bad as I feared. Our COO-cum-CEO today informed us that orders are up, thanks to the scheduled launch of a new product in May, and that our US facility won't be closing, but instead the employees will be buying it out and forming their own company. Good for them, I say. Sadly, had information like this actually be broadcast as it came to light, it is possible that I would see the progress this company has made in preventing wholesale liquidation. Instead, I saw bad news announced nearly 6 months ago with zero follow-up, a bunch of high-level employees repatriating themselves back to the parent company, and a global market that is picking up, but for products that we won't be making anymore. I saw no future here, whereas it now seems that progress is actually being made.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not sorry that I'm leaving - not by any stretch of the imagination. I'm really looking forward to my new position and the opportunities it represents. If my current job were the only one available to me for the rest of my life, I could certainly live with it, be fairly content, and do very well, but my new position has Opportunity written all over it, a kind of opportunity that would simply never exist within the walls where I work now.
So long, Egypt. I'm off to the Promising Land.
