One Year Later
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| Image: Perplexity |
I had spent the weekend in Toronto with DW, our two kids, and our friends who live in the U.S., and on the drives to and from the GTA, I was thinking that I should write a novel. It had been years since I worked on one and it would be nice to try a new genre and actually finish the book in a decent amount of time, if only I could find that time.
My co-worker had left me an e-mail message at the end of the day, on the last Thursday, but because she worked a four-day week and would be away on the Friday, I would address her concern on the Monday. So after powering up my laptop, I sent her a message to ask her if she wanted to open a video chat to discuss the issue.
Her response came pretty quickly: I don't care, I just got laid off.
I was shocked. She and I were the only two writers for a major product that had more than 40 manuals. There were documents that I maintained, such as the upgrade guides, release notes, and one of the operation manuals. She had docs for which she was responsible but the bulk of the larger manuals were shared by the two of us.
There was no way that only one writer would be able to manage all of these documents.
I asked her if she wanted to talk about her layoff but she said she was too upset, so I wished her well and tried to get my mind on the tasks that I had set out for myself. It was hard to focus because layoffs are very disruptive, whether you're directly affected or not.
And my colleague's layoff was going to directly affect me.
Within minutes, one of my developer colleagues reached out to me. He had learned that one of our team's writers had been laid off and he wanted to know if I knew anything else. "How are you going to keep up with all of the documentation?" he added, genuinely concerned that I'd now be overloaded with work. I told him that my manager would have to help pick up the slack, something I knew he'd be able to do but that I'd have to help get him up to speed on the work process.
For years, my colleague and I had been left to our own devices when it came to the documentation. We were in various scrum teams and we set out our tasks for every two-week sprint cycles. We'd keep our manager in the loop with what we were doing but we only came to him when our workload became unmanageable, and he'd work with the development team to help us out. He'd also take care of the post-production side of our documentation, but he was never responsible for creating the content.
After chatting with this developer, my colleague contacted me, said she had cooled down, and was ready to chat. We opened up a video conference.
After seeing how she was feeling, I asked how she had learned about being laid off. Had she received an e-mail? Had our manager told her?
No, she replied, it had been the meeting with another documentation manager, the one who managed our manager. We almost never had any contact with this person, as she lived on the other side of the planet and managed many doc teams around the world.
"Shit," I said, looking at the clock. "I'm supposed to be in a meeting with her, right now. I'm two minutes late. I guess I'm getting laid off, too."
Or, I was learning that I'd have more work to take on, my colleague suggested. I promised her that I'd contact her as soon as my meeting was over.
This supervisor seemed genuinely upset. She had just laid off a couple of other people and it was a task that she was not accustomed to doing. And I was the next person on her list. My last official day with Motorola Solutions, after nearly 19 years, would be on Friday, March 28.
She thanked me for my years of service and the good work I had done. Someone from HR would be joining our chat and this manager would leave it. I asked her if there was anyone else on our documentation team that was being let go, and she told me there were two more, plus our manager.
In other words, my entire team was being cut.
The HR person, who was in Chicago, took over the meeting and told me about my severance package and that I should take the time to make sure that my work was in such a state that it could be handed off to someone else. I could also take this day off, as she was sure that the news would need some time to process.
After our chat, I contacted my colleague and we shared notes. She was also going to take the rest of the day off and we promised to meet up the next day and figure out how we were going to prepare our content for whoever was going to take it over.
I then contacted my manager to let him know that I was taking the rest of the day off, and did he want to meet for a pint? After all, it was St. Paddy's Day and there was at least one good thing to celebrate. We agreed to meet for lunch.
I had known my manager for more than 25 years. He had hired me at Corel, in 1999, when I returned home from Korea and was looking for a job as a technical writer. I didn't have the technical experience but in the months that I got to know another writer from the company I had proven that I had strong writing and communications skills, and I had the personality that made me a good team player.
Years later, when I was looking for another job, a head hunter contacted me about a company in Gatineau who was looking for a writer with the skill set that I had acquired through my work at Corel, iFathom, and PCI Geomatics. When I said that I was interested in meeting with the company's manager, the head hunter gave the manager's name to me.
It was my old manager at Corel. The head hunter said he'd set up the interview and call me back. I said to say hi to my old manager.
When he called me back, about five minutes later, he had confirmed a date for the interview. "Oh, and when I mentioned your name, <the manager> said, 'Folks, we have a winner.'"
The meeting wasn't so much an interview as it was my former manager telling me about the job, how much I'd make, and what my responsibilities would be, after which he asked if I'd be interested. And that was pretty much the job I did for nearly 19 years.
And one year ago, he and I were enjoying pints of Guinness, raising a glass to St. Patrick and our years of knowing one another—this time, not as a boss and one of his staff but as friends who shared a career history.
I told him that even though the company had given me two weeks' notice, I was going to wrap up my work by the end of the week. I'd write a status report and provide a spreadsheet of all the documents, their current state, the tasks that were assigned to them, and where all the resources could be found. I had accrued some time owing, and I was going to use it.
The next day at work, when I attended my first product meeting, I learned that the dissolution of my team came as an utter surprise to all other departments on my projects. The product manager had been blindsided and he was furious with the bean counter who made an uninformed decision. "Who is going to take over? What is going to happen to all of the deadlines? Who knows our products as well as you do?"
"I'm sure whoever made this decision has everything in hand," was my answer, even though I didn't know anybody who could readily do what my colleague and I were doing."
I received kind words from people throughout the company, especially those who worked in our Gatineau office. I was touched that so many people felt so highly of me, not just as a good content specialist but also as a person. Even a year later, I'm still honoured.
DW was near my home office when she heard me in conversation with the HR person, when I had learned that I had been laid off and what the next steps were. As soon as I ended the call and before I contacted my colleague, I said, "At least now I'll have time to work on that novel!"
I don't consider myself to be officially retired. I took six months to write my book. And in that time, I also travelled with my family to Peru, kayaked extensively, visited the Saguenay region with DW, and finished the first three drafts of Dark Water (more on that, tomorrow). I also made a record number of videos for YouTube in 2025.
In the fall, I started looking for work but I didn't want to take on another technical-writing position unless I felt the company really interested me. I'm not retired now but I'd like to be in about two years, so I want whatever job I take to bring me joy.
I've done a gig as a photographer for a real-estate agent and I hope I can get more work doing that. I've joined a casting agency and have been looking for work as an extra in movie and TV productions (I had to turn one down last week because of the ice storm and my unwillingness to drive in poor conditions to a rural location).
My stint as an extra in a music video really has me wanting to do more of this kind of work.
One year later, I'm doing fine. While I would have preferred to work three more years for Motorola, I'm not in a dire state. One of my colleagues who was also laid off at the same time has told me that he's looked for writing jobs, but after not finding anything worthwhile, he's decided to call retirement.
Once again, I'm immersed in my novel, which I'm hopeful I can send to a publisher in the next week or so. And I will then return my attention to the sequel, The Watcher, of which I've already written five chapters, and I'll look for the right job to come along.
But one thing I haven't been, since I've been unemployed: bored.
Happy Tuesday! Happy St. Paddy's Day!
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