A Reunion, of Sorts

A few years back I worked for an e-commerce company. Like many others, its story didn't have a happy ending, but not in the usual way. It was a small company, with a staff of about fifteen. It had been acquired by a large tech company that made products that ran our products, so we had the resources of a large company with the atmosphere of a small company, a nearly ideal situation. We had loyal customers and we were making a profit.

About a year after I started there, the company was sold. The new owners were a humorless bunch of folks from a different part of the country, and I got the impression they didn't quite get us. The CEO struck me as a singularly greedy individual. He was quite obsessed with making his company as big as possible as quickly as possible, and a few months after we were acquired, the new owners made a deal to merge with another company. At that point I think we all knew it wasn't going to be good for us.

The company we merged with had a lot of funding (one of the reasons they were attractive to the greedy CEO to merge with), but having the money meant they got to call the shots, and a couple of months later, we got word that the operations of all three companies were being consolidated at company X's offices in North Carolina. Oh, and they didn't need any of us down there, because they could hire people to do our jobs for roughly 75% of our salaries, due to the lower cost of living there. Not that I would have wanted to go anyway; I'm too entrenched here, and if I was going to choose to move away from Boston, it would be to Seattle, or Chicago, or San Francisco.

We had about two months between the time we got the news and when our office was shutting down. As the end grew closer, one of the programmers decided to have a "memorial barbecue" to mark the end. (Many of the employees had worked together at this company for several years before I got there.) He offered to host the event, everyone brought food, and it turned out to be a fun time in spite of the occasion. What's interesting is that we've kept up the tradition; on Sunday I went to the fourth annual memorial barbecue. Almost everyone was able to make it this year, which is pretty impressive.

Even though I only see these people once a year, it's nice to catch up and see what the others are doing now. Four of the programmers have managed to be working together again, one person is retired and spends winters cruising the country in an RV, one got his pilot's license, one is a consultant, one had a baby and is working part-time. I'm not going to say that working there was like being part of a family, but as workplaces go, it's in my personal top three, and it's nice to be able to maintain that connection.