Headlines

It didn't take take long, but news of the Seattle site closure was on the Seattle Times website today - plus various industry websites.  Apparently a total of 72 employees in the Seattle office were laid off.  That's a lot more than I thought - I guess they also laid off some of the lab folks in addition to the various site-dependent people.  I didn't think we had more than 200 employees in Seattle (one of the articles I read mentioned that our company had about 230 employees in Washington State), so that's probably almost half the workforce here.  I know that all but one person in my function was converted into a remote employee.  Sadly the one person was our admin help, which is a shame because she had been working here for a long time (over 20 years) and was a really good person.  As much as I don't really mind converting to being a remote employee, it is still a sad time - realizing that there will be a number of colleagues that I won't see again.  If not friends, at least people I was friendly with.  And I think when you take the office away, that feels like the safety net being removed from your job security.  I don't think anything has changed in that regard - I still expect to be laid off before the end of next year.  The timing of the closure is very strange - not least because apparently our building lease was up in 2 years time.  I don't know why they didn't just wait until then - I suspect there are some nefarious tax reasons for that.  Now, just lots of questions.  Is there stuff we can take from the office (I wouldn't mind taking home my computer monitors, plus the comfy office chair)?  Will the office Christmas party still go ahead (apparently it has been paid for, but most of the organizers are the people who have been laid off)?  With our company's emphasis on coming into the office, why wasn't anyone offered the opportunity to relocate instead of becoming remote employees?  And so on.  It's not been a great end to the year has it.