Yup. I was made “redundant” yesterday. My three-month contract has expired and soon I’ll no longer be able to call myself a current employee of 3months.com. So it wasn’t really a redundancy.
So on Monday, while I was still an employee, our client the Department of Labour launched New Zealand Now, a website aimed at New Zealand expats to bring them back to the mothership that is New Zealand. It’s damn sweet if you ask me. The team did an excellent job of getting it together in about 9 weeks. We worked with Shift who did an awesome job on the design and HTML+CSS+Flash — seriously superb!
So then on Tuesday I was told that the contract I’d been given was coming to an end. I’d been hoping that they’d give me more work after that, but it turns out they didn’t.
Talk about your mountain-top experiences. Talk about your dark tea-times of the soul.
That night, I was going to go Orienteering for the first time since about 1997. I wasn’t gonna let a little thing like having to find a new job get in the way. Even though I walked most of it. 44 minutes for a yellow course on the Petone foreshore — lets just say that’s not my best time. I enjoyed it though, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series over the next five weeks.
And today, to cheer me up, a Thinkgeek package I ordered about a week ago shows up! Nothing like schwag to take the edge off of a redundancy. Hooray for Domo-kun shirt!
. . .
Oh well, I’m over it. A door closes, another door opens. I start the job hunt tomorrow with updating the CV. But if you could do with anyone who can ninja up some (X)HTML+CSS along with a healthy dose of PHP and Javascript, maybe even some AJAX if you want it, then please, for my sake, contact me!!! I’m no graphic designer, but I do have a good eye for interfaces, and I’d like to get into interaction design and HCI work.
And now, for a megabyte of expletives. Nah, just kidding. But I do feel like it.
UPDATE: Changed to make things a bit more accurate.
As someone who’s lost his second job the same way (albeit in a months-long decaying process from “oh yeah and while we’re waiting for clients you can do that” to “we’ll close next month anyway, just play UT”), I can understand the frustration.
Especially since on your CV, when you’ve worked at a place where you couldn’t accomplish as much as you wanted to do, it’s hard to put the experience in a great light.
Good luck with your job hunt! The NZ scene seems good enough to recognize your worth, so I’m confident you’ll find a nice place to do cool stuff soon. 🙂
Crap! I’ve never been in that situation and am impressed that you can even declare something positive from the day. Good luck with your job hunting.
I was made redundant from the job I had as a student earlier this year.
Oh well, it’s a push to do something that prevents you ending up in in rut. Now admittedly, 3 months probably isn’t long enough for most people to get in a rut, but, well…
I hope it goes well for you. God has got it in hand. Something good will come of this.
don’t give up hope. there are lots of jobs over here (I think, anyway)
Hrmm, all suckie. There again, it CAN force you to think about what you are doing vrs what you want to do… hell, it worked for (sir) Bob Jones (he was in hospital for 3-6 months in his early 20’s – thats how he got started in commercial property). I know of a number of people who got made redundant in the past few years (most of them ASP developers). None of them are worse off now than they were before. Most are a lot better off 🙂
Hrmm, if you are around around lunch time during the week, and live where I think you live (blue building over Cash Converters in C. St, right?), give me a yell, and I’ll bring the Segway over. 🙂 Always fun for a laugh 🙂 I’m around the corner on Vic St.
Of course, that’s if you can handle hanging out for a bit with a (gasp) .NET g33k 🙂
-Nic.
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