A story about peanuts

Those who know me, know that, up until recently, I was activelly looking for a job. the project I was doing failed, the big boss decided to outsource almost all the IT into 2 companies (yes, he split our IT and gave it away to 2 companies) and, I was about to see myself out of a job.

When Portugal Telecom (PT - the company that won half of the IT) saw that they had in the budget one guy to replace me and he would be responsible for 100+ weblogic intances, loads of UCMs, IBRs, Oracle SOA Suite and a few other products, they decided it would be better to keep me instead of hiring a full team for that job (if you were wondering who would get one guy for all that, I refer you to the first paragraph of this post where I say the project failed).

So, together with the outsourcing contract, PT got me in the deal. Having suffered a serios pay cut, I ended up better that most (those that got fired) and worst than some (the big boss family who kept their jobs).

So, with all this, what changed? Not much really. I'm still activelly looking for a new job. Obviously, the impending unemployment scenario in a country deep in recession is now gone but, the brain dead scenario is as close as ever.

It's amazing that Karl Marx really had some insight, as soon as one smells the scent of a recession, companies go crazy in limiting employees conditions and joy in their works. Not for any productivity gain but, because they can and, Like Scott Adams talked about, employees react by adjusting their real work effective compensation by working acordingly.

So, now, and for the first time in my life, I see myself in a company with time cards, without youtube access in the company's network (legal access anyway), with an aproved browser and email client for employees, hell, email quotas, we work in desks built like a call center (but without the noise reduction stuff in place, in an huge room with near 100 people in it.

2 monthes ago, I was doing an identity federation with social networks and now, I'm not allowed to access facebook. 2 Monthes ago, I was trying to implement a new revenue stream for one of the biggest media groups in Portugal, now, I was just told, as an example of innovation, that PT is starting a project that will use Lucene in a way to try this technology.

Well, I guess I'll never win the title of employee of the month here.