Re Lo Hell No

About a month and a half ago we learned that my company, Netifice, was purchasing its largest competitor. This was considered to be pretty good news all around, and a very shrewd move on the part of our CEO (especially since MegaPath was about 50% larger than Netifice).

There was some concern, since Netifice already had large offices in Costa Mesa, Atlanta, and Seattle, and smaller nodes scattered elsewhere around the country, and Megapath had offices in Austin and Pleasanton. That's a lot of offices to maintain, and it would be sensible to assume some consolidation.

About a week ago, we learned that the new company will be called Megapath, and will be located in Pleasanton and Austin.

So now we have been waiting for details, to find out just what was going to happen. I was asked by almost as many people as I asked if I (they) would move to Austin? Kim and I had already decided, no. I would be happy to travel to Austin as often as necessary, but could not move. Perhaps they would let me work from home? After all, Netifice did a lot of business selling other companies on the benefits of employees who work from home. No, Netifice does not like for her employees to work from home.

The rumor was that we would be getting re-lo packages. (Re-lo, of course, is short for re-location. "Location" is such a long, clumsy word to type or say. I mean, what else would you expect from employees of Ntfc (Netifice) who work with SBC, ATT, Cvd (Covad), VZ (Verizon) all day on our tkts (tickets) and ckts (circuits)? We would abbreviate anything but our lunch hours.)

Today the VP of our functional group came to our office to convince us how much they wanted all of us in Austin, and to prove it, they handed out the relocation packages. Even people who were planning on moving to Austin (and by planning, I mean putting their house on the market and scheduling trips to visit Austin and look for a new house) began to rethink their options. After all, most of us aren't single college students who describe their ikea desk as their "Good Furniture". At least, as best as we could tell, that seems to be the type at whom the packages were aimed.

So now we begin waiting again, for the next package: Severance.