Several times in my 28+ year career at Unisys, I’ve been told my job is going away.
I remember the first time, I had been working at “City of Industry” (L.A.) for a little over 3-1/2 yrs (for my first truly great pair of managers/mentors – Mike Dowers & Mary Mikhail), and was just about to go on vacation (at Lake Arrowhead) in the fall of 1987, and I was told that we were going to be having an “all hands” meeting on my first day of my vacation and I should postpone leaving for one day in order to make it to the “all hands”. Bill Rhode, some unknown (at the time) director from Roseville flew in, and we all met in the “large” conference room (all 30-40 of us), and Bill proceeded to tell us that the office would be shutting down at the end of the yr and “we’ll be moving your jobs to Clear Lake, Iowa”. Well, we all fell off our chairs since NO ONE even had heard of Clear Lake, much less knew where “Iowa” was. Turned out, we had other options and most of my friends/co-workers either quit or found jobs at the Mission Viejo plant. The option I took was to accept a position (and promotion) and move to Roseville (MN, not MI). [COI/PSIS/OPTIC – layoff #1]
Second time I was out of a job was when I was working in Roseville in late 1989 or early 1990 (supporting BAMCS – in the factory), and Barry Hamersly came out for (another) “all hands” meeting, and said our jobs were moving to Detroit – this is pretty vague in my mind right now, but I remember flying out there and interviewing with Mark Ianacci, Yvonne Van West, Jim Beers and Jerry Comer. For some reason, I didn’t take the job (or perhaps I wasn’t offered one?). I instead interviewed at Eagan and got a position “down” there working on “Respond” in the datacenter, (and met Tom Adams, who eventually became my supervisor, and much later, my manager and one of a few great mentors I’ve had along the way). [BAMCS – layoff #2]
The Respond job lasted for about 12-18 months (with a promotion in the middle somewhere there) before somebody (Barry again?) came out and said they were moving “Respond” back to Detroit. This was summer of ’91. I kind of sat in limbo for a good yr before the higher ups figured out that “ALL” data processing was going to move from Detroit to Eagan. [RESPOND – layoff #3].
Which is how I got my job in the infamous “InfoHub” (now called the “Eagan Service Center”) in fall of ’92. That job lasted for several years (getting another promotion and getting tapped for the team leader position for the DBA team by another great manager and mentor – Rob Voigt) until I was called by a recruiter in the summer of ’95, asking if I wanted to go work for UHG (United Health Care Group). I interviewed there and got an offer which I accepted.
So, I went to work for UHG, and a little less than 4 months later (get this, on April 1st), a Vice President at UHG holds – get this – say it together now, “an all hands meeting” for the datacenter, and announces that our jobs are being outsourced to Unisys – HA HA. [UHG – layoff #4].
Fortunately, that worked out very well for me, and I moved right back to the DBA team that I had left 4 months prior. In the spring of 97, I was asked to lead the System Admin team. I received my last promotion a couple of yrs after that. I “tried” to lead the SA team, but, after 4 yrs (in 2001), I was removed from that position (rightly so, since I was doing a really awful job as the lead for that team). This wasn’t exactly a threat of a layoff, but I did sit in limbo for quite some time (doing WaMu PIA installs/support), before I finally found my true dream job at the end of 2004. I moved onto the Remedy Development and Support team, eventually working for the last of my great managers and mentors – Steve Diederichs, and became the team lead in early 2007. [Sys Admin TL – limbo #5].
So, now, after two yrs as team lead, and a little bit more than 4 yrs doing Remedy Development, it seems that this job will be going away as well, some time in the future – not sure when, but it seems imminent. I really thought we had 1-2-3 more years with this team, but Unisys is coming apart and the only way upper mgmt knows how to stop the bleeding is by downsizing. Seems like the company has been downsizing for the past 20 years (roughly 3 yrs after Burroughs merged with Sperry in ’86). [Remedy – layoff #6 – forthcoming].
That’s the story for now. Stay tuned for the next chapter – same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.
