A Death Sentence Dressed In Blue!

Getting laid of from my very first job and the company I joined straight out of college was probably the best thing that could have happened to me.

In one stroke my employer, Cisco pulled the rug from under myself and thousands of others. A shock it was, as who could have imagined this. Especially it happening to you.

You may have played all the right cards available to corporate professionals. Yet at the end of the day usefulness of employees is not based on their individual contribution.

As an employee in a corporation you get paid for being in the office day-in and day-out, as long as you deliver upon your specific role, everyone is happy, and you continue to get paid, with the occasional bonus slapped on.

It is a great and cushy life, you feel on top of the world, secure in your life. Never really expecting your life line to the company could ever be axed by the same company you've diligently slaved for day-in and day-out.

That was me until the morning of Thursday, July 16 2009. Upon walking in to my cubicle, as I took my seat in front of my 17 inch LCD monitor, I clicked open Outlook to find two emails from both my managers marked urgent with the subject line "Please contact me at your earliest convenience".

I thought to myself, what could they want to see me about so early in the morning. While going over all the project deliverable's and statuses in my mind. Not quite able to figure out what might they want to see me for, and both of then early in the morning, and that in my senior most managers office.

Anyhow I got up from my desk, and walked over to my managers office that was around the corner, two cubicles away from me.

There I saw both my managers, I knocked and my senior most boss asked me to have a seat, while my second boss got up to close the door.

Then my senior most manager started reading, though I am quite sure he wasn't reading. As I heard what he had to say I felt my self sink, my heart started to pound, mind was in turmoil, trying to comprehend my managers words. I felt as if I was going to faint.

He then handed me a blue folder, inside of which was a 25 page termination letter, most of which I could barely read apart from "we regret to inform you that your employment at Cisco Systems has been terminated".

Terminated I thought, but why, why me? Then my boss looked at me and said you have two months at Cisco, within that time you will have the same rights and privileges as before. But you are not to work on any existing projects...."but ..." I blurted out "there are the following projects I am overseeing....." my boss smiled and said "don't worry about those your remaining time at Cisco is for you to look for another positions internal or external".

With that we parted, the short walk back to my cube was one of the longest walks I had ever taken. Back at my desk I reopened the blue folder, took out that 25 page death sentence, that's what it felt like as I skimmed over each page. I could barely comprehend the words. Felt like I was having some sort of bad dream.

Felt like my entire worth as a human being had been shattered. Who was I, what do I do? I found myself wonder how will I break the news to my parents, to my friends, to close acquaintances, what will I do? What will I say, that I got laid off?

I felt like running, putting the entire morning behind me and continuing my work as I usually did. Then suddenly I noticed my Sametime, the company wide instant messenger we used popping up with messages from all over. Oh they were friends from within the company asking how I was and if I survived ? That's when I learnt of dozens of others who received the same death sentence dressed in blue.

Turned out 25% of my Business Unit had been affected, about 1,000 - 1,500 people company wide. Many from my Business Unit, the team that had been responsible for Cisco's flagship product Catalyst 6500. Once the only bread winner for the company was on its death bed.

Ever since I haven't looked back, the death sentence in blue is none but a fading glimmer in the fabric of space and time. Though, many times less wealthier, I am glad that the death sentence came when it did. The experiences and skills gained in the months and years since were well worth the initial anguish.

I am more determined than ever before not to allow myself in such a similar position, and decided to embark, full throttle ahead upon the entrepreneurial journey, wherever that may take me. After all this is a journey that is the most rewarding, despite the emotional tolls faced from time to tome, there is no better thrill than to be working on something, building a business of your own, striving to make it profitable, tweaking and pivoting every step of the way.

The death sentence dressed in blue was none but a silver lining that came at the peak of a Great Recession.


Sent from my iPhone

In Respect of Honest Work

Just because an entrepreneur doesn't run a successful high-tech or "professional services" company, that does not  mean their business or their business skills aren't worth the respect typically attributed to high-tech businesses and entrepreneurs possessing college degrees. This is something I keep trying to remind myself each time I meet or hear of a successful Pakistani / Pakistani-American entrepreneur who runs a profitable auto repair shop in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Many Pakistanis are programmed to think of businesses or jobs outside of high-tech, medicine, law, politics & government as lowly. Auto repair business though are tech in nature, in the Pakistani mindset they are categorized as jobs for the under classes (or cullee classes).

Success as a nation requires us to break this in-bred societal prejudice. Something that owes it's roots to colonialism where pre-colonial jobs were shunned to the lowest rungs of society by the English colonial rulers in India. Case-in-point: Jamhadar was once a highly respected rank in the army, equivalent if not above that of a general.