It’s not a surprise to anyone here of course, but they just cut 10% here. It’s not all that much, ultimately, as we don’t have that many people and that included cutting a significant number of vacant spots. In the IT division here that was 17 jobs total, cutting 11 people. Only one of those was from my department, and none from my team.

The one from my department I won’t be shedding too many tears for, as mean a thing to say as that is.

Anyway. This is the first time in the company’s hundred year history that they’ve had layoffs like this. That’s saying a hell of a lot.

The thing is, there’s a team from the newspapers division that got merged into my department. Those folks are really very redundant, but they didn’t see any cuts at all. They work in another building and weren’t present. My boss asked the director if they were affected by this. The answer was “not yet… not by this one.” Yeesh.

That team isn’t expected to last long. We have a standardized financials product we use across the company, but the newspaper division decided to go elsewhere with it. They spent five years, went way way over time and over budget to get it going, hired loads of consultants on it, and as soon as it went live we started selling off newspaper properties. As it is, only one newspaper and the remains of the newspaper parent company (now merged into one big group with our TV and Radio people) still use it. Yet they have 27 people there supporting it. As opposed to our company wide product, with… three. Three people.

I sense some redundancy there. I have been calling them ‘Team Meatshield.’