Aww, the day that I wasn’t really expecting but expecting was coming. Today at work they had a “reduction in force”, so laid off the whole engineering department, Dan, Raj, Joe, and I. The only people they kept were David and Lars. However David went to Project Engineering, and Lars went to Division 89 as a software specialist.
What do I think about it? I am kind of relieved, because I thought the company was going to get better. I am a really loyal worker, so I would stay and work hard for them for at least 1 more year without being swayed by recruiters. The VP Josh had said he wanted to change the moral, and culture of the company. So I wanted to see what he had in store. However, I guess I will never get to.
First thing that I should note is that on google calendars, if you don’t want people to know what is on your calendar, you should make it private. Because a couple of my co-workers saw on the ops mangers calendar that “RIF” was on there. 
I kind of knew because I got a weird email saying to “make sure you get to work early”. So I thought I would either be laid off, or transferred to a different position. Because of that, I actually backed up all my stuff, and packed everything on friday.
However all is not lost, because 30 minutes after I called, my old manager, and old sales PM called to try to recruit me to Air Systems. So we ended up having happy hour at 3pm in pleasanton.
While for the rest of the day, I went shopping for new clothes, and hanging out with david and Jeff, my last meal with my co-workers. It was weird how the company sent both those engineers out to the field, when they were laying everyone else off. 
However, I actually made sure I said goodbye to all the PM’s and Project Engineers that I work with. One of the PE’s was really sad that I left, he didn’t believe me when I said “good bye”.
It should be interesting to see where Sunbelt goes from here, because I am trying to see how they will actually attract people to work for them, when there really is no one to support them. Essentially if you are a PM, you will have to do all your own work, and know the product well.
One of the things I also did, was make sure I left all my candy with my old workers. Because I couldn’t use it.
Overall, I’m not really sad at all that I was laid off. They gave me some severance, an opportunity to grow, and I can now go work for any company that values their engineers.
As for why our engineering department was canned? The PM’s can use a 3rd party engineering company. That company right now is making our drawings for 1/3 of the price we do. But that doesn’t take into account the on site engineering that an in-house engineer can do. From talking to the field engineers, the 3rd party engineering drawings are okay, but have mistakes that they never change. However, the problem with us is that, one of the engineer was doing substandard drawings, and taking an extremely long amount of time. This scared away all the PM’s from using us, because they got burned by us.
