perfidy

I had the singular pleasure, last Friday, of being invited to drive two hours through DC traffic to my company's headquarters in lovely Herndon, hard by the Dulles International Airport, to be informed that I was laid off. There were no positions in the company matching my skill set, and sadly, I must be let go. But hey, we loved working with you! And you're high on our recall list! Stay tuned!

For the last couple weeks, I had been uneasy about my situation. The project that I was working on had run into difficulties, as a result of the client's unwillingness or inability to realize that you can't provide a complete picture of a software system until after it is built. The purpose of a design document is to show the path forward, giving a general idea of how problems will be solved, and what methods will be used to instantiate business rules and processes in code. Naturally, many details will not be known until the code is actually written.

So, two weeks ago, after the system design document was rejected for the fourth time, higher powers within my company sacked the PM in order to save the contract. I was concerned at the time because the problem centered on documentation, and I am a technical writer. But when I wasn't fired immediately, I began to feel somewhat safer. That was mistaken, and it does seem that I had been blackened with the same brush that painted the PM out of the picture. Needless to say, I think this is a bit off base, as the government didn't have issues with the grammar, style or format of the document - all of which were within my purvue - but rather with the content and direction of the design.

After a long drive home, half a pack of cigarettes, and some well chosen words, I was home. And I found that I was not really as upset as I might have been. My son was in the backyard slowly learning how to move rapidly over uneven terrain. My wife had a beer for me. Life ain't bad. Over the weekend, I have already developed several leads on jobs. But if any of our gentle readers is aware of any job openings in the field of technical writing or editing in the DC metro area, I would be pleased and grateful to hear of them.