ornoth

Of all the places I’ve worked, the one I’m most proud of was Sapient, one of the first and most successful Internet consulting agencies of the Dot-Com Bubble.

And probably the thing that I’m most proud of about Sapient is the list of amazing and noteworthy clients I got to work with, including National Geographic Magazine, Verizon, JP Morgan, Staples, Vanguard, WorldCom, Wells Fargo, Cardinal Health, and many others.

But one client and project will always stand out in my memory: HomeLink and OfficeLink, BankBoston’s first Web-based banking sites for individual consumers and small businesses respectively. And because of that, I’ve retained a not-small pile of memorabilia.

Why does that client stand out? Because I was already a HomeLink user! I had been using the first iteration of HomeLink for a few years already, back when “online banking” meant installing the bank’s dedicated software, which used your modem and public telephone lines to connect directly to the bank’s systems!

In 1997, the bank wanted to scrap the old dialup system and create secure, online banking websites for home and business use. They came to Sapient to design and build it, and Sapient assigned me to the project, since I had already accumulated fifteen years of experience programming Internet-based information services.

Before I go on, don’t let the company names confuse you. When I first started using HomeLink, I was a customer of BayBank, who had licensed the dedicated dialup software from Citicorp. But in 1996, BayBank merged with the Bank of Boston to become BankBoston, who wanted to offer HomeLink via the Internet. They were in turn bought out by Fleet Financial, which became FleetBoston; which was in turn acquired by Bank of America in 2004. But unlike the company name, HomeLink survived all those mergers.

Now let me share some of my archaeological exhibits, beginning with the old BayBank days, back when I was a dialup modem customer, years before Sapient got involved. First there’s this branded mousepad and 3½” HomeLink install diskette (version 1.0c)!

Tho my favorite memorabile from the old BayBank system is this screen capture from the installation program, where a really mediocre drawing of the greatest Boston Bruins player of all time says, “Let’s log on,” while a huge disclaimer reads, “This is a fictional situation. In real life, Bobby Orr is not authorized to view your account information under any circumstances.” Effin’ priceless!

Bobby Orr wants to log on to your account

Moving on to Sapient’s design and development of the new HomeLink, here’s a couple of Sapient “design center” signs. We used these to direct client staff where to go when they arrived for design sessions and development checkpoints, and I kept dozens of these from my old projects. Note how the eventual OfficeLink site was originally named “BusinessLink”.

Finally, here’s some marketing materials that BankBoston produced for the new HomeLink rollout, along with a demo CD-ROM.

The client engagement began with the design of the consumer banking site. As that transitioned into the development phase, the design of the small business site kicked off. I joined the latter team, and did requirements gathering and user interface design for OfficeLink, but once those plans were signed off, we all rolled into a single, unified development team. I was on the project for about a year.

This was the best example of doing development on a product where I was already the intended end-user. As such, I was immensely proud of my contribution, the site’s rollout, and its long-running success in the marketplace. And it still stands out in my memory, even amongst all the other prestigious clients and projects I worked on.

Twenty-two years ago, I was just minding my own business.

At the consulting company where I worked, I had just finished developing BankBoston’s HomeLink & OfficeLink banking applications, and was about to roll onto a new project for a local startup.

I received an email from some new hire who was moving our (land-line!) telephones to the new team area. As you might expect, she ended by saying that anyone having concerns should call her at extension 1366.

Just one problem there: x1366 was my phone number!

I immediately emailed her back and discovered that she’d accidentally typed my extension (1366) by transposing the digits of her own (1633). Not an auspicious first impression for a new hire fresh out of college, whom I was going to have to work with on my next project!

And that’s how I met your mother...

Despite starting off in decidedly bizarre fashion, once I met Inna in person, I decided to cultivate a friendship. At work I orchestrated time together under the pretenses of tutoring her on web design and speaking to my coworkers individually about team morale.

I charmed her with hair down to my hips and bizarre boyish antics. I ran the team’s junk food fund—known as “SnackLand”—and wrote a web app so the team could vote on what they wanted to buy. When I ordered a new bicycle, I had it shipped to work in a box, assembled it, and rode it around the office space in my consultant’s white shirt & tie, despite bikes not being allowed inside the building. The security guards freaked out when I eventually brought it down to the ground floor to ride home!

But with Inna, the deal was sealed when I persuaded her to come to my place after work to meet my cat Puggle: the fluffiest longhaired creamsicle you could ever meet. From that point forward, we were an item.

Not a public one, mind you. We kept our romantic involvement strictly a secret at work for some time, only exchanging furtive kisses when we were alone in the elevator between floors. It wasn’t something we wanted people to know at first, but we’d eventually let the proverbial cat out of the bag.

In the meantime, we spent a lot of time together. I was still into Boston’s local music scene, and we went to countless live music shows.

One of our early dates will always stand out in particular. We were having dinner at Brown Sugar Cafe, a neighborhood Thai place, looking for something to do for the evening. I was lamenting that there were no good bands playing, only some stupid punk band calling themselves “The Damned”.

Little did I know, but The Damned were Inna’s teenage idol band, an aging English group whom she’d been following for more than a decade, but had never seen live. It was as if I’d waved a magic wand and made her dreams come true by turning three Fenway rats into her favorite brooding goth heartthrob singer Dave Vanian, drunk buttocks-exhibiting glam guitarist “Captain Sensible”, and (perhaps least of a transformation) a back-alley waste product drummer called “Rat Scabies”.

Needless to say, within a couple hours we were off to Axis for an evening of noise, profanity, and unsolicited exposure to middle-aged man-butt.

In those early days, neither of us made particularly desirable partners, and our relationship was very off-and-on for the next seven years, until Inna moved back to Pittsburgh. We remained best friends—with occasional benefits—for another ten years while we both matured into adults capable of tolerance, compromise, and forgiveness.

When the obscene Hell-spawned winter of 2014-2015 prompted me to leave my beloved Boston, Inna suggested I come to Pittsburgh to see if we could stand living with one another.

With four years of cohab now under our belts, we’ve settled in to a stable, lasting partnership. The future’s a bit up in the air right now due to the Corona virus, but we’re confident and comfortable facing whatever comes up together.

I’m not a packrat, but I have an eye for memorabilia, socking away strange little keepsakes that would otherwise land in a dumpster. Examples include circuit boards from the PDP-11 system I managed in college, and the brass corporate mission plaque from MediQual, my first post-college employer.

Another such item is a poster-sized oil painting that hung over Sapient’s front desk back in 1995, when I was first hired by the nascent internet consulting company.

It was an original composition by Courtney, Sapient’s receptionist, who had recently graduated with a bachelors degree in studio art at Dartmouth College. Painted a year earlier, it depicts a streetscape of brownstones in Boston’s South End, where she lived.

During her years at Sapient, Courtney left the front desk and led new employee orientation, then ran Sapient’s People Strategy Organization (aka HR), and finally took overall responsibility for corporate culture. Over that time we had several moves and refreshes of our office space, and her painting was thrown into permanent storage and forgotten.

When the Dot-Com bubble burst, Sapient needed to shrink its physical footprint. Being a curious little opportunist, one day I accompanied our Operations team as they cleaned out one of the storage areas. Unearthing Courtney’s painting, and knowing that she was no longer around, I received permission to adopt it.

That was around 2002, toward the end of my tenure at Sapient, and just after my purchase of a condo in Boston’s Copley Square. When I brought the painting home, it took pride of place on the brick wall in my front entryway. And there it hung.

Years later, before I left Boston, I reached out to Courtney and offered to pay her or give the painting back. Despite initial interest, she never made arrangements to pick it up, and I never heard from her again.

The painting has been with me for nearly two decades, and now graces our Pittsburgh dining room. It is a treasured reminder of Boston, my time at Sapient, and the Back Bay condo I loved.

It’ll surprise those of you who know me best, but aside from my 2016 mention of my condo sale, I haven’t posted about money at all in four or five years, mostly because “people get funny when you talk about munny…”

But since money is one of my six necessities for happiness, and because things are afoot in that department, I’m going to correct that with a two-part look at money and investing. This first part will be a retrospective covering the 25-year period from 1990 to 2015, and a followup post will discuss more recent developments since moving to Pittsburgh.

The Windfall

The event that kickstarted my savings was, of course, working at Sapient. I joined a startup of 120 people, and during the dot-com boom we grew to over 3,600 staff, went public in an IPO, and were added to the prestigious S&P 500. We were one of the biggest internet darlings, and my Sapient stock options made me a moderate but comfortable nest egg.

On one hand that was just an unexpected windfall: a completely arbitrary gift from the heavens. On the other hand, I worked my ass off at Sapient for seven long years, and my coworkers did the same… That windfall was the result of our long hours, huge sacrifices, mental discipline, and collective business and technical acumen.

I was a pretty conservative stockholder. I never wrote covered calls against my Sapient stock (i.e. selling others the right to buy my stock at a particular future price), nor did I use my Sapient holdings to buy other equities on margin (i.e. borrowing against unrealized paper gains). Thus I avoided the pitfalls that claimed some of my coworkers’ fortunes when the internet bubble deflated. Some simply held their stock for too long and watched, paralyzed, as it spiraled into the shitter. Others got hit with margin calls, which forced them to sell their stock well below its peak.

I was a little bit wiser and a fair bit luckier. I knew buying on margin was stupid, and also that tying up 99 percent of my net worth in one volatile internet stock was even more stupid. Instead of thinking the stock could only go up, near the top of the bubble I decided to cash out most of my stock and use the proceeds to buy a condo. I attribute the fortuitous timing to blind luck, but financial wisdom drove my decision to move my tenuous paper gains into something less volatile, e.g. real estate.

Not that I wasn’t making big mistakes of my own. When I sold, I incurred a ludicrously heavy capital gains tax burden, which threw me into the dreaded Alternative Minimum Tax category. Then I compounded the problem by not knowing enough to file quarterly estimated taxes, which incurred substantial penalties. I know: “First World problem”. But let me tell you, writing an obscenely huge tax check to the government ranks as one of the most painful things I’ve ever done. Lesson learned!

Congratulations on Your New Mortgage!

Those who parrot conventional wisdom will tell you that carrying a mortgage is a smart way to force yourself to save money, and that you get great tax benefits by writing off your property taxes and mortgage interest payments. Then you sell your home for maybe 50 percent more than the original purchase price. Sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it?

It isn’t. Consider your expenses.

No one lends you money for free. When you add up all your mortgage payments, you’ll find that over the course of the loan, you pay back two to three times the amount you borrowed. That’s like going to the bank every week and depositing $300, but only being credited with a $120 deposit!

Then add on all the ancillary costs: local property taxes, mortgage insurance premiums, home insurance, condo fees, utilities like heat and water and sewer and electricity, maintenance and repair, and more. Now your 50 percent profit is looking mighty thin.

But you won’t see that 50 percent profit anyways. Remember that when you sell your home, you’ve also got to cover the real estate agent’s fee and closing costs. And if there’s still any profit left, don’t forget the tax the government will levy on your capital gain.

Sure, sometimes owning a home makes financial sense. But much of the time it doesn’t, and it’s a ludicrously inefficient way of saving for your future.

Unemployment, or “Quasi-Retirement”?

So after selling my stock, my main job became ensuring that I could pay for that mortgage lunacy. For the next decade, I bounced around five jobs, quitting twice, being laid off twice, and taking severance when one employer got bought out. That’s pertinent because I learned one of the most valuable financial lessons of my life after leaving Sapient due to my first layoff experience.

Being laid off ain’t so bad at first. You might get some severance pay, and you’ll get unemployment insurance checks. You might be able to get by for a while; I did. I even kept my mortgage payments up! But a year later I had a problem: how to pay the mortgage when both my severance and unemployment ran out?

About the same time, I realized something important while doing my post-layoff income taxes. My only income that year came from my severance and unemployment checks. Then, when I looked at my deductions, I got those promised mortgage interest and property tax deductions, which would offset about $25,000 worth of income. Basically, those huge deductions offset all of my meager income, which meant I owed zero taxes!

But with my severance gone and unemployment ending, I was in a really strange position. I had a huge liability to pay (my mortgage), but no income, and a huge $25,000 tax deduction which I couldn’t benefit from unless I had income! If only there was some way to apply the deductions to my mortgage payment…

That’s when I remembered my other big, forgotten asset: my retirement savings. There was plenty of cash in my 401k and IRA, but since I wasn’t retirement age, I would have to pay regular income taxes on anything I withdrew, plus a 10 percent penalty.

But if I only withdrew $30,000, that “income” would be completely offset by my mortgage deductions, plus my personal income tax exemption. Essentially, I could withdraw a certain amount from my retirement account, and—thanks to those mortgage deductions—pay *no income taxes on it at all*, just the 10 percent penalty! Then I could use that money to pay my mortgage, and everything would be copacetic!

Now, I wouldn’t advise normal people to raid their retirement account. But compared to my Sapient windfall, my IRA was a small part of my net worth. I always expected to finance my retirement with the proceeds from my Sapient stock (now tied up in my Back Bay condo), rather than my comparatively small “retirement” account. So it actually made sense to raid my IRA account.

That worked out so well that I took three years off between Sapient and my next job. I recharged my utterly depleted energy levels, did lots of biking, traveled, and generally just enjoyed the hell out of life. It felt like taking three years of my retirement and pulling them forward into my forties, when I could enjoy them more fully than if I were older. It was an immense, immense blessing.

And boy, did I internalize that lesson! When I went back to work, I dedicated myself to building up my savings, so that when I was laid off again in 2008, I could afford to take two years off without having to raid my retirement account. And another whole year off in 2014, when my employer was bought out. And I converted the majority of my IRA to a Roth IRA, a taxable event that was made easier by having no other income for that year, but large mortgage deductions.

To be honest, in the 16 years since Sapient let me go, I’ve spent more time unemployed than employed. Having the financial resources to take a year or two between jobs, bringing several years of my retirement forward, has been one of the greatest blessings and most valuable financial lessons of my life.

Taking Stock

After leaving Sapient, my financial life was mostly quiet, since most of my net worth was tied up in my condo. I did hold some money back, so that I had a little cash to invest elsewhere.

At first I tried my hand buying individual stocks, but being very uneducated about the market, I had mixed results at best. Looking back, I’m surprised at how many individual stocks I bought. At various points I held: Cardinal Health, Staples, Fleet Bank / BankBoston, gold miner Freeport McMoran, MBNA, and Sprint.

I never made real money on any of those stocks, and eventually accepted the fact that I was taking too much financial risk and not reaping any reward. And more than anything else, I wanted to keep those assets safe, so that they would cover my expenses if I had the opportunity to take time off between jobs. So I satisfied myself with the much safer alternative of just buying and holding less volatile mutual funds.

Paying the mortgage and shepherding my assets, alternating between work and time off: that’s how more than a decade would pass. That would change dramatically in 2016, but that part of the story will be told in my followup post: The Ghost of Munny Present…

On leap day, we closed the sale of my apartment in the historic Hotel Vendome condo in Boston’s Copley Square.

Neither my original purchase nor the recent sale of the property were my favorite life experiences. Both entailed an awful lot of seemingly-unnecessary complexity, risk, and bother. Although I suppose the size of the transaction warrants such precautions.

When I bought the unit back in 2001, I was looking for a safe place to stash the proceeds from participating in Sapient’s IPO and meteoric rise to prominence and inclusion in the S&P 500. I paid a lot of capital gains tax and bought when real estate prices were high, but at least I liquidated my company stock options before the Internet Bubble burst in the early 2000s. Many of my coworkers held onto their shares—or worse still, used them as margin leverage—and lost all their unrealized fortunes when the market turned on them.

In the end, I’d like to say that owning a condo turned out to be a really good investment. After all, it proved to be a lot safer than Sapient stock, and the property appreciated by about 33 percent during the fifteen years I was there.

On the other hand, I paid a whole shitload of mortgage interest. While that (and property taxes) provided a nice income tax deduction, the government gives you the deduction because you are paying so much in interest (and property tax). So net-net, I’m not sure I got a better return than if I had invested the money somewhere else.

The good news is that I’m debt-free for the first time in 15 years, which is always an awesome feeling. Even though I’m over 50, being financially self-sufficient and independent remains one of the most central values that I inherited from my parents.

However, liquidating that big asset comes with the intimidating (but probably desirable) challenge of figuring out how to best invest the proceeds, which represent about 90 percent of my net worth. I’m thinking something fairly defensive, but we’ll just have to see how it turns out.

And after listening to me talk about the move for so long, you’ll probably be happy to know that this severs my final significant tie to Boston. You’ll still hear lots about my exploration of my new home in Pittsburgh, but the long-talked-about departure from Boston is finally complete.

I’ll certainly miss the Vendome. It was my first experience in home buying, ownership, and selling, It was an amazing location and a wonderful place to be for those 15 years, and I loved it dearly. More than any other house in a long, long time, it felt like home to me, and I’ll miss that a lot.

But it belongs to a chapter of my life that’s now finished. Now it’s time to look forward to whatever new story unfolds.

After a record-short 333 days, my tenure at Buildium is over.

Last winter’s ludicrous snowfall finally put the nail in the coffin of continuing to live in Boston. But it also became clear that moving out of Boston wasn’t compatible with my employer’s plan to centralize their personnel locally and stop supporting people working remotely. I had hoped to stay on while relocating, because it would obviate the need for any Pittsburgh job hunt, but given our opposing directions it was inevitable that Buildium and I would have to part ways when I left town.

In the past, when I left a company (as opposed to being laid off or having the company move out from underneath me), I’ve always been fortunate to move on to something better. In 1995 I jumped from a failing medical software company to a rapidly-growing nascent internet consultancy, which was without question the best career move I’ve ever made. And in 2006 I left a tiny professional services contractor to return to large-scale internet consulting just as open-source and “Web 2.0” were taking off. It would be awesome if this departure leads to similar improvement, especially given the way front-end coding has transformed over the past couple years.

The unfortunate aspect of my departure is that I’ve been really happy at Buildium and would prefer to stay. While property management software isn’t the noblest purpose in the world, it was a huge improvement over my previous job spamming students and funneling leads to student loan companies. I greatly improved my technical skills, the hours and stress level were uncommonly humane, and the pay was good.

And the people were awesome. Buildium’s leadership team has its share of challenges, but it’s been very satisfying to once again work with and for people with a healthy dose of both intelligence and common sense—as might be expected from a company founded by and stocked with fellow Sapient alumni.

But more than that, what makes Buildium unique—both among my former employers as well as across the industry—is that its staff are enthusiastic and uncommonly personable and caring, without being contrived or dogmatic about it. From top to bottom, the positive attitude of their team members sets Buildium apart from other places I’ve worked.

That’s a big reason why I would have preferred to stay on as one of several remote workers on their engineering team. Sadly, the commitment to centralizing operations in Boston made that impossible. And after 25 years here, my life is taking me in a different direction.

Although that didn’t stop me from feeling a certain righteous amusement when HR asked the employees to vote on what Buildium could do become a better place to work. Someone added “Work remotely” to the list of ideas, and sixteen people put their checkmark-votes next to that item: more than twice as many as any other suggestion!

And if that input had been put into practice, I would still be working there, rather than going my own way and diving back into the job market in an unfamiliar town.

Before I talk about my new gig, a brief word about the old one. I spent nearly three years working for a student loan marketing company called Edvisors. In 2013, a company from Las Vegas bought them out and phased out our Boston headquarters.

The title of this article is a bit of an inside joke. Edvisors had a lot of turnover, and people came to appreciate the euphemism “Transitions”, which was the usual subject line on the emails announcing another coworker’s departure.

Edvisors was pretty political and had (insert superlative adverb) outdated technology. On the other hand, I’m very proud of what my team accomplished. We built a good frontend team from scratch, set up vastly improved processes and standards, and dragged the company kicking and screaming toward 21th century technology and design practices.

Even after a six-month soft landing at Edvisors, I still took some additional time off. In the past year or two, the frontend technology field has advanced radically, most particularly in client-side Javascript frameworks like Angular and Ember. At the same time, I started hemorrhaging money thanks to repairs and medical bills from two big bike crashes, diagnosing and removing a faulty gall bladder, big vet bills after the sudden death of my pet cat, and renovations to my condo. Between rapidly changing technologies and a shrinking nest egg, it was time to get back to work in earnest.

Once I got serious about the job hunt, it took just a month. I only sent out four resumes, and got responses from three of them. I’m immensely thankful to have so many helpful local connections and a nicely loaded resume. It was also nice to get through the always-stressful tech interview; you never know what questions (or coding exercises) you’ll be asked, and despite having lots of experience, one always wonders how one’s tech chops will measure up against other candidates.

So two weeks ago I joined a company called Buildium, which was founded by a couple old coworkers from my Sapient days. Once upon a time, they bought and started renting a couple apartments, but discovered there was no good software to help them manage their properties and renters and contractors and taxes… So they built it themselves and started selling it, and they’ve built a thriving business around it.

I’m a senior member of their growing frontend team, and I’m really excited that they are transitioning to the Angular framework, which is a tremendous opportunity for me. They also have a strong UX design practice, which is a real differentiator for a small product company.

In addition to the two founders, Buildium employs four other old friends from my Sapient days: one’s still a working designer, and the others each manage Buildium’s technology, design, and product management practices. And there’s at least one more old friend starting in January.

Even though it’s been about twelve years since we worked together, I was surprised by the things my old friends remembered about me. One of them recalled that I was the kind of person who absolutely didn’t want to climb to senior/leadership positions, and another fondly remembered the “Snackland” website I built (in ASP & ADO!) to help teams vote for what snacks they wanted to spend their collective money on.

Having kept in touch with some of those guys, I recognized the company name when a developer position at Buildium appeared in my RSS feed of job listings one day. I reached out to one of those buddies, and the rest was pretty straightforward.

This constituted the unlocking of one new achievement: the first time I’ve ever received a job offer without ever meeting anyone at the company face-to-face! Most of the vetting was done by phone, with one video chat for the tech test with a developer in California. In fact, I was the one who insisted on coming in to check out the office and meet a few people before accepting their offer! Very different experience.

As a company that prioritizes employee satisfaction, the benefits are refreshingly good: completely flexible PTO, the potential to work remotely, and of course I’m pretty happy to have decent health insurance again, after footing the bills for my recent medical issues. And they have not just one, but TWO foosball tables, which means I need to work on restoring the meisterly skills I had six years ago. Initial indications are positive, but considerable practice will be required! There’s also the opportunity to rewrite FRank, the foosball league ranking site I made so long ago, perhaps adding a mobile interface and speech recognition!

They’re located at the opposite end of Downtown Crossing from where I used to work at Optaros, so I know the area pretty well, and plan to revisit Lanta, the Thai place that formerly was Rock Sugar, my go-to lunch spot.

I’ll also enjoy a reprise of the walking commute I had down the statue-lined Comm Ave mall and through the Public Gardens and Boston Common. Or ride a whopping two stops on the Green Line… Definitely beats the hell out of the 40-minute commute down to Quincy that I had last year! Although I’ll miss having that nice, long bike commute, too. It’s not worth riding one mile to Buildium; it’d be as pointless as going out for a two-block jog!

On that note, there is a Buildium Strava cycling club, and their big company outing is to ride the 175-mile Cape Cod Getaway charity ride for MS each year. It goes from Boston to Provincetown, like the Outriders ride I do each year; while the MS ride takes a leisurely two days, Outriders does a shorter 130-mile route in just one day! Amusingly, it usually takes place one week before the MS Ride.

I also garnered an enviable second new achievement: coming in to work wearing jeans on my first day! Very cool! But my first day ended with something a lot less cool: when I went home and checked my postal mail, I received a note that my gall bladder surgery was scheduled for Thursday, only two days later! So at the end of my first workday, I had to ask on short notice for two days of PTO!

After taking Thursday and Friday for the operation, I returned to start my second week of work a week ago. I set up my development environment and finished my first code fix. Then Friday was the company holiday party…

I already posted to Facebook about the awkwardness of starting a new job right before the holiday party, which is an experience I’m always desperate to avoid (as related in this anecdote from my Sapient days). Fortunately, two weeks was sufficient to break the ice with some officemates—thank goodness for the non-threatening mixer value of foosball!—and so I survived our seasonal Mandatory Fun.

My third week began with the deeply exciting experience of PAYDAY!!! I also have transitioned into a new (semi-permanent) team, so that I can cover for another frontend dev who is moving away at the end of the week. That’ll provide some immediate challenges, but it’ll also be exciting to be able to really dig into the work.

So overall the new job is Really Good.

Here’s one final observation. Having always set money aside when I was working, I’ve had the flexibility to take some time between jobs to unwind and just enjoy life before jumping back into it. But this fall I looked back at my resume and was a little surprised when I added up the numbers; since 2002, when I left Sapient, I’ve taken almost seven of the past 13 years off!

And being honest, I have to say that it was a really good thing. I’ve enjoyed entire summers kayaking or cycling, and been free to travel or devote time to my meditation practice. Given how insanely stressful and frustrating and exhausting software development can be, I think those periods of relaxation have been a real lifesaver for me. I definitely think it’s nice to pull a year or two of one’s retirement forward, so that one can enjoy time off while one’s still (comparatively) young, strong, and healthy. And the break gives one time to decompress and reconnect to one’s enthusiasm for work (and money!) before going back to the daily grind.

Now my most recent little sabbatical is over, and it’s time to dive back into the melee. But at Buildium, I’m really excited by the company, the people, and the technology, so I’m planning on enjoying it quite a bit.

Back in 1995, I left my job running a mainframe for a medical software company and joined a small but growing local IT consulting company. Their ambitious corporate tagline was: Changing the Way the World Works.

It’s not often that an individual can have that kind of impact, but earlier this month I was presented with photographic evidence that I found both deeply touching… and deeply humorous.

During my seven years with that consulting company—Sapient—we grew from 100 people to 3600, had a public IPO, and were named to the S&P 500. I was one of their first web developers, who helped them transition from just client-server IT projects to doing their first large-scale e-commerce, banking, and stock brokerage websites.

Today Sapient employs over 12,000 people globally, and (for whatever reason) they’ve chosen to sponsor the Boston Red Sox. While that tagline seemed awfully ambitious for a 100-person company back in 1995, one of the visible signs of Sapient’s success at “changing the way the world works” is the recent presence of their corporate logo adorning that most famous edifice in Major League Baseball: Fenway Park’s Green Monster.

That kinda freaks me out, but it is also a reminder that I had a part in something that really did have a major impact on the world.

During my tenure at Sapient, I started riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge, a fundraising bike ride for the Jimmy Fund. The PMC has been a partner of the Boston Red Sox since 2003, and each year they devote one game to recognizing the PMC and its riders. And in recent years, that has included unveiling a huge PMC logo on the Green Monster.

Having been part of the PMC for 14 years—in the process, raising over $100,000 for cancer research, treatment, and prevention—that recognition means a lot to me.

So I was pretty heartily amused when I saw the photos from this year’s PMC Day at Fenway Park. There in huge script for all to see are two of the biggest accomplishments of my life—the Pan-Mass Challenge and Sapient—right next to one another on the biggest billboard in professional sport.

Obviously, I can’t claim sole responsibility for those two organizations’ work, but I can take pride in having made a meaningful contribution to each, and that those contributions have helped create thriving organizations that will continue to have positive impacts on the world.

But I still think it’s funny as hell whenever I see those two logos out there in left field, right next to one another. Life sure is strange!

Apparently I’ve never related this story here. With the Santa Speedo Run making its frostbitten-hamhock trudge up Newbury Street in 16° snow flurries as I type, it might be a good time to reminisce and share this classic holiday tale.

Friday December First of 2000. I went in to work as usual at Sapient’s Cambridge office. At the time, I was one of several frontend developers embedded within a huge team working on an online stock brokerage system for JP Morgan Chase and Brown & Company.

That morning we had a guest in our daily team meeting: Jerry Greenberg, one of Sapient’s two founders and CEOs. He gave us the usual little pep talk and then—since the company’s holiday party was that evening— asked for a show of hands of who would be going. Just about everybody raised their hands… except Ornoth.

It will surprise no one that I dread corporate holiday parties. The period from Halloween to New Years has always been a stressful and unpleasant time for me, and I’ve never been a fan of the party scene. So I had hoped to quietly let the event pass, in hopes that no one would mark my absence.

Fat chance! Jerry’s eyes scanned the team and he muttered his pleasure at the team’s response. Then they landed directly on me and my hands, which rested uneasily at my sides. “Ornoth? You’re not coming?” O fuck.

Before we go any further, let’s add a little bit of context. By this time, I’d been with Sapient for six years, participating in four dozen projects; helping grow it from a 100-person company to over 3,000; going through its IPO; and seeing it named to the S&P 500. Of course, Jerry had known me all that time. He and Stuart had actually discussed my hiring back in 1994, since I was the first guy they hired who had long hair! So Jerry felt pretty comfortable that he knew me.

All that matters because out of that 120-person team, I had more tenure than anyone else on the project and a longer relationship with Jerry. They viewed me as the grizzled veteran of old-school Sapient. But here I was, being confronted by Jerry about not attending the holiday party!

“Well, uh… It’s really not my thing…”

That might have gotten past my peers, but not the CEO. “Naw, Ornoth. Come on…”

We went back and forth a bit, with him trying to pressure me into committing while I danced around the fact that I didn’t want to go, even if the CEO was publicly asking me to in front of all my coworkers.

Then it hit me. There was one shining, simple, graceful way out that would enable me to save face and still avoid that inane party!

Since Sapient had grown so big, they had actually issued tickets for the party. No ticket: no entry. And the deadline for requesting tickets from HR had passed the previous week! Slammida!

“But Jerry, I can’t go… I don’t have a ticket.” Jerry (and everyone else in the room) knew I was reaching, but what could he do about it?

It was then that our eyes met, and I saw the sharklike look of a salesman who had just cornered a reluctant mark. With calculated slowness, he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out… his ticket to the holiday party, then walked over and placed it in my hand. I was out of options and dumbstruck.

As he walked back to his place in the circle, he defused any tension by joking that now he might have a difficult time getting into the party himself. Everyone laughed while I surely turned beet red. He’d called my bluff and beaten me, winning the amusement of the whole team in the process. Even I admired the panache with which he’d shown me who was boss.

And there was nothing else for me but to show up at the goddamned corporate holiday party. Worst of all, there was no way I could quietly not make an appearance, because now it would be marked by more than a hundred people!

Sheesh!

I couldn’t help from rofling at this one. One Mem Drive is the former global HQ of Sapient Corporation, where I worked for seven years. The space is almost certainly the 7th and 8th floor, which were among the four floors they occupied in the oh-so-70s salmon granite and teal glass tower.

From today’s Snotlob Globe:

Microsoft seeks next big idea in Cambridge

CAMBRIDGE - Microsoft Corp. is reinventing itself, and it’s looking to One Memorial Drive for a dose of innovation.

[…]

That will be the home of Microsoft’s Boston Concept Development Center, a first-of-its-kind research unit that’s assembling dozens of engineers and designers and sniffing out technologies with the aim of incubating new Internet businesses within the company.

[…]

“Microsoft doesn’t have time to waste. You’ve got a very skeptical public right now that’s looking to Google or Apple for technology leadership, not Microsoft. This is sort of an effort to return to Microsoft at its roots, when it was young and edgy.” That goal is reflected in the space the team will move into this summer at One Memorial Drive, an office tower looming over the Charles River outside Kendall Square. Construction workers are renovating two floors, connected by a bleacher-style staircase and open work area.

[…]

Sturtevant’s team will be part of a larger, already existing Microsoft office at One Memorial Drive, next door to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that serves as the company’s Boston-area development hub. The office will also house the company’s first Microsoft Research lab in the United State outside Redmond and development offices for its SoftGrid virtualization software. Overall, the company is leasing more than 180,000 square feet on five floors in the 17-story building.

Link to full article

One year ago today, f_l_i_r_t posted a comment about dollar bill tracking site Where’s George in her LJ.

I was already familiar with the concept, invented by local software engineer Hank Eskin, because sometime between 6/98 and 1/99—almost as soon as Hank had put up the first version of the site—my project team at work found and entered a “Where’s George” marked bill. I thought it was an interesting idea, but didn’t bother registering, and promptly forgot about it.

Until f_l_i_r_t’s note, more than six years later. Being unemployed and having more time on my hands than usual, I decided I’d give it a shot. I ordered a cheap self-inking stamp and began marking each bill I got with the Web site’s URL and entering them into the database.

That was, as I say, one year ago, making this my first “Georgeversary”, as they say, which is, of course, an appropriate time for reflection.

It took 64 days to get my first hit—someone finding and re-entering one of my bills—but it was an interesting one. In those two months, it had travelled 100 miles northwest to Wardsboro, Vermont. The user wrote: “My daughter got it at her elementary school. One of her classmates was making fun of the stamp ’till she explained to him what it was!” You can see its bill report here.

Last summer, since I was in the area, I biked out to Concord to a barbecue where a bunch of enthusiastic “Georgers” from across the nation gathered to swap stories (and bills). I wound up winning a handful of ones at a card game, which I carried with me and spent during my trip to Oregon. Of course, I also spent some marked bills of my own there, and one of my $5 bills was hit in Portland a couple weeks later (bill report).

The Web site asks you to enter a note about each bill, and I gradually chose a consistent format for what I’d enter: the date and place where I received it, the date and place where I later spent it, and anything particularly noteworthy, like its condition. Later in the year, I also started including code to dynamically generate maps showing where each bill had been seen.

By September, I was reliably getting 4-7 hits per month, but that came to a crashing halt as I only got two hits per month in October, November, and December. That was very discouraging, but things fortunately picked back up again once the new year arrived.

Also last fall, my Where’s George user profile page (here) was nominated for their annual user profile contest. I got 18th place out of 56 profiles, which was a bit disappointing, given some of the tacky pages which received more votes. On the other hand, Hank—normally very reticent and spare of words—took an active interest in my unique profile and how I had circumvented his security features in order to create it, which mollified me a bit.

Also in October, I got my first “straps” from the bank: bundles of 100 $1 bills wrapped with paper bank seals. Georgers like $1 bills because they can get more of them into circulation, they change hands more rapidly, and they’re less likely to get deposited in a bank, where they might sit for months, or worse yet be destroyed. They also like straps because they can often get crisp, news bills, which are easier to enter and circulate longer. I was hoping to find my first “Wild George”—a bill that some other Georger had marked—in my straps but no such luck.

Late in the year, I undertook a one-day road trip to Philadelphia and back for a wedding. I’d looked forward to the opportunity to spend marked bills all along the route, hoping to get hits from states I passed through or near, especially the elusive Delaware. Unfortunately, the only one that has gotten a hit travelled north. I spent it on the Jersey Pike, and was re-entered in Kingston, NY in December; however, it went on to become my first bill to accumulate two hits when it later was spotted in Battle Creek, MI in February (bill report).

Typically, users become aware of and register on Where’s George because they find a marked bill. Of course, I hadn’t done that. In fact, despite getting three or four straps and checking the bills I received in change, I had still never found a marked bill: a “wild”. For most of a year I looked, and never found one. Finally, on February 10th, I got a wild in my change at the corner CVS; it had originated in South Carolina (bill report). Synchronicity was at work, though, because within 48 hours one of my bills was hit in South Carolina (bill report), and—most astonishingly— I found a *second* wild at the local pub from a Georger I’d met from Rhode Island (bill report)!

To that’s how the year has gone. I’ve entered 1000 bills into the system, two-thirds of which are $1 bills. I have received 40 hits, and average one hit every 6-8 days. Most of my hits have come from bills I’ve spent at ice cream stands, farmers’ markets, convenience stores, and bars, but not exclusively.

The hits have come from 12 different states: 19 in MA; 4 each from NH, NY, and CT; 2 from OH; and one hit each in ME, VT, MD, SC, MI, IL, and OR. Obviously, getting hits in more states is one of my big goals.

In terms of other, more short-term goals, I am still waiting for Rhode Island for my “New England states bingo”, and I’m slowly working on getting a hit from every county in CT (got 4 of 8), MA (5 of 14), and NH (4 of 10). I will also have a hit on a bill from every Federal Reserve Bank once I get Philly and Minneapolis.

So it’s been interesting and a bit educational. It hasn’t been much of a time-sink, since, being unemployed, I don’t spend all that much money. It’s a relatively painless hobby, and there’s nothing quite like getting a spontaneous hit notification in your email to perk one up— especially since I’ve configured Eudora to play one of the distinctive power-up sounds from the old Defender arcade video game whenever one arrives!

I’d tell you more about it, but I’ve gotta go enter a few more bills to take up to Maine with me this weekend…

Do you remember your first best friend? Who was it?: Well, early on it would have been Scotty and Shelly Littlefield, then Billy Harwood and Mike Marsh after we moved, but the one I’d probably pick would be Jon Nichols, who subsequently moved in next door. I’m not sure that tells you anything about me; they’re just meaningless names.
Are you still in touch with this person?: Hell no. I’ve reinvented myself far too many times for that.
Do you have a current close friend?: That would be Inna, who has shared my life for the past five years. I met her at work, we dated for many years before backing off a bit, and have been dominant presences in one another’s lives ever since.
How did you become friends with this person?: She had just joined Sapient and we were staffed to the same project. She was given the task of moving everyone’s telephones into our new team area and sent out an email to her future teammates asking for their phone info. She ended her note with a request to give her a call at extension 1366 if anyone had any questions. The only problem was that her extension was actually 1633; she had transposed the numbers. And ironically, she had transposed them to my extension: 1366! I sent her back a teasing email. Later, when we began working together, I found her attractive and poured on the charm, then bribed her to hang out by offering to let her visit my cat. Such are the ways to inveigle a woman!
Is there a friend from your past that you wish you were still in contact with? Why?: I think the biggest loss has been Gordon Smith, a former roommate in college. We always got along famously; however, Gordo was always a terrible correspondent, and had a habit of just disappearing, which he continued after college.

How are you planning to spend the summer [winter]?: This summer’s goals are finish up a couple stories I’m writing for DargonZine, finding a new job, and training for and completing my third Pan-Mass Challenge, a 200-mile charity bike ride to benefit cancer research and treatment. If you’re interested in helping me reach my fundraising goal, either email me or go here.
What was your first summer job?: When I was about fifteen I began working as a counselor at a YMCA day camp. My first year, I think I was paid $25. Later, I’d have my marriage ceremony at the same lakeside camp.
If you could go anywhere this summer [winter], where would you go?: Probably Scotland. I’d really like to have more time to explore the countryside.
What was your worst vacation ever?: I’m not sure it qualifies as a “vacation”, but the celebration at the end of the Staples project was the most dismal that I recall. The consultancy we worked at gave us a comp day, but it the weather was raw, windy, and rain-sodden. I spent more than two hours on a bus with my coworkers, some of whom were fine and some of whom were the kind of people you’d pay money to avoid. We were dumped off on a sleazy patch of slag near the ocean, and left for two or three hours to freeze in the rainstorm (yes, the bus left). When the bus finally returned to pick us up, someone had the wonderful idea that we could really cap this celebration off by going to a theater and all watching the tedious and formulaic X-Men movie before our two-hour bus ride home. Looking back on it, it was thoroughly painful and disheartening, and a truly pathetic way for our employer to thank us for the months of long hours the project had required.
What was your best vacation ever?: I’d have to say it was last year’s Scotland Dargon Writers’ Summit. Twelve days driving around the country, sightseeing, accompanied by some of my closest friends.

Sorry this one’s late. That’s material for a subsequent post…

What do you most want to be remembered for?: I’d like to be remembered for founding an online community that successfully encouraged and nurtured hundreds of aspiring amateur writers. I’d like to be remembered by everyone associated with that community for my wisdom and leadership in running that group.
What quotation best fits your outlook on life?: Honestly, I don’t think there’s any one quote, but there have been plenty of good examples among the philosophical treatises I’ve posted here (friends-only) over the past 18 months.
What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?: I don’t know as there’s one single one. I’m pleased with how I ran the 2003 Dargon Writers’ Summit. I’m naturally pleased with my cycling, which included climbing Evans Notch and doing the 200-mile PMC ride, which also included my fundraising for the Jimmy Fund. I’m also particularly proud of how well I’ve done in graphic design school. But in addition, I’m also pleased with my philosophical investigations and exploration of Zen, my participation in Boston’s war protests, my Web work for Onyx, and my administration of DargonZine’s advertising campaign on Google. And I’m especially pleased when I look back at how successful my social life has been over the past year.
What about the past ten years?: Well, again, there’s several things. Ten years is a long time. It would be impossible to overemphasize my return as editor and my leadership of DargonZine. There’s also my work for Sapient, which in addition to being very lucrative, offered me the opportunity to work on some of the most prestigious Web projects on the planet, such as National Geographic’s Web site, online banking, online brokerages, and much more. There’s my move into Boston and then my subsequent condo purchase. There’s my evolution as a person and the gradual increase in “healthiness” of my relationships, which is a particular point of pride.
If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?: I think the most important thing is to be aware that you’re responsible for your own life and your own happiness. Don’t do anything just because other people expect it of you; do it because you know it’s going to make you happier. Enjoy each day, rather than always live for a tomorrow that never comes because there are always more tomorrows to worry about. Make all your decisions based on the criteria of having absolutely nothing to regret when you’re on your deathbed looking back at your life.

Why is it so hard for people to be perfect?

I mean, am I missing something? How hard is it to remember simple things you're supposed to remember? Or actually follow-up on the things you commit to doing? How hard can it be to be aware of your surroundings? Or to have the self-control to respond rationally to life's challenges? Or seek the self-knowledge to avoid being hopelessly fucked up? Don't people learn anything?

All my life, I've aspired to perfection: military precision, and machinelike competence. People who know me think that I have some kind of super-human ability to honor my committments, follow through on what I say I'll do, remember things that most people wouldn't, and provide a completely honest and sincere opinion.

In my days in consulting, I really came into my own, because my employer and peers demanded a preternatural degree of skill, self-control, and presence of mind. I thrived there, having finally found a place where my machinelike precision was appreciated, and where I could actually count on my coworkers to demonstrate the same admirable degree of perfection.

So it surprises me when so many people blatantly parade their humanity where everyone can see it. I look at my friends and I see them suffering for their ignorance, laziness, and inefficiency. And I'm somewhat surprised when they express admiration or surprise when I call up facts that they'd forgotten, or actually do something for them that they forgot they'd asked me to do! Somehow, that has made me "godlike" in their eyes.

Of course, perfection comes at a cost. It does take some degree of effort to actually pay attention to life as it happens. But I find that infinitely more satisfying than stumbling around like one of those toy cars that bounces off one wall before heading off in another random direction. That's hardly the behavior I'd expect from a presumably sentient person, and I have much higher expectations of myself than that.

Of course, one might ask whether all this preoccupation with perfection is a little neurotic. Sure, there's an obsessive component to it, but it's that very obsessiveness that makes it possible for a fallible human to approach perfection. Instead, I'd ask why we should tolerate sloppiness and imperfection and error, when it's so easy to rise above all that and live one's life with honor, dignity, and pride.

It's just not that hard, and it freaks me out that people think integrity and efficiency aren't traits that real humans should strive for.

What's your favorite piece of clothing that you currently own?: That'd be a toss-up between two things. My Shimano cycling sandals (yes, complete with clipless cleats) have served me admirably for two years, including two Pan-Mass Challenge charity rides, and have probably seen about 3500 miles of use. The other is this year's Pan-Mass Challenge rider's jersey, which is pretty ugly and lacks the history, but it still means a lot to me for what it stands for.
What piece of clothing do you most want to acquire?: A kilt'd be nice, don't you think?
What piece of clothing can you not bring yourself to get rid of? Why?: So many... My Cavariccis, my Concussion Ensemble tees, my Sapient S&P 500 tee, my old basketball shoes, my rubber shirt, my 1983 Billy Squier concert tee, the old DargonZine map tee (circa 1987)...
What piece of clothing do you look your best in?: On top, probably the baseball jersey in my "thoughtful" userpic. On bottom, probably cycling shorts. Although I suspect I probably looked good in my Veassllurd barbarian SCA costume: a fox pelt cut in half, with the fox's head and ears as a loincloth and his tail covering my backside...
What has been your biggest fashion accident?: Even though I'd been with the company five months, we didn't have a "boot camp" until then, so I got to go through it as a veteran. Amazingly, on the day the co-CEO was to speak to us, another new hire showed up wearing the exact same tie as I was wearing! I had to make a lunchtime trip to Sears of all places to salvage my reputation...

If you're an Orny journal reader, you've probably figured out by now that I don't talk much about daily events. That mundane crap just isn't worth the time or effort to save, much less inflict on my friends. Usually, I talk (mostly to myself) about what I think is Big Stuff. Worth keeping. But this entry's gonna start out in the former, and hopefully find its way to the latter, although I think the former will be more interesting to people.

So Thursday I'm sitting at home, reading the Boston Phoenix, the best local paper for club listings. When I get to page five of the listings section, there's a familiar face staring up at me. There in the middle of a half-page feature is a photo of a woman, B., who used to be what lothie would call, my "grand-boss": my boss' boss.

The interesting bit is that she's wearing squarish wire-rimmed glasses, a tux, and a moustache. The lead-in reads "Mr. Murray Hill, the hardest-working middle aged man in show business". You can see the story I was reading by following this link.

My former grand-boss is a drag king. And not just any drag king, but the mother (if you will) of all drag kings. Elected drag king of the year at the 2000 Glammies, Murray's the big cheese. Learn all about the man at his Web site: http://www.mrmurrayhill.com.

Now maybe that's no big deal if you are fortunate enough to live and work in a den of liberalism, the way many LJ users are. But I worked with B. at Sapient, the same company that was once known for its military regimentation, fratboy culture, and starched white shirts and ties. The same company where my first-day orientation included polemics like "There is no such thing as a brown dress shoe." A very straight-laced, old school consulting firm.

Yet somehow I have to integrate the two extremes. I certainly never would have thought that Sapient would be the place where I'd experience a wookplace TV, and in the position of Director, no less! Those two data points just should never have gone together.

I'm not saying it's bad. I am as comfortable with G. Gordon Liddy as I am with Susie Bright. They just shouldn't be shacking up with one another behind my back! I just totally didn't expect to encounter such overt "alternativeness" at Sapient, of all places. It'd be equivalent to entering an office in the Pentagon and finding oneself in the middle of a scene from the Rocky Horror Picture Show!

"Your transvestite's running my consulting firm!"
"Your consulting firm's run by my transvestite!"
...

But I can tell you one thing for sure. Murray Hill... that guy's got cojones.

UPDATE: Some additional links describe Murray's 1997 campaign for Mayor of New York and a case study from Murray's financial advisor!

So whenever the topic of stock options comes up, I have this dilemma. When people learn that I sold my stock near the peak of Sapient's stock value, the usual response is "Boy, that sure was smart. I wish I'd been that smart."

Now, I'm torn about how to respond. Yeah, it was smart. Not that wisdom is the only factor that applied, and not that I can just say to my peers that their financial ruin is a very regrettable result of their lack of foresight. So instead, I usually say that a lot of it was luck, in that I was looking for a house at the time, and sold my stock in order to put as much down as possible.

But not wanting to brag about my wisdom is really just a social phenomenon, which I can put aside in this relatively private journal. Sure, there was a lot of good fortune involved in getting hired at Sapient before its IPO, but I made a number of decisions involved in managing and protecting that good fortune that demonstrated wisdom, foresight, and yes, intelligence. In order to support this conclusion that I'm so averse to admitting even to myself, I'd like to take a look at those decisions.

First, I had a strategy to my accumulation of Sapient stock. I exercised my stock gradually, doing my best to specifically minimize my AMT burden. I also held my stock as long as I could, so that I would avoid increased taxes on short-term gains. And I consulted an accounting firm in order to get the best advice I could on managing my growing assets and minimizing taxes.

Second, I made the decision to sell. Looking at my net worth as the millenium approached, I realized that 98 percent of my fortune was tied up in Sapient stock. No matter how well your company might be doing, that's just stupid. Although my stock had appreciated to an astonishing degree, it was still an unrealized gain that was entirely at risk, and a very high risk at that. I made the decision to sell and put my assets into a condo about a year before I actually sold my stock. At that time, I predicted that the speculative Internet bubble would undergo a whiplash negative counterreaction, as just about anything which becomes such a major trend inevitably does. I sold my stock in the autumn of 2000, a couple months before Sapient's competitors all began dropping like flies. I'm surprised that I looked at places for a whole year before I sold my stock; why my peers completely ignored the all-too-obvious warning signs just amazes me.

And finally, I didn't waver from the thinking behind my decision. A number of people pointed out home financing alternatives that might have been attractive in other circumstances. For example, I surprised many people by offering a down payment of more than two-thirds of the purchase price of my unit, when I could have put nothing down and kept my stock (and also paid a lot more in mortgage interest). Similarly, I was offered a stock-backed mortgage, where my stock would have served as collateral for my loan, and I would have been able to retain ownership of my stock. Either of those options would have had tragic consequences, and I didn't avail myself of them becuase they violated my primary reason for buying a house: cashing out of my risky Sapient holdings.

So although there definitely was some luck involved in my joining Sapient and in the tactical timing of my sale, I think I should be able to gracefully acknowledge that I demonstrated wisdom, foresight, and intelligence in how I managed my financial assets. The fact that I'm so well off now isn't just the result of dumb luck, when the majority of my peers have watched their fortunes be destroyed, and in some cases owe fortunes that they don't have to the IRS.

I don't want to overgeneralize, but I think too many of my peers are whiny, priviledged kids who have never had to learn financial discipline, responsibility, and independence. If you want to avoid a hand-to-mouth existence, have a retirement, and live well, you need to respect your money and where it comes from, and learn how to protect it. That's the wisdom that I have which produced, for me, such a better outcome than my peers.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to lord it over them when the topic comes up; I'll still be careful to avoid any implication that my friends' financial woes are the result of their own shortsightedness. But I needed to write this journal to clarify to myself exactly what degree of conscious control I had over the outcome, and by implication, whether I really was being smarter than most of my friends or not.

So today I was laid off, along with 550 other people, in Sapient's third round of layoffs. Actually, I've been given the option of continuing to work for them for another month, so although I was laid off, I won't really be unemployed until the end of March.

I have a hard time really assimilating this information. I haven't been let go from a job in 15 years, and after seven years at Sapient, it's kind of hard to imagine not having the security and confidence and comfort that went with it. I guess I'm still somewhat in shock, although the layoffs weren't a surprise, and I'd been ready for it for some time. It's just going to be a radical change, and I'm really not so good at big changes... especially when it cuts to the core of my self-worth, as this does. Not, mind you, that I think my being laid off had to do with performance, but instead my being at Sapient really bolstered my self-image.

Practically, I should be fine. Although I've got a mortgage and the job market sucks right now, my severance will keep me going into August without having to tap my savings. Furthermore, I have a good deal of savings around, and none of that even includes unemployment insurance, either. So in that sense I'll be fine.

My biggest concern is when I re-enter the job market, how I'll sell myself. The problem there is that I've moved out of the technical realm, but haven't got enough experience to land a job on the creative side. So it's going to be a bit of a selling and positioning job when I finally do get a resume together. And, for the first time, a portfolio, as well!

Looking back at Sapient, it certainly was a great job. It taught me a lot, and was very financially rewarding, and I got to work with a huge number of really great people. And, of course, it helped me make the transition from systems and database programmer to site designer. The big downside was really the workload, but even that wasn't so bad much of the time.

But now it's all history, and I need to look forward. From here, I really don't know what the future will hold for me. About all I can say is that I will take some time and enjoy life through the summer. The job market is really bad, and I'll need to find something that I can do which will be in demand, but I can wait a little while for that. I'm just hoping that I can find something that keeps me on the edge of technology and creative, because that's really what I enjoy most. And hopefully my next step will give me as much security and growth as I experienced at Sapient.

But now it's time for a little break, and then a big change.

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Entries tagged with sapient

Memorabilia: No Place Like HomeLink!

The Whole Damned Story

Trompe d'Oeil

The Ghost of Munny Past

The Windfall

Congratulations on Your New Mortgage!

Unemployment, or “Quasi-Retirement”?

Taking Stock

Life Beyond the Vendome

But not forgotten

Transitions

Of Course Mama's Gonna Help Build the Wall

Scrooge & the Ghost of Christmas Past

Microsoft's Next Big Idea

Have you seen my buddy George?

Friday Five #28

Friday Five #26

Tuesday Five

I'm not perfect, but I'm perfect for you

Friday Five #2

Dungeons and Dragkings

I Got Rich From Discipline!

Exit interview

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