What happened.

We all saw the blog post (www.cheezhead.com) and laughed. "It's so poorly written, it couldn't possibly be true."

Well it was. Reports are showing that one month after the CEO looked me right in the eyes along with many of our colleagues and said "We have no plans for massive layoffs. It wouldn't make sense for us to do that. We will be trimming head count. But we will be doing that by not filling positions that are left open naturally"

A massive layoff takes planning. It takes more than a month to figure out who goes, what kind of severance to offer, etc. I know in my heart, the higher ups knew this was going to happen. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it either. I saw reps in the room that I really looked up to, the ones I wanted to be like. People hitting 200% of their quotas. I saw a friend of mine who just hit his 5K bonus for invoicing 25,000 in his first 6 months (actually a little less than 6 months) who was told they weren't sure he would even receive that. Theories are going around that they got rid of a lot of these top performing reps to save money in not having to pay out all of these bonuses. That doesn't seem like thinking about the future to me, but who knows where a corporation's mind goes when things go sour. It was a great company to work for, but they made some mistakes.

Aside from the lying, I hold no ill will to the company. I appreciated the severance package. I don't know that they had to do that, but if they didn't have to, it was really pretty generous in my mind. I've got enough money coming to me to get by (with unemployment) until after my x-mas vacation home. When I come back, I'll hit the job boards hard, knowing I can find a new job.

The saddest part, is the people. I'll miss you guys and I hope you will all keep in touch. You were my first real friends in Chicago and I want you to still be a part of my life.