Monday, October 19, 2009

Goodbye Corporate America


Some things just don't make sense . . .
  1. Quitting a high-paying (albeit boring) corporate job you are good at, before they get a chance to lay you off and give you a severance package.
  2. Buying a new iPhone and a new (used) car just before leaving said high-paying corporate job.
  3. Starting a new job with a huge cut in salary at a tiny startup software company before actually leaving the first job.
  4. Loving your new job at said startup, even though most of your co-workers work with the lights off (one of them has a really long goatee and calls his tattooed self "Cookie"), and your office sits behind a gas station and looks like a cheap motel.
  5. Loving your new office space even though it's missing carpet, came with a mysterious kid-sized jacket hung on the wall, and only had furniture when you bought it at IKEA and put it together yourself.
  6. Working for said software company even though your ultimate goal is to do hardware, and not for iPhones, but in telemedicine.
Some things just feel right and feel happy, okay? Especially when you are newly thirty-five years old, charmed, charming, and gorgeous.

Rich officially quit his job at Freescale Semiconductor after working there for 9.5 years--the only job since he got out of college. He stuck around until Monday to lay off seven of the guys on his team, and now works for InMotion Software, which has about 8 employees. The owner of this company is working with Rich to help him get his telemedicine ideas off the ground. In exchange, Rich is helping him do some work with iPhone apps and hardware.

And in the end, we got the severance package and health insurance for a while. Amazing how many blessings are showered on us so often.

So wahoo! We've cut the apron strings and are now masters of our own destiny. And speaking of destiny, this opportunity with InMotion came through a temple prep class we taught at church, and the deal was sealed the week of a stake fast for rain and employment. Divine destiny, I'd say.

Happy Birthday, Rich! I didn't really like actually being rich anyway . . . I'd much rather have the man himself, and have him happy at work.

2 comments:

Aby Runyan said...

You were rich? Wow, that's pretty cool to be able to say.

But I'd have to agree about having the man and having him happy at work. I wish I could make the second part of that come true for me!

luvs, aby

PS - but I might not MIND being rich, even for only a little while.

Merinda Cutler said...

Aby, I didn't realize we were rich until we moved to India. It's all relative.

Feeling rich makes me feel like a jerk, because it often seems to come at the expense of somebody poor somewhere (the child factory workers in China, the Mexican immigrant laborers in America . . .). Being rich also sometimes comes at an expense to your family in a non-monetary way. People hate the rich, and I don't like people to hate me!

We'll see how long the "happy at work" lasts. Rich does seem to have a knack for being content wherever he is, so I'm sure he'll make the best of whatever lies ahead for him.