I work at Netscreen Technologies, or at least I do for another couple weeks. If you’re not into technology, the tech sector, or you live in a bubble (no, not the internet bubble) – We were ‘acquired’ by Juniper Networks last monday. I got up monday morning, fired up the laptop and got my coffee. then I logged into Yahoo and looked over the stocks I monitor, and NSCN, stuck in the middle there showed a trailing +9.53. “Great,” I thought, “Yahoo’s ticker is fucked.” So I click over and see the story, and I’m shocked. So I go back and look again.. +9.73… And I recover from my shock and let out a shriek. I run into the bathroom, disturbing my wife in the shower, and tell her the news. Then I check my e-mail and realize I now have an all hands meeting in a little over an hour, and since I live 18 miles from work I may not get there. But I rush and make it and everyone is jumping up and down and wearing big, shit-eating grins. Then we have our all hands meeting, and I realize that I could have missed it, since it was mostly a bunch of cheerleading by the two CEO’s.

Nothing really gets done that day (big surprise). We have a lot of talking in the halls about the changes that are going to be made. I work in Network Management, which basically means I’m a bit of a grunt-level code monkey. Which is kinda hard on me, and sad, because at my two previous jobs I was a lot more into design and architecture as opposed to straight implementation. But Juniper doesn’t have a good network management platform, so that may make me pretty secure after the merger. People who are in IT and Ops, common ground for layoffs after a merger are probably not feeling so good.

Nonetheless, everyone fears change, and I’m no different. I am curious and not just a little scared about our future. The first time I got laid off (well, the company folded, whatever.) I wasn’t too worried. I could get by for a few weeks and found another job fairly quickly. My wife was still working, we were newly married and didn’t have a lot of responsibilities, except to each other. The second time, my wife was pregnant, and due to health concerns had left her job. So now we were without money, without a job, and had more responsibilities. This time, although I haven’t gotten laid off, I am much more concerned about my situations. I still have the pregnant wife, but I also have a two year old and a mortgage, and that is a lot of weight for one person to carry. Well, totally lost my chain of thought here, so I’ll just leave it hanging.

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