July 25, 2005 – An Interrupted Journey

July 25, 2005 – An Interrupted Journey

Silicon Valley in the aftermath of the Manhattan World Trade Center attack on September 11th 2001 was fast becoming a shadow of its former self. The first signs of change I recalled was the traffic. Freeways that were once clogged during morning and evening rush hours had begun to move at a faster average speed. It took you less time to go from South San Jose to San Francisco on either California 101 or Interstate 280. The next thing I noticed was the number of office buildings sprouting “For Lease” signs. These harbingers began to appear six to nine months after the attack. You can view economic recessions like you view the weather, with your economist of choice being your favorite weatherperson. For those who were still employed the grim economic statistics recited each night on KRON, KPIX, KNTV, or KGO were like listening to details of gale force winds uprooting trees and leveling poorly constructed buildings in another neighborhood. Those who were in the affected area were busy righting themselves, wishing they lived in an unaffected neighborhood.

That was me a couple of months after the attack, a felled tree in the aftermath of an economic storm. I knew I was in for the uprooting and felt reasonably certain my fate would befall the small company that let me go. The small enterprise where I was employed was located in a high rise across Guadalupe Parkway (California Highway 87) from the then San Jose International Airport. It acquired its current handle “The Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport in November 2001, when the city wanting to honor Mineta—the 59th Mayor of San Jose’s and its 15th Congressional District Representative to Congress for twenty years from 1975 to 1995 renamed it. George W. Bush had appointed Mineta to head the U.S. Department of Transportation in January 2001—San Jose’s native son wielding power in Washington. From the multi-story parking garage of my office complex, during lunch hour I would watch the intense airport construction going on across the parkway. Fueled by the dotcom bubble, the building boom was the perfect picture of “before-9/11” with its snarled traffic leading in and out of the two-lane entrance to Terminal C south of the entrance and Terminal A north of the entrance.

I had come to this small start-up in mid-2000 at the invitation of its CEO, enticed by an increase in salary and generous stock options. A British media giant had purchased the publishing company where I worked and I was put in charge of custom publications. To facilitate the sale, I signed a non-compete clause that prohibited me from joining a competitive publication. Taking a job in marketing for a start-up was the perfect exit strategy. Furthermore, if the start-up went the way of many others of the time I was hired, my stock options could become worth far more than the hundred or so pages of 8 1/2 by 11 paper they were printed on. That was before the attack on the World Trade Center. Afterwards, the small enterprise watched all the business booked before the attack slowly slip away. Deals about to be signed were abruptly delayed or cancelled outright. The entire house of cards that was the Internet build-out began to crumble, with small ventures like ours that sold to companies doing the building being pulled down in its wake. Business plans that had called for order-of-magnitude growth saw that growth stunted. The stock value of large blue-chip high-tech companies started to plummet as investors fearing the worse sold shares at whatever price they could command.

A few weeks after the attack, I received notice from San Jose Superior Court to report for jury duty. I showed up and explained to the judge that the small company I worked for would lay me off if I went on jury duty. The judge was unsympathetic and the computer system that selects jurors chose me—ironically, the very machine that provided me my livelihood for over 40 years now took it away. I returned to work and informed the CEO I had been chosen for a jury and he broke the news to me that I was being let go. My boss wrote a letter to the court explaining that my job had been eliminated. The one good thing that came out of my layoff was that I got out of jury duty—the judge perhaps feeling remorse for ignoring my initial plea? I walked out of the courthouse ecstatic and terrified at the same time. I was suddenly free not only from the impressed service of the court but my job as well. I knew what it was to be unemployed, and I knew it was going to be more difficult at 56 than at 41—my age the last time I hit the bricks. I was involved in a huge game of musical chairs and a large number of chairs had been removed from the playing field. Those remaining chairs were being coveted by the lucky few with their asses firmly planted and no intention of getting up when the music began to play. I bore my employer no ill will. In fact, I was relieved. They were living on borrowed time and I had to find another game before I was too old to play. They would go under a little over a year later.

My first recourse was to begin looking for freelance work, which I managed to find—small writing jobs that provided cash flow, plus the company had given me a few weeks of severance pay. I rejected the idea of going on unemployment, after all I did have work. However, I had plenty of free time that I spent at trade shows and association gatherings handing out business cards, hitting up acquaintances for work—most had none to offer, and working with others like me who were trying to start businesses of their own. There was no investment money so the endeavors all called for sweat equity—work for free banking of cash eventually coming. All the schemes were based on dotcom models that had little chance of taking hold when potential customers were suspect of anything web based. Starting a company was something to do in addition to applying for job openings working friends put you on to—most of which had a surplus of applicants. At 56 I realized that you don’t find a job, you create one for yourself. Unfortunately, few companies were of a mind to create positions when they were actively eliminating large numbers of existing positions.

Getting up every morning with no job to go to gives you a disquieting feeling, because you’re without a role to play. I was neither an editor nor a marketing guy. I was simply unemployed, someone without a handle for others to recognize your state in the hierarchy of our business society. To eliminate this stigma, I restarted the consulting practice I had the last time I was let go. I printed business cards with a new consulting agency name, Do !nc. (clever the inverted “i” no?). I would go on my morning jog but instead of doing it at 5:30 every morning, I would start at 8:00 when everyone else was rushing out the door to begin work by 9:00. On days when there was a trade show or conference, I would dress up in my sports coat, dress shirt, and slacks and head out the door with a pocketful of Do !nc. business cards. I knew most of the show and conference organizers so I could usually get registered as a member of the press. I was also working freelance for a custom magazine—I had started the publication while still at my last publishing company. Registering as a freelancer for the magazine allowed me entrée I would not otherwise have. I was enjoying the freedom of setting my own schedule, coming and going as I pleased. The only problem was that I wasn’t a real editor anymore. I had been an editor who had left the profession to become a marketing guy—a loss of credibility. Like it or not I had exiled myself from the world I had known for over twenty years. “Consultant” would tide me over until I became a marketing guy once more. The feeling was like getting a divorce after many years together and moving in with another partner who tempted you with the promise of material gain. Once you start living with your new partner you realize how foolish you had been, but knowing you cannot return

By January, 2002 I had landed another job in marketing for another start-up—this one with a higher probability of succeeding than the one I had left—I could extend the personal relationship analogy but I won’t. However, my life had changed and it had nothing to do with the terrorist attack or the economic recession that resulted. Each of us comes into the world with a fuel tank that had a finite amount of gas that each of us uses to propel ourselves down the highway of life. I had driven down one road for the vast majority of my professional life. With a fuel tank below the midpoint of the gas gauge heading toward “E”, I had taken a detour lured not by the prospect of something that I would enjoy doing but rather by the chance for material wealth. I think of that computer program selecting me for jury duty as an omen that stated clearly I had taken a wrong turn—the computer program was not the cause of my demise as I’m sure I would have suffered the same fate without the computer choosing me to serve on the jury. I had been chastened and now I’m looking for a good stretch of road to spend the remaining fuel in my tank.