Let them eat cake!

On Weds a whole load of the people I worked with at ARM were told they won't be working there any more. A lay-off, a RIF, redundancy- there are many names for this kind of thing and I am probably not allowed to say publicly what is going on. However the fact remains that a lot of folk have been told they won't be working at ARM anymore and I think that is a great shame.

Today we had a communications meeting run by one of our illustrious leaders of the Sunnyvale office. I had expected the events of Black Wednesday to be the main topic of conversation as there had been so much angst over the past 3 days in Sunnyvale regarding "the stuff" that was effected. However after being treated to a slide show by someone in Sales on how really Grrrrreat the sales team were, followed by much applause as the sales team clapped itself ecstatically, one slide flashed up on the changes in the effected division. "And these changes will effect some of the people in the offices listed [on the slide]."

Hmmm, yes I guess could say that impending unemployment can effect people. I guess we will just put this one down to English understatement.

"Now!" our illustrious leader continued, flipping the slide quickly forward and switching back into incredibly upbeat mode "Let's take a look at some pictures of our new building and after that we can have some cake!"

I left. I didn't want their free cake or their free pizza. I guess I'm just not a "team player".