LAID-OFF!

On December 14, 2000, I was LAID OFF from work for the first time in my life. I couldn’t believe it! I was working my butt off at Opentable Inc, a small start-up company in SF, when they laid me off. The reason they gave was because of reorganization and my position as Webmaster requires programming experience as well as hardware knowledge. Since I knew little about programming VBScripts, middle-tier COM+ objects, or Delphi, I was no longer qualified for the position and thus, I was laid off along with about 40 other people.

This re-organization at Opentable was rather harsh due to a change in the business model. Many people got laid off that I felt was really working hard for the company. Most of the sales team was laid off, implementation team, call center, remote offices, and half of the IT dept. Here are a few of them that I felt was working really hard for the company:

Patrick Duncan – BusDev person, he worked late all the time!

Rob Praeter – IT, one of the busiest person in the office, maintaining everyone’s computers

Zach Miller-Catin – IS Manager, made sure the office was running smoothly

The only major dept that was not affected was Engineering because of the direction of the company. Opentable seems to want to be a product development company and sell off its technology for other people to use and support rather than be an one-stop shop for restaurants. This way, Opentable can cut its support & implementation costs while still reaping revenues per product sold. With less overhead and possibly more revenues being generated, Opentable hopes to be profitable by the end of next year. Problem with this route is that Opentable wants to out-source its support and sales teams. However, this would be rather difficult to do at this time due to current market conditions and given the type of clientele that Opentable has, I doubt sales will pick up without the personal touch that a permanent sales team can provide.

My Brief Recounts!

Dec. 13, 2000 – Wednesday

Mark Deaton – IT Director, my boss really wanted to talk to me about something, not sure what it is, but it’s really urgent and he won’t tell me over the phone. He wants me to come in ASAP to the office.

Unable to comply that day because I ran into a bunch of problems at the colo at Digital Island with our disk array. I worked on it from 9am-6pm, then from 11pm-2am.

Dec. 14, 2000 – Thursday

Arrived at the colo at 8:30am to check on diagnostics and check the servers.

Around 10am, emails started come in from various people stating that tomorrow (Friday) is their last day at Opentable.

Sean and I thought it was rather strange but thought nothing of it until 10:30am when our IS Manager sent out a similar email bringing the total number people leaving to around 6 people within the last half hour.

We packed up and left for the office ASAP!!

On the way to the office in SF, I joked with Sean that I was probably getting fired or laid off like the other guys, he bet me lunch that I won’t be laid off.

Arrived at the office, helped out Laurel Rush with some problem on the website. Waited for Mark. Found out that it’s a company-wide lay-off in progress.

Most of the remote offices were being shut down and personnel laid-off. Most of sales except a core group for big corporate sales, most of Implementation were gone, and half of IT was gone.

Had the meeting with Mark and Glenn (my VP), who told me that I was being laid off and why. The lay-off will be effective Dec. 15, 2000. I was told to report back to corporate the next day for my severance package.

Mark had a quick meeting with Sean and afterwards, Sean came out and said “So sorry, man. Pick a place, any place. Let’s go get some lunch.” Hehehe…..he owed me lunch!

I had to turn in all my cool toys: two-way text pager with toll-free number, my awesome Dell Latitude laptop, my Palm IIIC and of course, my cell phone and DSL line is no longer company-paid.

Dec 15, 2000 – Friday

Went back to the office for my severance package, met with Glenn and Trina (HR Director)

Severance package is as follows:

Options – pro-rated for 6 month of employment – 1000 shares @ $0.30 (need to buy it within the next three months)

2 weeks additional pay – basically, I get another paycheck, my Dec 31^st one.

Health benefits – all coverage extended through March 31^st 2001

PTO & floating holiday pay – cashed out on my vacation pay which amounts to about one more paycheck.

Asked Glenn if they needed any consulting help with the website since I know it like no one else, he said he’ll have to ask the VP of Engineering. Hopefully, this pans out. =)

Packed up the rest of my stuff and went to back to South Bay to get my cell phone downgraded.

Due to the limiting choices I faced, I was able to get the new Nokia 8290 cell phone, downgrade my plan, sign another year contract, and Glenn agreed to pay for it.

Then I went to TechSource, where my friend is a recruiter and did a 90-min interview.