The credit crisis hits us all, that's a known fact. Some people, however, are hit harder than others. Every day you read about people losing their jobs, mandatory days off, lowered salaries, etc. Initially my employer seemed to be unaffected by it all, until now.
Yesterday around 15:00, my boss asked if he could talk to me in private for a few minutes. He told me that the revenues are going down, and that they have to find some way to save money. The company can go on like this for another 2 years, before it would get into trouble, but the management wants to prevent that. To save some money, my boss wants to rent me out for two days per week to another company that is owned by his brother.
The company I'm being rented out to is quite nice; they're sort of an online video store. You pay them a fixed amount, and can watch the latest movies on streaming video. From what I understand from my co-workers, the people at the other company are cool, but that's not the problem. The problem is that it's yet another environment with new coworkers, new servers, new problems, etc... The upside is that I still have my job, and that my salary won't change. So I'm still lucky I guess... but some things really bug me.
First of all, I'm halfway the project of upgrading all the workstations, and am way behind schedule as it is. If I'm being cut from work for 2 days per week, it means the migration will go behind schedule even more. That doesn't make me very happy.
Secondly... as far as I understand, I'm the only employee in the company that is being cut. The management won't be receiving as much bonus as they used to, the boss will cut his own salary by 30%, and some social events are scrapped. The sales people, however, will still get their monthly bonus. Yes, bonus. That is an extra payment on top of their normal salary. Apparently it's more important to the company to give a little perk/tip to sales people, than having the system administrator around for 5 days per week. If you ask 100 system administrators what they think is important in a job, 99 will say "appreciation". Right now, I'm feeling highly unappreciated, and I feel rather insulted.
Though I should be thankful that I still have -a- job, I guess... :S