Pligget

Pligget
Little to say for myself

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Strange times at work

I work for a multinational company with sites in the UK, Germany, France and Spain, and which is the product of recent mergers between single-nationality companies. Largely driven by disastrous financial results caused by industry down-turn, but also as an inevitable conesequence of the mergers, a big re-structuring was announced yesterday. Three main impacts for me personally:

my department will survive and be expanded
a sister department in Germany, including colleagues I've been working closely with for nearly three years, will close in favour of my department
many, many people in other departments at my site will lose their jobs

I'm finding it very difficult to sort this out emotionally.

My main problem is dealing with the guilt that I feel relieved.

posted by Plig | 17:30 |

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Forget the sentimental notion that foreign policy is a struggle between virtue and vice, with virtue bound to win.
Forget the utopian notion that a brave new world without power politics will follow the unconditional surrender of wicked nations.
Forget the crusading notion that any nation, however virtuous and powerful, can have the mission to make the world in its own image.
Remember that diplomacy without power is feeble, and power without diplomacy is destructive and blind.
Remember that no nation's power is without limits, and hence that its policies must respect the power and interests of others.
Hans Morgenthau

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts
Bertrand Russell

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one
Albert Einstein

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative
Martin Luther King Jr.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man
Bertrand Russell

I think it would be a good idea
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun
Pablo Picasso

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others
Groucho Marx

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it
Mahatma Gandhi

Always make new mistakes
Esther Dyson