Realizing that my year of travel and year long personal leave of absence is coming to an end, I sent my company HR an email about job opportunities. However, I received an interesting response from a new HR guy who essentially emailed me a letter to let me know that I have 2 weeks left on my leave before I am "administratively terminated". Even more interesting, the letter is backdated a few weeks to show a month's notice. Being an HR guy, he could have used more subtle language since I instantly went into panic mode. The term "terminated" never sounds good. Unfortunately, I could not take the voluntary separation package since I'm not technically an active employee and there really are no job openings since my company is about to slash headcount for those left who didn't take the voluntary separation package. So, in two weeks, I will no longer be an employee of Medtronic, where I have worked for the last 5 years since business school. Given the overall doom and gloom of the job market, I don't plan to return to the real world unless an interesting opportunity presents itself. For me, it is cheaper to search for jobs while in Latin America where the cost of living is much less than heading back to the bay area. Earlier this year, I had received numerous headhunter inquiries, but after letting them all know that I wasn't interested, I may need to find those emails again. For now, I will continue my travels since I just bought a ticket to Ecuador and will head up there shortly to pursue more dreams of mine. The most important thing is that I am still happy. Financially, I will be fine. The cost of my travels for a year thus far is less than the cost of rent for a studio apartment in SF. What good is money anyway, if you can't spend it to enjoy life. Life is too short and too often dreams are never realized and rarely pursued.
Thank you Medtronic for your flexibility and for the wonderful career opportunities and incredible life long friends I have made while working there, that for which I am most grateful. Who knows, we may just reunite within the next year.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Fond Farewell to Medtronic
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3 comments:
uh oh, so is Stan the Stent graft going to be replaced with a new mascot then?
Good point. I didn't think about the fate of Stan. He is still traveling with me although the wear and tear of travels is beginning to show. He is still my only travel companion.
congratulations on making a very tough decision. you're right about money: we don't need all that much and what we have, we should put to work at making us happy. looking forward to reading about more adventures...
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