A phone call in the middle of the night? Vague grounds for dismissal?
I wish I could understand Linden Lab. It all started so well six years ago, then something happened and the company fell apart. Does anyone know the inside story? Is it a problem with the Board of Directors? Senior management? Both? I'd really appreciate some links to explain how such a promising company with such an amazing product got so messed up.
ETA:
Tangentially related, I found this link:
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/10/linden-lab-2005-s
(Time for one of the resident Doom-n-Gloomers to weigh in .. however I will try to stay out of the quagmire ...)
What struck me most about Oskar's description of his termination was the lack of advance notice and the manner in which it was delivered. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the usual professional approach to a termination is to provide some form of advance notice and to deliver news of this magnitude with a face-to-face discussion. There are of course exceptions, such as when an employee violates the Employment Moral Clause or some other similar egregious event precludes such protocols. Oskar does seem to indicate that LL's "Cause" for his termination was a conflict with a customer .. and that could perhaps be the precipitating event.
The "Skype Call" may have been the only form of face-to-face possible; I'm not familiar with how close to the home office he is located, so perhaps he could not be summoned in to the office to deliver the news. I'm willing to give a little ground there, especially in today's age of the Distributed Company.
But even with the above, I find it unsettling that there seems to have been little effort made to fully explain the circumstances. If Oskar did have a run-in of monumental proportions with a customer .. one that reached such a high pitch that LL felt their only recourse was to terminate him rapidly, I would have expected there to be more emotion in Oskar's post on SLU.
Ah well, the bottom line is that we know only the one side. Most definitely LL isn't going to chime in to justify their own decision. (Nor should they need to.)
Yet this feels ... wrong. I can't lay hard evidence on any one thing that brings me to that feeling, I can only state that no matter how I try to look at this incident, I keep arriving at a sensation of something more at play than some rapidly developing situation that could only be resolved with a termination.
We have seen LL make some radical changes in their management, employee cross-section, product support and development targets. We have watched the steady decline in "old blood" that had a solid understanding of the SL product and customer base. Rodvik has given very little voice to the future of SL itself, while at the same time putting a lot of effort into promoting their new titles and direction.
Perhaps this is just "one of those things" that happen in every company, and it really has no more significance than the accidental spilling of a cup of tea. And yet, I can't shake this feeling that this is another paper clip in the slowly building chain toward some sort of very significant final action.
Well .. whatever .. Oskar? Best of luck on your next landing spot. I can safely report that there are many times in life where the events we feel at the moment are very hurtful or damaging, can eventually turn into the best detours possible.
