What to do?

Recently, I saw a lot of recommendation given to each other of my team where I was working during summers, with some investigation I got to know that 50% of my team has been laid off. My mentor, my manager, my good friend and some others all laid off. Then I started pondering what could be the reason that these people were laid off and rest were not. These points I think will make me better in the coming times.

1) The work you are doing, does it fit well with your background. What I mean to say is, for example my mentor is a software engineer but was working in services team primarily consisting of Environment Engineers and yes all were from Berkeley, Stanford, Waterloo. How much ground do you hold if you are switching to new field against them in this fragile economy.

2) How much relevant work is given to you in the team you are working in, for example, if you are in Services consulting team, you implement software for your clients. Do you get the opportunity to implement and face clients, if others in your team are facing clients and you are put in some mundane work which might be important but not generating revenue for the company, it should raise red flag for you.

3) Do you have the persona to be in that team. What I mean is, do you have a good looking face, easy going liberal personality, willing to accept other person's thoughts and ideas. Some people get in easily because of their GPA or credentials but don't last long.

4) You are plain unlucky, which means nothing is absolute in this world and everything is relative. Even though you are doing your work very well, still things were beyond your control.

5) Your lavish lifestyle which your organization has to pay for it. Like my manager, he was pretty lavish with bi weekly team lunches, buying macs and ipads on company's expense. Then going on holidays, working from home on fridays and not joining intern final get together where all other team managers and CEO was there. These small small things in this fragile economy counts a lot, plus not to mention not even a single reply to many emails wrote to him, in the name of being busy??

Lame!

For the past 3 months I was doing internship at Energy Management start-up in a place close to San Francisco. After working there I realized even if the job market is not good I don't want to work in that firm anyway.

The work was interesting and I did learn a lot from internship specially J2EE framework based web development but apart from work I have nothing good to say about the company.

It's such a small company ~70 employee but it's so secretive and politicized that one can't comprehend, every day in my group someone was cribbing that his/her work is not appreciated, don't tell this and that outside the group, why a person from outside group is in their social networking group WTF!!

One thing I have learnt from this internship is to figure out Important people who are actually useful in solving some problem in hand, just telling everyone your problem just end up making a mockery of oneself. Also, before joining make sure which group you would be working in, is your work important and related to them, like for myself I was software engineer but my team mates were environment consultants so there was nothing common, they just like iPad interface that's it, they are not much concerned with back-end stuff. One more thing to understand is how you fit in the team structure, in my case I can say I had worst possible structure where there was a functional mentor and a product manager, if functional mentor doesn't communicate with product manager about my progress then he has no idea and when I used to goto PM he used to tell me talk to your functional manager, you see how much things were fucked up and yes it was start up environment.

On day one try to figure out which Email list are important to you and get into it proactively than thinking your mentor will do it, may be he/she is busy in his/her work and you miss out group meeting or lunches coz of this.

I had some problems in using framework went to engineering department and hardly anyone helped except one lady who was also monitored by her manager and was asked to do her own work than helping me WTF again!! She used to come to my part of building to help me so that she is not under scanner by her group or manager, can you imagine how fucked up things were in a 70 employee company?? Neither I got any code sample to see how things work.

I was so happy when days were coming to end of internship. Thank god I am out! The best part of internship is that it's not only employer can see you as right fit or not but you can also judge company and co-workers as right fit for yourself or not.