Praise and be damned

Sorry to keep harping on about events at work, but they are a rather prominent feature of my life just now. And besides, this is quite good.

We had a meeting with our MD yesterday, during which he attempted to give an overview of why the recent cuts were made and an indication of where the company would be heading in the future (other than downhill). In a pinocchioesque fashion, I'm sure I witnessed his hair getting pointier and pointier as each word fell from his mouth.

Perhaps his most astonishing revelation came when he dared offer congratulations to the (remnants) of the development team for providing a stable and flexible technical platform which he believes will meet the company's requirements for the forseeable future. In practically the same breadth he also intimated that this was the reason so many developers in proportion to the rest of the business were made redundant. That's right - he basically told us that we'd done such a good job he didn't need so many of us any more.

We (remaining) developers were pretty much all aghast at this and our manager this morning did an admirable job of back peddling on our MD's behalf, telling us that he'd make sure our reward for good work would be something other than redundancy. I lightened the mood a little by suggesting we should get bonuses for good work - we all chuckled merrily at that.

Needless to say we're not a particularly motivated team at the moment. You know things are bad at work when Dilbert seems more like a documentary than a sounce of amusement...