At work, I sit in a somewhat secluded area of the floor. I have no one to my right or left. There are two desk behind me but no one sits at them. I use these desks to store extra crap I don’t have space for.
Last week, our production coordinator came over to my area and looked at the two desks behind me. She asked if the bag on one of the desks was mine. I said yes and she told me I’d have to move it because a new engineer was coming to work on our team. Boo! I mean, yay, new team members means less work for everyone.
Anyways, I begrudgingly moved my bag back over to my area. IT came over the next day and set up the new guy’s computer and associated equipment. I found out that new guy was going to start this Monday. On Friday, just before the start of the weekend, I overheard my manager talking to another one of our engineers. It turns out the new guy had a change of heart and bailed on us. After accepting our offer, he changed his mind and took an offer from Blizzard. Is changing your mind after accepting an offer slightly bad form? For sure, but when you consider his other offer was from Blizzard, then it’s somewhat understandable. It’s almost guaranteed his pay will be higher and of course, in US dollars. If you’re into games, then Blizzard is a pretty cool company to work for.
So tomorrow, no one will be at the desk behind me. This does not, however, eliminate the business need for more engineers on our team. We will still need to hire someone and that new person will eventually wind up sitting behind me.