Tuesday 18 November 2008

Closing down. Everything must go.

Anyone want to buy a small, cute software development team? One previous careful owner. House-trained (mostly).

There's a direct connection between bankers in the US having a little private disaster party and the job security of the rest of the world. The ripples are moving gradually further out, and sadly the writing's now one the wall for my development team in Cambridge, UK. It's a real shame, but largely unavoidable: when you make consumer products, and distributers are not buying any stock at Christmas time, or can't get credit to do so, then you have a problem. And there aren't many solutions.

So our office will almost certainly close its doors for the last time in a few days.

Personally, it's a shame. It's not often you get to work on something you are genuinely passionate about. It's not often you are able to construct something truly excellent from scratch, to work on an excellent codebase, fully unit tested from the start, and to do so with a team of excellent programmers who you're happy to meet in the pub as much as the work place. It's a shame that the economic conditions will consign our codebase and products to a very small chapter of history. Plans for world domination have been put on hold.

Still, onwards. To new challenges. The first of which will be finding a job. I'm going to have to buy some shoes...

2 comments:

Paul Grenyer said...

What can I say Pete? My thoughts are with you and let me know if there is anything I can do to help (bar shoe shopping of course!).

Pete Goodliffe said...

Thanks, Paul.

I'm not the first person this has happened to, and I'm surely not the last...