What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

My life seemed perfect during the summer of 2000. I had a great job, a great relationship, I was painting, I was selling paintings, I was writing. Life was good. I think we all go through these good times without knowing. I too did not know, how good I had it.

After the acquisitions, the crazy NY client project with the crazy unruly HC team, I could not see past all this noise to realize how good I had it all this time.

One day my technical lead walks into my cubicle and asks me to come to his room. Go figure, as the project manager I did not have a room to myself but my tech lead did. Also strange was the fact that my tech lead was my manager because I was a senior engineer in the SAPE corporation and he was the head of the tech team but I also was the project manager so I was supposed to be his boss too. Are you getting a headache yet? No wonder SC fucked up so bad eventually, how can a company be run with these circular hierarchies??

Anyhow, I get asked into his room and he starts to tell me about this new initiative SAPE has kicked off. They are planning to take several HC employees from the Austin office and relocate them to New York City offices. This was being done in an effort to transfer the rich media expertise we had in such abundance to the New York City offices that were in need of these capabilities. It all sounded great but I failed to see the connection between all this and myself. My life was already consumed by my ever-so-slowly tanking project, I could not see past it or think that there could be something else for me to do other than run this project.

And sooner than you know, it is taken away from you; the innocence is lost. With that one sentence he said to me, it was taken away from me, even before I agreed to it openly. He said that it did not matter if I was currently assigned to a project as a project manager, I still could be relocated to NY and also get to do what I liked doing --technology.

It seemed tempting, it seemed like the right thing to do, it also frightened me. I have never been the one to take plunges into major changes in my life. So to some point I was completely terrified and partially in a state of denial. Over the course of the next two weeks after much consideration, a prolonged over-analysis, and consultations with my partner, my parents, my best friends the writing was on the wall. I had to go; it really was not much of a choice.

The Austin office was being sized down, it was obviously we all could be laid off any minute now. The pressure of the possible future layoffs, the tanking morale was taking its toll and working at the Austin offices was becoming a pain. In the middle of all of this corporate drama, I was a foreigner who was on a H1-B visa which means I am allowed by the INS to work for a company for a specific period of time.

An H-1B worker can not work for anyone else other than the approved sponsor company. He can not have any others sources of income in the US. He also is approved for employment for a maximum of 6 years of employment in the US after which he has to leave for a complete year and stay out of the US for this period of time. After this leave of absence, he may return to the US for another six years of the same type of visa. Complete bullshit if you ask me. It never made sense to me, and I think it never will.

So the NY office presented the chance to stay longer with SC and created a chance that they might get me a green card eventually.

So the choice was made. I was moving to New York City...