in, out, in, out. Shake it all about....

[boring work talk]

We've got a big announcement at work tomorrow.

Maybe you need a bit of history. The company that I used to work for 'outsourced' its IT department a couple of years ago. The idea is that this enables them to get rid of a lot of fixed cost and gives them access to skills and expertise that will enable them to deliver things they could never have managed on their own. As part of the deal, I moved from the one company to the other. You don't actually have any choice in the matter: if your role is moved, you either accept the change in circumstances or you are deemed to have resigned. Actually I wasn't too bothered. I was leaving the IT department of a retailer and going into a proper IT company. In theory there ought to be greater opportunities for me to develop my career.

The outsource has been difficult for all parties (I'm sure most of them are), and there has been talk for some time now that there would be a renegotiation of the terms of the outsource agreement. This speculation became reality a few weeks ago and the serious negotiation began. The announcement tomorrow is to tell everyone what has been decided.

WhatEVAH.

The thing is that the renegotiated contract is likely to see some of the roles that were outsourced a couple of years ago being taken back in-house, and the people with them....

Hmmm.

Initially I was only invited to a company-wide briefing for 2pm on Thursday. The point of this meeting would be to let us all know what was going on. Great. I've been getting bored of all the speculation and it would be good to finally know. I wasn't too worried: my gut feeling was that I would probably be okay and would stay where I was, which on balance I thought was a good thing. I figured that the people who would be personally affected by the change would have to be briefed earlier in the day than that and certainly before everyone else was told. I hadn't been invited to any other briefings, so I got on with my day.

....and then this evening I got an email telling me to make sure I attended a briefing at 09:30 tomorrow morning to discuss the future of my role. This is an almost certain sign that I am in scope for a move back to where I was two years ago.

I'll wait to see what they say, but at the moment I'm not too thrilled at the prospect. I feel a little bit like Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower and realising that the last two years had all been a dream....

**sigh**

[/boring work talk]