Great career, awesome job, you’re fired! – how I’m doing it, and you can too…

So why one stumble.com, – whats in a name?? Why did I name this website onestumble.com – I will explain about that at the end of this blog post. 🙂

** This is about my journey, how I got to where I am today, right now, as I move through time from this point on I will still be learning, and learning is a wonderful thing to me…as I write this first post am learning, and its great!  Read my story, I will refer to it often and write many articles from it. It will be the foundation for this website.

I am a mechanical type person, I am able to dissect things, put them back together, it is easy for me to just look at things and figure out how they worked – I enjoyed doing that for as long as I can remember.

My journey started in early 90s –   I happened to meet John Galinski, (LinkedIn John Galinski).  John and I happened to strike up a conversation about computers, which I considered a serious interest of mine but only as a hobby. I didn’t realize that this computer interest of mine and this conversation with John would be the kindling that would influence the largest change in my life.  In thinking about computers now, I have been heavily interested in them since the late 70s and early 80s with the release of the TRS-80, the Apple and the Commodore Vic 20.  I could not afford to purchase the TRS-80 or the Apple –so it was the Commodore VIC-20 that got me to understand the vision, capabilities and the fun computers could deliver for you.  But, I digress, John and I finished our conversation and we went our ways – we agreed that computers were the next best great thing.

In 1992 I got a phone call from John Galinsky, John asked me if I would like a job, I reflected, “I have a job, I wasn’t employed in a job which I really loved to do, but I was working.”  I was married, had a young son and a mortgage – John asked if I would you like a job working on computers? I reflected again then said, – “well that’s really a hobby for me, how can I earn a living doing that?”  Now I’m really reflecting, “you are working at FedEx for nine years now, you have a have a pension and you are building tenure at a great company.”  I was 30 years old.  John explained to me that in our brief conversation we had years earlier, he felt that my strong interest and passion for mechanical engineering would be more than I would need to succeed.  Now i’m like, this this guy is nuts and I saying that I am crazier than he is for even considering this – heavy sigh!

Well, I took the job that John offered, it was a real risky move, I was scared, real scared – I am married, and have a young child and a mortgage.

The opportunity – John offered me a job as a network administrator at Snapple Beverage Corporation. Snapple was a new niche beverage that started in New York Citys East Village in a health food store – Snapple was going big and they were riding a wave of popularity and my opportunity was to assist and build the first computing network. 

Back to reflecting – “this sounds like an interesting job, but I don’t know anything about networks, literally – nothing.”  I just toy with computers, we at least that is what I thought I did.  Well little did I know that my mechanical engineering experience and background and the way I think is actually very well suited to putting together a network of computers.  No more reflecting – now focusing – “this is just wonderful!”   

So here I am in my first computer job, never taking one computer class in my life, know nothing about networks, know nothing about how applications work with networks and I put together this stuff  with John and stood up the first distributed computer network at Snapple Beverage Corporation ever.  We opened their first data center on Long Island, NY and put them on the map – I actually got to design Snapple’s first electronic product listing order form – well I got to say you can’t beat experience like this grassroots, entrepreneur,  ground up, building from nothing opportunity – it was wonderful!!  Thank you John! – Oh, almost forgot – I was the first registrant and admin for Snapple.com and put up the first ever Snapple Beverage Corporation home page!

Then it happened – it was late 1994 – only two years since I left my stable pension growing job – Snapple was being bought out by The Quaker Oats Company and most of us New York based staff were being laid off – Quaker was based in Chicago. 

What did I do?  I left this wonderful job, building a pension and two years later I’m laid off – no job.  I’m married, have a young son and have a mortgage – I was lost.  John was able to help procure my next job at Reuters, the international news agency based in the UK with offices all over New York City.  In February of 1997, less than two years later, I was laid off again (heavy sigh) – corporate restructuring they said.  So again, I was back to thinking I left FedEx after working there for 9 years and building a nice pension, married, have a young child and a mortgage – and in the work I have come to love to do and get paid for it (well I am trying to get paid for it at this point) and I was laid off from both of those jobs.  Looking back –  I am thinking the reasons I was laid off were not my own – let’s see, acquisition, corporate restructure, is this a pattern, this is burned into my brain.  During the rest of the 90’s I bounced around at a few different organizations doing the same type of work – learning and absorbing everything about the markets I am working in.  There was New Line Cinema, the movie company, I left there on my own, there was Muze, now known as Rovi, I left there on my own and then Mount Sinai Medical Center / NYU Hospitals – I left there on my own as well. These organizations were great but I was not happy, not fulfilled, plus I was still broken and saddened from earlier in the 90’s from the job loss experience I lived through.  It wasn’t until 2000, while I was on family vacation with my wife and now two young sons, that I received a phone call (I was actually walking through the Swiss family Robinson tree house in Disney World if anyone remembers that) on one of those huge bulky Motorola flip phones.  It was a call from Barnes & Noble booksellers offering me a position to run their customer service call center and help desk.  I had interviewed with them a few weeks earlier and thought it was a dead end.  I accepted the position as I was coming out of the tree house – they faxed the offer letter to me at the Disney resort I was staying at – wow, that felt great, I was wonderful again!  I stayed at Barnes for 7 years – after about 5 years at a great company, doing what I love to do, learning more and more and adding to my skills – I was getting bored.  Barnes is a retailer, they have tight margins, spending on technology was not big in their budget, and at the time IT was just considered expense.  So I wasn’t challenged, wasn’t learning anything new, everything was running really good and frankly I’ll waited for something happen so I have something to do, so maybe it was time to leave – but before I had the chance to leave on my own – I was laid off in 2007. Geeze – another heavy sigh – I was given the reason that the new guy who was just hired a few months earlier was making changes – bla bla bla – I kind of knew it was going to happen – but waited for it anyway. 

Corporate reasoning for layoffs – I have been through an acquisition, organization restructure and now a political reason – I am learning, at the end of the day – it’s a numbers game.

Between 2007 and 2008 there were some family personal losses that needed my attention along with the job search it took approximately 16 months to find something real when I landed at Computer Associates, Aka, CA Inc., Aka CA Technologies, but I had to suffer some more and gain one more career experience layoff at – and wouldn’t you know it – at American Home Mortgage, if you remember it was summer of 2007 the mortgage crisis hit the US economy and tore down many companies – and American Home Mortgage was bankrupt and out of business – I was there 2 weeks and you won’t see that on my linked in profile.  So I got to add one more reason to get laid off to my life experience – company bankrupt!

It was at CA technologies where I learned the most, absorbed awesome information in about working at a publicly traded software company in the high tech vertical.  I was wonderful!  This is where I really learned about the corporate political landscape and how painful it is get laid off and how painful it is to have to fire people myself, even if I did not agree.  – remember I have a life time of reasons first hand why people get laid off!  CA unofficially had an employee restructure every March, and every March for the 5 years I was there, there was a layoff, this was stressful but I made it through each one.

CA was a great place to work, I learned a lot of great things and I met a lot of great people.  In 2013 I was recruited out of CA to go to work for CBS Corporation and left on my own – a year and a half later in the fall 2014 I was laid off again – political reason – although we were all told there was changes and many positions including mine were being eliminated….more bla bla bla.  It is now November 2014 I write this blog, and put up my first website – my story may sound familiar to some people, some others might be saying, are you kidding me, what a roller coaster ride of a career, even others might be saying, maybe it’s you own fault Robert, you don’t know what you are doing, John did you a disservice offering you that job at Snapple, look at you now, no job and a horrible career experience.  Well, you the reader have your opinion and I would love to hear it.  I look at it like this – and everyone can say this, I am who I am because of the life I have lived and the experiences I was privileged to live.  My career experience and the companies I have been exposed to have driven me to take the next step in what I will do in my life for work.  I have lived through job losses and I am okay.

All the reasons: Company acquisition, Company restructures, Company Bankruptcy, Political and Role Elimination – I have learned from each and every one.

So, why am I writing this blog? – 

I want to share this experience with people in the hopes that they can compare this to their experience and realize that they’re not alone.

This experience could help someone just starting out in their career.

I want to post step by step how I put up this blog and how you can do one as well.

I like to influence and motivate others and love to listen. 

Getting through this crazy career I can’t say this hasn’t been stressful, it’s been very stressful, painful sometimes.  I look back, I had a pretty great career, I’ve worked with some amazing places, I’ve learned some great things, I met so many wonderful amazing intelligent people – you could check out my career profile at LinkedIn.com if you’re interested. 

 View Robert Cummings’s profile

OneStumble.com  – why – I was thinking one day and if you read the above you realize there’re number of times in my career experience that I was laid off and each time that happened I needed to get back in the game – in thinking about this the word stumble always can to mind – I didn’t fall, but stumbled, learned and got back in the game.  Pretty simple reason to me.

After leaving CBS, what to do – I have 20 years’ experience in technology, project management, service delivery and management and my skills are strong and experienced as a result of working in so many different vertical markets.  I’ve been so lucky to have this career experience.

In the coming posts I will cover topics such as do’s ad don’t, tactics and how to do something and share how I did everything.  I will even share how I put up my own blog, it not as easy as some say and there are many things to consider – I will post the process I took step by step.

Please take the opportunity to share your career history, ask questions, ask for advice – I hope to build relationships with you all so I can ask questions too.  

Maybe this is the beginning of a network of connected career experiences!

In the meantime I am working as a management consultant doing a business process improvement project for a retail services company.  And I am available for hire.

All in all – this is for me to share and provide information and to help others.

OneStumble.com is all about resetting, brushing yourself off and get started again, reinvent yourself, use what you know to survive, to have a career and to add value.  Enjoy what you do, enjoy your life! Be Wonderful!  It’s also about having fun, I will share popular videos, and will write commentary as I see fit – lets have fun.

I am just starting this chapter, and if my life experience tells me anything, I will find something, I will prevail and I will be successful – so will you!

I would love to hear your story.

Thanks for reading –

Robert