Notices by Kevin P. Fleming (kevin@mastodon.km6g.us)

In case you haven't heard, Red Hat is laying off people today, and I'm one of them. My 'career' as a Hatter lasted just over 15 months, much less time than I had planned or expected.

Many of you know me well, and know that I have extensive background in open source software, project management, open source business, and lots of related activities. If you're aware of any opportunities which may be of interest, feel free to send them my way via any channel you like.

Boosts much appreciated, of course, and thanks in advance!

#FediHire

Also, in case anyone hasn't noticed, this is exactly on-point for what is happening all over the tech industry. Red Hat had a pretty good Q1, IBM had a decent Q1, IBM generated US$1.3B in *free cash flow* (discretionary cash after all operating and capital expenses), but the method they chose to realign their investments in products and technologies is by reducing the workforce (which was already barebones in many places).

In fact I'll take this a step further with some math:

Let's assume the published number of terminated employees is 800. Let's also assume that they get paid US$225,000 per year (very high average estimate), and that Red Hat's overhead per employee is 40%.

That's US$315,000 per year per person, times 800 people that's US$252M per year. IBM (of which RH is a significant chunk) produces that much free cash flow in *three weeks*.

There is no way that terminating all of these people is going to free up so much cash to invest in strategic projects that it can be worth the harm caused to 800 people and their families, and the knowledge loss in the organization, and the attrition that will follow as the remaining people get even more burned out.

Inspired by @ehashman I will also occasionally post food pictures here.

This was last weekend's shrimp curry (without the use of curry powder/blends) over rice with toasted coconut. Naan was store bought, I ran out of time to attempt my own... this time.

After making curry from scratch I now understand why Indian kitchens have such a large quantity and variety of spices.