Good bye

Not sure any words or condolences make an announcement like this any less painful. Families and friends are directly impacted in a negative way when you hear about news like this and I consider all of you as friends and extended family members. I don't even want to think about the anger and disappointment everyone feels over there. To say I am shocked and confused is an understatement.

Playing a blame game of what went wrong and where did it go wrong leaves me with no answers or directions. Its easy to blame it on the current Economy of the USA, and perhaps I have been somewhat blinded by the fact it has not already hit our company. I assumed this was hitting companies much bigger than ourselves that may have been overstaffed to start with. Thinking it was more manufacturing based than educational based. Did not correlate the massive amounts of home forclosures tied to taxes which support the educational world. (90% comes from state taxes). Did not think about the companies and how they pay taxes on profits. Once again, companies all downsizing as there are no profits, hence no taxes paid by companies either. Here is a local story I found online today as well. http://www.waow.com/Global/Story.asp?S=9442775 I heard more about things like this on the news last night. (Keep in mind Wisconsin is only 1 state among many we are infiltrated with). Seems like every night I turn on the news, there is a new local company cutting jobs. Listen to the radio and massive layoffs for other companies forcasting billion dollar losses. Shutting down stores, factories.

I hope our time together would be classified as one of the best experiences in our lives. I hope we have allowed you to become better programmers than when you first started based on the programs you have developed. I hope Suresh and myself will be remembered as one of the best managers you have ever had the ability to work for. Perhaps this is not true with the most recent of events, but I am SO PROUD of the work you have done. As a team, you guys have shown so much growth thru our time together.

Anil, you have been a rock on this team with your programming practices and delivery builds. I think your fundamentals have improved greatly as well as your ability to take complex concepts and ideas (Program Selection on CMT, SystemInfo.dll, Object Oriented Class level project builds) and bring them to life. There is no doubt in my mind that you will go on to bigger and better things in the programming world. You have what it takes to be a great programmer in this world.

Its hard to talk about success when external factors force our working relationships to be closed and terminated. I will never consider the time we spent working together anything less than professional, productive and honorable. I was lucky to be able to work with a staff as great as what you have been. I really do hope you stay in touch and keep me up to date on personal as well as professional experiences in your lives. This is a sad day for Renaissance Learning and one I never want to be part of again. Several at RLI home offices have also been let go and over the next few months, more could happen. Its a scary time that nobody wants any part of. I hear from my grandparents about the Great Depression and how bad it was. Its a different time now, yet watching so many people lose their jobs, even outside of RLI and surrounding communities makes me fear that it will be a long and difficult journey back to where we need to be. I just hope we remember what it took to get us there and all the people that were sacrificed in the process.

Anil, if you ever need a reference, don't be afraid to email me. Currently I check my work email more often than my personal one, but as we have seen, things can change way to quick. So stay in touch to both accounts.

Thank you for everything you have developed for us as its been more than I could have asked for.