ProQuest, Adieu?

Dear ProQuest friends and colleagues:

Introduction
As you’ve probably heard, I was abruptly laid-off, on Monday, January 22, 2024.  The reasons given were entirely financial; it sounds as though Clarivate wants to move money into “new” projects of some sort.  My best guess is that, after 13 years, I was probably one of the higher-paid staff on the PQIS OneSearch terms… and thus ripe for ‘plucking’ by some bean-counter who, as others have put it, “manages by spreadsheet”.  I also wonder if my age (68) was a factor, since retirement in some form was not too far off (2025?).

I was offered a substantial severance package, although deep in the fine print is a condition that I will not sue Clarivate. I’ll probably take it — but if I were 10 years younger, I might think differently.

How am I?
First of all, thank you so much to all the people who immediately messaged or emailed me, in shock, and with sympathy and empathy.  That means the world to me.

I’m in shock and pain right now… but I know the way forward, and I have lots of friends and help, professional and otherwise.  Financially, in the worst case, I could retire, and while things will be tight, we’ll be OK.  I was hoping to keep working for a while, or even reduce to half-time.  And there are many possibilities for such, that I am just starting to investigate.  (One or two of them are actually at ProQuest, which would be ironic in the extreme.  But I’m not counting any chickens…)

Really, the worst part is I miss my daily purpose, and all of you!  I’m a flaming extrovert (no surprise to those who worked with me in person), and I need people to be around, to work with, to bond with.  I’m proud of what ProQuest has accomplished, and I’m proud to have been part of making scholarship more and more available the world ’round.  To me, ProQuest’s finest hour was when we made all of the COVID research available to anyone in the world, for free.  I was proud to be part of building the “openlayer” that made that possible.

Saying Goodbye, properly
My wife, Barb McRae, was a pastor (Presbyterian Church USA) for many years (and a chaplain now).  She has done many christenings, weddings, and funerals… and her great gift is to be able to truly “tell the story” of each person or couple.  In that vein, she taught me many years ago that “how we say goodbye, is just as important as how we say hello”.

So I’m not going to just disappear.  At some point (it may be months) there will be party (not a wake!) that you’ll all be invited to.  And we will have fun, and not complaints.  I am also looking into delivering a “last Brown-bag” at ProQuest, to talk about how we deal with people, and how we deal with code, and how they are often similar. 🙂

A Huge Favor
Finally, there is a huge favor I would ask of all of you.  Some of us are assembling a protest/petition letter to Clarivate management, explaining

1. How this decision negatively impacts the bottom line for the continued delivery, maintenance, improvements, and knowledge transfer for the (very profitable!) proquest.com search engine.
2. That there are many options that could be explored.  (Hells bells, I offered to Jim to come work for free 1/4 time, continuing my knowledge transfer — most of you know how I love to write! — while giving me the purpose and people I need.)

Part of that missive would include short testimonials by people who worked with me, learned from me, or were otherwise positively impacted by my writings and talks.  E.g. a few (or many!) paragraphs about how I was helpful, what you learned, any way in which your own work was improved.  The more specific, the better.

If you’re willing to do that, feel free to throw something together, and either post it here, or send it to me (croth@thedance.net) via email.

I do not have any illusions about the chances that this will make a difference in my situation.  But as they say, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”.  But even more importantly, I think upper management needs to hear from you, all of you, about any and all decisions they are making that you believe are bad for the company.  As the saying goes, “Silence = Death”.  And calm, specific feedback that focuses on how such decisions hurt the bottom line, are the most effective.  (Yelling at management tends to be easily dismissed, as I’ve learned from my own experience, years back.)

Closing thoughts:

1. Please pass this page around to anyone who knew me.  The more, the merrier.
2. Feel free to post questions, thoughts, rants, whatever, here.  I will respond as appropriate.  (Your email address will not be visible to the public or other commenters.)
3. Also feel free to explore the rest of this blog.  I don’t blog a lot (most of my writing is under the “Charles Roth Bibliography” in ProQuest Confluence!), but there are some things of interest here — perhaps notably my course on (of course!) unit-testing.
4. And if you haven’t already seen my Green Lantern JUnit Oath, take a look.  It made Kent Beck (the creator of JUnit) laugh until he cried.