It's nice to see this old thread again
BTW, Cheese -- the company I work for sells lots of our industrial pumps to Flowserve.
My position has not changed. But it appears that 2008 will bring major changes to our company, because of corporate level changes to improve the stocks. They are going to merge (although they will not use the term "merge" instead they say they are leveraging synchronicity and integrating product lines) what were independantly run companies within the corporation into "product groups". The corporation which owns all the different sub companies is a Fortune 500 level corporation.
Basically many of my long term co-workers in management type jobs will probably be gone this year. They will be termed "low hanging fruit". So anyone with duplicate jobs at companies within the new product group will be gone -- no need for CEOs, CFOs, IT Directors, Comptrollers, Controllers, VPs of Sales / Marketing / Operations when there are the same positions are now located at the new product group level. I'm so glad I did not move up to IT Director the times I was asked!
But if it eventually does get down to my level in the hunt for low hanging fruit, I'll be looking for a job out in the southwest where the weather is much dryer
