I did ask my friend. She hadn't heard anything about this hire. A large firm that does something similar to what we do closed a division at the end of last year. We hired several of their employees. This guy is also from that company. I don't understand why they wouldn't have reached out to him months ago when they knew they had this big project coming up (except that they tend to just fly by the seat of their pants).

I'm also starting to get sort of paranoid because they've given me this big systems project but I think they are under the impression that I am going to do the work myself - which is just kind of nuts. It's not something you'd have inhouse IT doing or a contractor who didn't specialize in that exact thing. I think they have no idea what the scope of the project is. So in two weeks when I present a report, there may be some disappointment.

I can't believe your company treats external execs (never mind their own employees) to three hours of demos with no seats. That's shoddy! I can't think of any technical conference or presentation I've been to that's done that. That's not normal and I'm surprised that no one asked for a seat- or that no one thought it might make a good impression to make sure the guests were comfortable.

I get the back and forth. I don't want to be doing this work but I am so wiped out from it (still) that I have not been developing a back up plan. Some days I think that I can do this for a year or two and save some money. Other days, like Monday, I realize that this is short term and I need to start aggressively preparing for the end. It's just weird to think that the decision for it to be short term may come from their end rather than mine.