What led to my lay-off part 1

I'm going to spend a couple of blogs discussing the events that led to my layoff. Maybe it will clue you into some of the "red flags" that I missed.

First, let me start by saying that I think General Electric is a great company. There is a reason that every year magazines like Forbes and Fortune call it the most admired company in the world. The division I worked for was Healthcare Financial Services. If you work your way down the GE ladder, it goes like this: GE Corporation -> GE Capital -> GE Commercial Finance -> HFS. Even though HFS was three rungs down the GE food chain, if we were an independent company, we still would have been a Fortune 200 business.

In the leasing business, you make money two ways -- the small amount of interest you make during the lease and the big chunk you make at the end when a customer buys the equipment or returns it and you sell it to someone else. Anyone who has ever leased a car understands what happens at the end of the lease, and it's no different for a $1.5 million MR system.

In 2005, we were a $140 million net income business. At our forecasted rate of growth, the expectation was that we would be a $200 million net income business by 2008. These were the glory days. Lots of expensive parties, celebration trips, team outings -- we were on top of the world. Ever watch The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Enron Story? It felt like that -- there was no ceiling, no end in sight to how much money we could make.

I'll continue the story and how The Perfect Storm formed in a later blog. In the meanwhile, today's drawing.