Lennart John Holmquist

Previous Page         Next Page

2000 - Sunrise

Len was out of work for some time, and so took advantage of the unemployment insurance he had, insurance required of all workers by by the Swiss government.

Some months later he was hired by Sunrise, a Swiss telecommunications company in a suburb of Bern named Bümplitz as a team manager.

This job lasted a shorter time than did Autodesk, but his time it was not a political move, directed at Len, but the result of politics between two managers. Len was simply collateral damage. Seems that Len's manager, who was based in Zurich, assigned Len to manage a team in Bümplitz without first getting the approval of the manager of the Bümplitz Sunrise site. That manager thought that the Zurich manager was enrouching on his territory. He blocked the action of the Zurich manager.

The Bümplitz manager, realizing that Len no longer had his position within the department said that he would find something else for him to do. Len declined the offer. Len thought that working as an individual contributor, so-to-speak, in a Swiss company where all the employees around him spoke Swiss-German throughout the day, was not a career-advancing role to have. Being a manager was on thing, this was another.

Len's Zurich manager met with him one day and apologized for the situation. Len arrange with him that Len would be kept on in the company for three months while he looked for work. Len was assigned to do research into alternate revenue streams for the company, and he did a bit of editing on the English section of the company's website.

Earthwander

Len needed work, but finding an English-speaking job in foreign county was difficult. So, he taught himself hyper-text markup language (html) and created a travel website, EuroTraveler.biz, in hopes of the website bringing in money. However, travel websites are only successful (and most of them are not) if they have a lot of 'traffic'. But Len's website never became large enough to draw the needed traffic.

EuroTraveler.biz

Len took an online Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) class, earning a certificate.

2004 - The Balkan School of Language

Len found a job working part-time as a Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) teacher for The Balkan School of Languages in Neuchatel starting on 4 November 2004. (See Balkin contract). Sometimes Len taught in the school itself or drove or took the train to other towns to teach in companies, one being Philip Morris, where he taught a group of four or five students. He taught at Philip Morris with mixed feelings. One of the products of Philip Morris was tobacco, a very unhealthy substance. He took the job because the family needed the money, and Jill felt his reluctance to take a job for ethical reasons was not a legitmate reason considering their financial situation. Interestingly, the four of five students he taught did not seem too excited about working at Philip Morris either, probably for the same reason, Len guessed.

Len also taught at the engineering company of ETEL S.A. just outside the small picturesque town of Môtiers, which in the 1700s was the home of the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The train ride to ETEL took about half an hour through the beautiful Swiss countryside. ETEL made many products including parts used in space travel.

Jill during these years first worked for a company in Neuchatel, and the for Philip Morris in Lausanne, taking the train ever work day to and from the cities and a bus ride within each city.

Leaving Switzerland

Len and Jill continued on, Len working part-time teaching English and Jill at Philip Morris. However, it was not an ideal situation. Money was tight. Stress was high. Jill wanted to return to the States and buy a home. Len wanted to stay in Switzerland. He thought he'd be able find full-time work in time. But the pressure was too great. They were leaving.

Neuchâtel was probably the nicest place Len and Jill had ever lived. On the shores of Lake Neuchâtel, the alps lined the horizon like dragon teeth. A few minutes walk away ferries docked and sailed for Lake Neuchâtel ports and through canals, two other lakes. The architecture in the center of town was Swiss French in design dating from the 1600s to the 1900s. A castle and a cathedral sat atop a nearby summit. Local restaurants placed their tables on the cobblestones outside their doors. Musicians played in the streets. Local museums displayed art and artifacts. Visits to the family's good friends were minutes away by foot. During winter tobogganing and skiing was fifteen minutes drive up the mountain the foot of which Neuchâtel rested. Coffee shops with names like Boulangerie Knecht and Mediterranean were nearby where Len enjoyed his morning cup or bowl of coffee and a croissant.

Port Neuchâtel, Switzerland: 2005

Living and working in Switzerland was a dream that Len feared would not last. It didn't. Laid off from two companies, Autodesk and Sunrise followed by teaching English part time at the Balkin School of English. The latter did not bring in enough money despite Jill working full time in Neuchâtel and later Lausanne. Work would be easier to find in the USA.

However, they were still under contract for the rental of their apartment and 3 Place des Halles.They had to find a renter. Len wrote some text about the apartment and together with photos, put it all up on his EuroTraveler.com website:

Apartment at Places des Halles 3

After finding a renter, they sold or gave away household items.

2005: Moving Sale, 3 Place des Halles, Neuchatel, Switzerland

They hired a moving company to pack up their remaining belongs. Len's brother Carey drove down from his home in Germany, along with co-workers, helped Len get all of the family's other belongings that had been stored in a barn in a village in the Val de Rue.

2005 - North Carolina

Move to Chapel Hill, NC

Where to move in the USA was the question. Trying to move back to the San Francisco Bay area would be difficult. Cost of living was expensive. After some research and road trips they moved to North Carolina where they would be closer to Jill's brother and his family in Connecticut. They bought a wood frame 'bungalow' house with a lot of charm, built in 1922, at 1 Cobb Terrace.

Kristofer started school at Culbreth Middle School.

Len worked as a technical writer starting at Productivity Point and followed by Lenovo, Fidelity Investments and Cisco Systems.

2009 Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, an American multinational technology conmpany that develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, telecommunications equipment, brought Len on as a 'technical writer' contractor for the department Global Government Solutions Group (GGSG). Though he worked at Cisco he was an employee of a contracting company called Insight Global who paid his salary, but otherwise Insight Global had very little interaction with him for the six or seven years Len was with Insight Global. Though his title labeled him as a technical writer, he did much more technical editing on already existing documents. The exception to this was documents for new Cisco business, mobile data centers.

In 2016 Len's contract with Cisco was ended, and a fellow technical writer, Catherine Willis, a Cisco employee (not a contractor) was laid off. This was part of a cost-cutting and employee/contractor reduction at Cisco. The department in which both worked (GGSG) was required by upper management to reduce staff. Management at GGSG felt the department was more in need of engineers than technical writers. Later Len heard from a co-worker Tony, that GGSG's documents suffered as a result.

For the next six months Len searched for work online and sent out resumes to many contract companies and coporations. He had a few job interviews that did not work out. However, in 2017 he was rehired back to Cisco in a different department, Cisco Cloud Services (CCS), this time through the company Bay Area Techworkers. That job lasted until August 2017 after which he was hired on 30 August by another contract company called Teksystems, again to work at Cisco in another department as a technical writer, but again his work was mostly editing of documents.

Previous Page         Next Page

Footnotes