An easy question to ask is who is to blame for all of this? Sadly, the answer isn’t who, it’s what. And you already know the answer to that question because you’re hearing the same doom and gloom that we are regarding the massive layoffs and wild swings in stock prices. It’s the economy’s fault and unfortunately it caught up with us as well.

Ironically, last year was the best year the company ever experienced and it was continuing to grow at rapid, double digit rates. When the bottom fell out, it obviously hurt some of our clients. It also hurt our potential clients. When they hurt, they spend less money with us and new prospects take longer to sign contracts. That made it hard to afford the people we hired to staff for new business.

If there is any silver lining to this, and trust me when I tell you that it’s difficult to be positive on a day like this, it’s the fact that we have an equally smart and hard working group of people who are sticking around to be able to meet existing client needs. To that end, I’m confident that things will get better and when they do, we will be stronger than ever. But we have some pain to endure before we get to that place. And until that time, we will quietly mourn the departure of those smart, hard working colleagues that we had to let go of today.