Looking back, Vincent Laganella is amazed they managed to stay together.
A year ago, while he and 13 co-workers, all of whom had just been laid off from Home Account Networks Inc., were throwing back beers at a local bar at three in the afternoon, an idea began to germinate on how the close-knit group of computer programmers could continue working together.
They hardly expected that the plan ultimately would include auctioning themselves off as a group for hire through eBay Inc. and weighing an offer from Alltel Information Systems, the bank processing division of Alltel Corp.
The programming team, located in Charleston, S.C., was among the 25 employees, or about 20% of the staff, laid off by Home Account, which eventually was bought by Intelidata Technologies Inc. of Reston, Va.
The way Mr. Laganella, who had been a software release manager at Home Account, remembers that day: I walked into work, and things just seemed wrong. All the servers were shut down, and people were just milling about. I could tell something was afoot.
Over the years the group had worked effectively as a team, and one of the most disheartening aspects of the layoff was the prospect of splitting up, he said.
We didnt just want to get scooped up by different companies and get separated and relocated, said Mr. Laganella, 32. The group included mostly senior programmers and software developers. Our team had gelled, he said.
Their solution was to market themselves to another employer that would hire them collectively. Upping the already sizable ante, they stipulated that a prospective employer also keep them in Charleston. They decided that if no offers materialized after three weeks, the members of the team would strike out on their own.
The networking began in earnest. An in a stroke of public-relations inspiration the group advertised itself for $1 million on eBay and drew considerable attention, including a write-up in a major business publication.
It was very exciting from a PR standpoint, said Worth Ketchem, 48, who had been a client service manager at Home Account. We contacted anyone we thought could help us. There was lots of activity each day, burning the phone lines up.
Three weeks came and went with no definitive offers. But the unit was in discussions with two prospective employers: Enterprise Engineering Inc., a New York Internet banking firm, and Alltel, of Little Rock.
After a short bidding war the group was hired by Alltel, which met its demands to hire all of its members and keep them in Charleston. We listened over the speaker phone as a group, and then each member picked up the cordless phone and got an offer and our employment letters by e-mail that night, Mr. Laganella said.
The group, which had stuck together a week longer than it had pledged, celebrated its first anniversary at Alltel on May 31. In the past the members have worked on developing IFX technology for the bank-owned electronic bill payment and presentment consortium Spectrum LLC, which they plan to complete this month.
The programmers turned out to be early trendsetters, as a growing number of people are marketing themselves to prospective employers in groups.
Kevin Pursglove, an eBay spokesman, said other groups have peddled their collective services over eBay, including a Nascar pit team. To accommodate the increase in such auctions, eBay added a professional services category to its Web site five months ago, he said.
But for some of the members of the former Home Account team, the group process was nerve-wracking. Several had mortgages to pay and kids to feed and no guarantee we would be able to land the job for the group, Mr. Laganella said. Its hard enough to get people to do stuff when you are paying them. When you dont even have a paycheck, there is just desire and teamwork.
Their efforts paid off. Mr. Ketchem, now a standards and procedures analyst at Alltel, said he is pleased that the group can work in a familiar environment on exciting projects.
Mr. Laganella said the stability of working in a large corporation like Alltel, which has 26,000 employees, also has its appeal. A lot of dot-com people have been hopping from company to company as they start up and fold, and that doesnt look good from a career perspective.
Alltel is a nice marriage between being fast and nimble like an Internet company and having the resources of Fortune 500 company, he said. I was afraid we would just get absorbed into it and lose our own identity, but I found we have been able to maintain our own individuality and influence.
Rob Roedel, a spokesman for Alltel Information Services, said it has benefited by being able to hire a complete programming team that was familiar with Internet banking and had proven experience in working effectively with one another.
On May 2, Alltel plucked resources from another ailing online company. It acquired 30 financial relationship management support employees and technology from Xpede Inc., an Oakland, Calif., online mortgage firm.
