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Ask HN: What's a "normal" amount of Layoffs to occur in one's career?

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Re: Ask HN: What's a "normal" amount of Layoffs to occur in one's career?

#11

Post by cgb223 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #6

Myself I've had three jobs that lasted more than a year and one of those was a "layoff" where the organization was facing an internal crisis, the other one I left because I felt unheard and a startup was going to pay me almost 2x what I was making to work on the kind of stuff I was doing side projects of. I spent some time working as a consultant and also pitching an idea for an intelligent data transformation system…

I appreciate the empathy and the context. It definitely helps.

> I spent some time working as a consultant

Did you consult on your own or work with a company? If you were on your own, how did you find clients? I've got a business entity ready to go and am heading to meetups to try and network. What else should I be doing?

Re: Ask HN: What's a "normal" amount of Layoffs to occur in one's career?

#13

Post by shinryuu »

cgb223 wrote: post #10
DamonHD wrote: post #2

I was a consultant so was ready to be canned at a day's notice anytime, though only a fewf times got pushed in decades. And IIRC each time (other than one, which was mutual) that that happened the client tried to change its mind and have me back, but I was already sorted with something new. So IMHO it's often random and irrational, thus you shouldn't read too much into your experience, nor generally into apparent clu…

> I was a consultant so was ready While I'm enduring this current layoff I'm thinking about consulting for local businesses in my town. Any tips on how to get this off the ground? I've got the business entity set up and I'm going to meetups to try and network. What else should I be doing to land my first clients?

When a company has a job ad they advertise they have a need. You can sell your services to them as a consultant based on that job ad.

Re: Ask HN: What's a "normal" amount of Layoffs to occur in one's career?

#14

Post by CM30 »

To be honest, I don't think there is a 'normal' amount of layoffs. It depends how well run the companies you work for are, and how unlucky you/they are when it comes to societal trends as a whole.

For example, I experienced layoffs from my last two roles, simply because the companies in question got affected by Covid. One had a lot of clients in the events industry, so had to layoff 90% of their staff when the lockdowns occurred, and the other bet the farm on the pandemic era rise in users lasting past the world reopening (which it didn't).

So I don't think someone getting laid off 3 times in two years is that out of the ordinary. Feels like you just got really unlucky with the companies that hired you, which is gonna to happen to at least a percentage of the population.

If it turned out they got fired for poor behaviour/incompetence at every company they worked in that would be a red flag, but just working for incompetent/failing companies isn't really a red flag in itself.

Re: Ask HN: What's a "normal" amount of Layoffs to occur in one's career?

#15

Post by DamonHD »

shinryuu wrote: post #13
cgb223 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was a consultant so was ready While I'm enduring this current layoff I'm thinking about consulting for local businesses in my town. Any tips on how to get this off the ground? I've got the business entity set up and I'm going to meetups to try and network. What else should I be doing to land my first clients?

When a company has a job ad they advertise they have a need. You can sell your services to them as a consultant based on that job ad.

That has indeed been one successful tactic.
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