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The hero's journey of getting laid off

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Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#41

Post by the_af »

duxup wrote: post #8

I got laid off from a company after nearly 20 years of work there. I was very lucky to get a big company layoff type package of ~ 9 months of pay. I decided to take it as opportunity to do new things. It was still a worrying experience, had kids, family to take care of, but I chose to take that money and time and enroll in a coding boot camp and go in a new direction in life after age 40. I figured I wasn't going to…

Awesome that it worked out for you! That said, 9 months of pay as severance for 20 years of work seems a bit disappointing.

In my country it's currently one month of pay per year worked for layoffs where the employee was not at fault.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#42

Post by diob »

aetherson wrote: post #32
diob wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of folks are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, not of their own volition. I'd be fine for quite some time, heck I could probably semi retire so to speak.

The majority of which folks? People in the world? Certainly. People in history? Even more certainly. People in the United States of America? ...I mean, probably not actually a majority, but certainly lots of people in the US would have difficulty putting away months' worth of savings without really rigorous amounts of financial discipline. The majority of people who read Hacker News ? Uh. No.

It's nearly impossible for folks outside our industry (or some comparable industry in terms of pay).

Car trouble? Savings gone. Any sort of medical issue? Savings gone.

I actually think those folks are more financially disciplined than us, given they somehow make it work despite their low pay.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#43

Post by bombcar »

paulcole wrote: post #9

> Why are the smartest people in the world working on delivery food? They probably aren't. Some of them are really smart. Some of them are pretty dumb. Some are determined and hardworking. Some are lazy. Most are more or less somewhere in the middle. I don't know why anyone would assume the smartest people in the world are working on delivery food (I understand the subtext of the-smartest-people-are-choosing-to-work-…

People assume "highest paid" = "smartest" because the assumption is if you're smart you'll go where the money is.

This is not always true. And smarts/talent aren't completely interchangeable, either.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#44

Post by the_af »

efficax wrote: post #31
paulcole wrote: post #9

> Why are the smartest people in the world working on delivery food? They probably aren't. Some of them are really smart. Some of them are pretty dumb. Some are determined and hardworking. Some are lazy. Most are more or less somewhere in the middle. I don't know why anyone would assume the smartest people in the world are working on delivery food (I understand the subtext of the-smartest-people-are-choosing-to-work-…

everyone in this industry loves to think that they're surrounded by (and accordingly one of) the smartest people in the world. Sure, some people in tech are very very smart, but many, maybe most, of the smartest people in the world, don't work in tech at all (they work as researchers, in universities)

Thanks for pointing this out. It's entirely possible, even likely, that the smartest people in the world don't work in tech, or finance, or any of the topics us HN readers find dearest.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#45

Post by davidw »

You don't have to abide by everything the guy says, but I like a lot of the ideas over at https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ in terms of living frugally.

The ultimate form of freedom is being able to decide what you want to do with your time. One way of accomplishing that is making a ridiculous amount of money via a successful exit. Another way is to structure your life so that you're ok with less. Sure, I think most would prefer the 'have lots of money' option, but 1) even there it's easy to get sucked into spending more, as this article mentions, and 2) we have a lot more control over living frugally while earning well (most software engineers earn pretty good money) than we do over a wildly successful exit from a startup.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#46

Post by TameAntelope »

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #10
colechristensen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is much less of a nightmare if you're prepared for this kind of predicable eventuality. If you're living paycheck to paycheck it's a nightmare, if you've got months saved up set aside for exactly this kind of thing it's a vacation.

Some people may think of it as a vacation. I don't think most people in the world would and not even most people in technology. In my own experience, it was a sense of worthlessness that seeped into me daily. I was newly married, my wife supportive, but it was constantly between us. "How did it go today, did you find anything interesting? No - ok, no worries, I'm sure something will pop up." Deep depression and a sen…

Contrast it with my experience where my wife was 100% supportive of me taking multiple months of not working at all and not really looking to recover from my time at my previous employer.

I think you're presupposing that your experience is universal. I felt refreshed and reinvigorated when I started my new job, not panicked and depressed, because I had created for myself a solid support structure for such eventualities (financially and socially).

I would argue that the real key here is preparation; if you can set yourself up not to be harmed by something like a lay off, you will be much more likely to go through it in a positive way than if you leave it up to fate to decide how and when you experience such a potentially negative event.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#47

Post by MerelyMortal »

bombcar wrote: post #30
willcipriano wrote: post #24

Any tips for being the guy who gets laid off? I'd like to have an excuse to take a few months break but when layoffs happen they never pick me.

Slowly reduce your output relative to others. Stop picking up extra work just because you can do it. Start working less hard (spend a few hours a day on hacker news, for example). Sadly, the above often results in more promotions and being considered more important, for some reason. I can't explain it.

Maybe 'They're so busy, they can't do it any faster / can't take on any more work.' ?

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#48

Post by aetherson »

diob wrote: post #42
aetherson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of which folks? People in the world? Certainly. People in history? Even more certainly. People in the United States of America? ...I mean, probably not actually a majority, but certainly lots of people in the US would have difficulty putting away months' worth of savings without really rigorous amounts of financial discipline. The majority of people who read Hacker News ? Uh. No.

It's nearly impossible for folks outside our industry (or some comparable industry in terms of pay). Car trouble? Savings gone. Any sort of medical issue? Savings gone. I actually think those folks are more financially disciplined than us, given they somehow make it work despite their low pay.

Median household income in the US is about $67k, and of course median cost of living the US is much lower than in the SF Bay area. It is thoroughly possible to put away enough money to pay for car troubles or many kinds of medical problems without superhuman financial discipline for most households in the US.

Now:

1. Is there a substantial minority who genuinely can only really live hand-to-mouth in the US? Yes.

2. Is it obviously much easier for those of us who have tech-job incomes to put away substantial savings than it is for the median family? Also yes.

3. Am I personally some kind of paragon of financial discipline? No.

4. Is it understandable why many people live closer to paycheck-to-paycheck than they could? Yes.

But I don't think that hyperbole serves anyone here.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#49

Post by cm2012 »

duxup wrote: post #8

I got laid off from a company after nearly 20 years of work there. I was very lucky to get a big company layoff type package of ~ 9 months of pay. I decided to take it as opportunity to do new things. It was still a worrying experience, had kids, family to take care of, but I chose to take that money and time and enroll in a coding boot camp and go in a new direction in life after age 40. I figured I wasn't going to…

Similar story here. I was laid off after 4 years with a company, got 3 months severance. I used it to try freelancing while looking for full time jobs - it ended out working out really well and I am more fulfilled and make much more money now. I wouldn't have taken the leap without the layoff.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#50

Post by cardanome »

Never do anything your love for money. If you are intrinsically motivated to do something bringing external factors like money into it might ruin you motivation and love for the thing you had. High chance of burn out.

Find work that has great synergy with your hobbies/interest but is not exactly the same. Either requiring similar skill or being the the same or related field. That way they will fuel each other.

And most importantly, don't try to find meaning in your work (except maybe if you work in non-market driven employments like education/health care but sill beware). That is something a simple farmer that directly interacts with his produce might have experienced but modern capitalism it way too alienating for that to work. Most of the time you wont be even able to tell if you individual output makes any difference and if so for better for worse.

Find meaning outside work.

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