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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

#101

Post by [deleted] »

TameAntelope wrote: post #46
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eventualiti…

[deleted]

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#102

Post by tra3 »

GiorgioG wrote: post #95
tra3 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to become a consultant. Any suggestions on how to do it? I feel like consulting a skill set different from being a developer. I think some folks fall into it, but I certainly haven't been able to.

> I feel like consulting a skill set different from being a developer. Not really, "consultant" is just another word for contractor. Almost 20 years ago the company I worked for did a round of layoffs that did not affect me. But it got me thinking and I started looking around and decided to try contracting. It was just like being employed except the term was set (6 months) and the money was much better than being emp…

> Not really, "consultant" is just another word for contractor.

The difference between consultant and contractor in my neck of the woods, is that consultants have multiple clients where as a contractor is basically an employee-employer relationship, simply structured in a different way.

I believe the grandparent was specifically referring to an arrangement where you have more than one customer ("employer", if you will) to mitigate the risk of getting laid off.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#103

Post by dvngnt_ »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #63
UncleOxidant wrote: post #58

Over the coming months, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands will be laid off. This event will be the call to adventure for those that were disillusioned but hadn’t considered changing their professions. (Or even just changing their job/company within the same profession.) The layoffs in tech have started. It won't be as bad as the 2001-2004 dot com debacle. Possibly not as bad as the 2008-2012 period was (which wasn'…

I suspect it will be much, much worse, for USAians anyway. So many companies have now moved almost fully remote and are looking at their payroll thinking - "Why am I paying an American dev $100,000+ when I can pay a European $50,000, or someone from the developing world $25,000?" Great for devs in the rest of the world of course.

outsourcing isn't new. it just doesn't work often requiring rework

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#104

Post by Salgat »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #63
UncleOxidant wrote: post #58

Over the coming months, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands will be laid off. This event will be the call to adventure for those that were disillusioned but hadn’t considered changing their professions. (Or even just changing their job/company within the same profession.) The layoffs in tech have started. It won't be as bad as the 2001-2004 dot com debacle. Possibly not as bad as the 2008-2012 period was (which wasn'…

I suspect it will be much, much worse, for USAians anyway. So many companies have now moved almost fully remote and are looking at their payroll thinking - "Why am I paying an American dev $100,000+ when I can pay a European $50,000, or someone from the developing world $25,000?" Great for devs in the rest of the world of course.

CEOs have been clamoring to outsource devs since the 90s. I'll let you guess how that's worked so far.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#105

Post by diob »

aetherson wrote: post #69
diob wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, go do it! Most studies I've seen state that it's hard to know because paycheck to paycheck is such a loaded word. And it's easy to access that the majority of Americans end up in medical debt in their lifetime.

Sure, yes, I'll upend my life for multiple years in order to satisfy the demands of a random HN poster. That seems highly reasonable. Quick question: how many times have you completely changed your entire life because someone on the internet told you that you weren't allowed to have a comment before you did that?

If you're going to say something like "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." then you should be willing to put your money where your mouth is or prove it in some fashion (run a fake budget based on your household making that amount).

I have a low tolerance for making light of other's situations.

Why not admit it takes a good amount of financial discipline (if not superhuman)?

What does it cost your ego to admit that?

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#106

Post by aetherson »

diob wrote: post #105
aetherson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, yes, I'll upend my life for multiple years in order to satisfy the demands of a random HN poster. That seems highly reasonable. Quick question: how many times have you completely changed your entire life because someone on the internet told you that you weren't allowed to have a comment before you did that?

If you're going to say something like "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." then you should be willing to put your money where your mouth is or prove it in some fashion (run a fake budget based on your household making that amount). I have a low tolerance for making light of…

I did say that. You got pissy because I didn't agree with your over the top hyperbole, then you said a lot of ridiculous nonsense, and now that you're ridiculous nonsense has been called you're trying to retroactively pull back on your claims.

Financial discipline is hard, it's totally understandable why people don't save as much as would be optimal. I also don't save as much as is optimal. It requires good financial discipline to save money when your budget is limited.

But it doesn't require living like a monk or spending every minute of every day pinching pennies to put away $1000 to $3000 or so per year for most Americans, and if you do that you'll be insulated against the kind of minor disasters that happen once a decade or so.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#107

Post by saperyton »

nus07 wrote: post #37
tra3 wrote: post #3

I'm thankful that the school that I attended forced us to take electives outside of Computer Science and Engineering. I took some Psychology classes. The list of stressful events was very surprising to me. The author alludes to it in the post. I recall that typically "happy" events are stressful, too. Here's the list [0]: Death of a spouse (or child*): 100 Divorce: 73 Marital separation: 65 Imprisonment: 63 Death of…

What’s my score according to my timeline of events - Late 2016- Layoff Early 2017- moved across country for new job Mid 2018- Got married Mid 2018- Layoff from second company Mid 2018-Mid 2019 - Moved away and back for two jobs Oct 2019 - Started new job Nov 2019 - Birth of child Dec 2019 - Death of father Mar 2020 - Cannot visit mother for 2 years due to Covid I think my score is about 210-290 for the last 4-5 years…

How are you feeling?
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