Losing two jobs in one year
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Losing two jobs in one year
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Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#2Tying health insurance to employment. Was, is, and will be nuts.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#3"Something else changed. Suddenly, the two layoffs stopped being of any consequence. They quite frankly didn’t matter anymore."
Beautiful piece. I feel this very deeply these days. Loved ones are all that matter in life (including ones no longer in my life).
The ideas here remind me a bit of the book "Man's Search for Meaning."
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#4Tying health insurance to employment. Was, is, and will be nuts.
Unfortunately, the US has a huge number of people who would rather have insurance-run for-profit death panels than government-run non-profit death panels.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#5"Something else changed. Suddenly, the two layoffs stopped being of any consequence. They quite frankly didn’t matter anymore." Beautiful piece. I feel this very deeply these days. Loved ones are all that matter in life (including ones no longer in my life). The ideas here remind me a bit of the book "Man's Search for Meaning."
Excellent book, on my nightstand right now!
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#6Tying health insurance to employment. Was, is, and will be nuts.
My recollection is that health care and other, similar benefits were incentives employers could offer to attract and retain talent during a period when FDR had wage and price controls in place. That is: healthcare was exempt from wage controls, so you could offer a healthcare plan or an improved plan in lieu of a raise.
Then, employers noticed, "you mean offering them healthcare makes it harder for our employees to leave? And public perception of healthcare means it will probably always be a tax advantaged way to allocate our expenses?"
And here we are, eight decades and change later.
Note: I think public perception of healthcare as a moral good in principle is correct. It's just that there's a wicked mal-alignment of incentives which leverages that perception to cement a bad solution in place.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#7If you only take one thing from this article, let it be this line:
My work is only part of my identity.
I'd argue that unless you're literally curing cancer, it should be the least important part of your identity.
I've never let work be more than the tiniest facet of my existence that provides the resources necessary to well... not die.
I understand this isn't the easiest thing for most people - tribalism and pack identity is a powerful thing.
It's why we have entires throngs of people who follow celebrities / twitch streamers / influencers / voice actors / etc. It's why things like the "reality distortion field" around Steve Jobs exists. And well, it's why when people suddenly find themselves let go from a job, it apparently affects them in a powerfully and I would argue irrationally emotional way.
In a way, these things have sort of acted as a de-facto substitute for more traditional tribalism (patriotism, national pride, etc) for a lot of Gen Z / Millennials. Shrugs. Or maybe this is just a personal observation.
Note: Just to be fair, I think her breakdown was FAR FAR more understandable than many people who are let go given that:
Her job provided health insurance for her family
She has kids who depended on her
Needing surgeryRe: Losing two jobs in one year
#8Sometimes it takes an existential event in our lives to really drive home what actually matters. On your death bed you won't wish that you spent more time delivering value to a company (even a great one) than spending time nurturing relationships with loved ones.
On another note, your value as a human is not the same as the economic value you produce, and it's too easy to conflate the two
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#9Tying health insurance to employment. Was, is, and will be nuts.
My recollection is that health care and other, similar benefits were incentives employers could offer to attract and retain talent during a period when FDR had wage and price controls in place. That is: healthcare was exempt from wage controls, so you could offer a healthcare plan or an improved plan in lieu of a raise. Then, employers noticed, "you mean offering them healthcare makes it harder for our employees to l…
That's basically my understanding of how we got into that mess. There are still significant tax subsidies for employer provided health insurance and most people don't realize that the COBRA price is the actual cost of their "cheap" or "free" employer provided insurance for the same reason they think their "income tax refund" is actually "free money" from the IRS rather than their money that the government held onto without interest.
The average person is not very smart and half of the population isn't even that smart so of course they fall for these intelligence insulting tricks invented by politicians.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#10"Something else changed. Suddenly, the two layoffs stopped being of any consequence. They quite frankly didn’t matter anymore." Beautiful piece. I feel this very deeply these days. Loved ones are all that matter in life (including ones no longer in my life). The ideas here remind me a bit of the book "Man's Search for Meaning."
How do you balance this mindset with the cold hard reality that one needs to make money?
I’m currently unemployed and I am lucky to have a generous runway, but that runway will run out eventually.
The idea that nothing matters outside of family, friends, etc is tempting but I have made sacrifices in relationships with others and myself to be a more employable candidate.
For example I’m taking LLM classes on Sunday mornings which precludes me from interacting with loved ones. I can try to schedule things around that-but sometimes that isn’t possible.
I’m also working on other things, my health, my fitness, my spiritually.
Finding balance has been hard. I’m in a good spot now, but I do find myself wondering if my ratios of time invested are correct given the fact that I also agree that loved ones are all that matter in life.