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Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

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Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#81

Post by fencepost »

akg_67 wrote: post #42
fencepost wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to the Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, you had up to 18 months of COBRA eligibility, meaning you could stay on your employer's plan but paid all premiums (expensive). During that time you frantically look for a job that includes healthcare coverage. Failing either of those, you might find junk insurance, or you simply go without and hope for good health. If your income is / remains low enough you might qualify…

I went through layoff six months ago. ACA definitely has helped with health insurance. If you are unemployed (no income), you are most likely to get subsidy as it is income based. Our premiums after subsidy is little bit higher than what we were paying when I was employed. I wish there was something similar to ACA for dental insurance. Most dental insurance plans on open market are expensive and with ridiculous terms…

Dental is harder, and (at least in my dentist's opinion) private dental insurance just isn't worth it. I can see the merits of that, because you're less likely to have a catastrophic dental emergency that can bankrupt you. A lot of dental insurance also seems to only cover 50% of the more expensive items.

It may be worth looking at how much you're paying each month in premiums and comparing that to the annual out-of-pocket cost for preventive / cleaning visits plus perhaps a filling or two. You may find that all the insurance is really doing is smoothing those payments out without saving you much money unless you have a "years of neglect" situation that you're still working through.

It's probably also worth asking your dentist if they have "self-pay" rates comparable to what they're getting from the insurance companies. If they bill $120 but accept $80 from insurance, will they take $80-90 cash from you instead of that $120? Also, for more expensive procedures like crowns, it's very likely that your dentist's office will let you do installments to spread the cost over at least several months. That doesn't really help when you don't have current income and aren't sure when you will have it, but it does relate to smoothing out your expenditures the way insurance premiums do.

Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#82

Post by runamok »

throwaway1dh9 wrote: post #28
acchow wrote: post #4

Honest question as a Canadian - what do you do about health insurance when you're 50 and get fired from your lifer job? Should you really have been paying for your own policy in parallel with your employer's so that you can continue with the low premiums post-employment?

I'm from Europe (Germany). Worried about insurance for your kid? Can't happen here, the government will deal with that. Losing your job? Get paid for one or two years by your work insurance. After that you fall back to a free basic income (for as long as you need). And still this system is generally not exploited: People work hard here. And it's not just unemployment. There are people begging for money on HN regularl…

A lot of people didn't like ACA because we would have preferred single payer. Many others felt we would just be sending much more money to the for profit insurance companies who were already treating us horribly and making record profits.

We also have heard many stories of people having to wait months if not years for non-emergency treatment. Such as getting an MRI for an injured knee in Canada for instance. As a very healthy avid runner it would be very frustrating to not be able to pay for something critical to me like that (once again I am not saying this is always or mostly the case but it is a scenario I have heard about). I suppose our imaginations extrapolate if health care is more or less free for all then our level of care will be much worse. I am not really sure.

If it was up to me, I'd kill all insurance companies with fire, have us all pay into a pot for medicare and just use that.

Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#83

Post by dapz »

wopwopwah wrote: post #64

I was also sent off from Microsoft last Thursday. What a day. My observations: - This was the best kept secret ever at Microsoft. Many VPs and directors were not knowing until the day of. - It's clear the layoff decisions were not personal or based on talent or seniority, but just rather the high executives each doing a large pruning of their own branches. Whole branches of the company being lopped off because they h…

Layoffs not based on talent? As competitive as the market is, throwing away valuable people seems insane to me.

Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#84

Post by krapp »

throwaway1dh9 wrote: post #28
acchow wrote: post #4

Honest question as a Canadian - what do you do about health insurance when you're 50 and get fired from your lifer job? Should you really have been paying for your own policy in parallel with your employer's so that you can continue with the low premiums post-employment?

I'm from Europe (Germany). Worried about insurance for your kid? Can't happen here, the government will deal with that. Losing your job? Get paid for one or two years by your work insurance. After that you fall back to a free basic income (for as long as you need). And still this system is generally not exploited: People work hard here. And it's not just unemployment. There are people begging for money on HN regularl…

>But it seems US citizens want to live like that. Why?

Well first, not all US citizens do.

Primarily this seems to stem from a free-market, conservative viewpoint. Central to this viewpoint is the thesis that not only is labor just, but the sociological outcome of labor is also, always, just (unless the government interferes). In other words, those who can afford healthcare have earned the right to it, those who can't were simply to lazy or ignorant to work hard enough to afford it.

Also, there can be a deep aversion to the government (any government) interfering with a person's property and income, where any program which requires people to give for the "greater good" is seen as not only theft, but an existential attack on the fundamental ideals of American individualism and personal liberty. The argument here is that governments are by definition corrupt, fascist and incompetent, and only a free market with as little regulation as possible could handle something like "healthcare" efficiently and fairly.

Therefore, advocates for limited government will see social programs as interference by an increasingly "big government" regime which has no right to force a moral imperative on people or relieve them of their property, and conservatives and free-market believers will feel that social programs undermine the moral principles of capitalism while insidiously creating a dependent class of lazy left-wing radical neo-immigrants.

Also, it's probably worth mentioning that not many Americans appreciate that there is a difference between liberalism, socialism and communism, and nor would they care.

Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#85

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway1dh9 wrote: post #28
acchow wrote: post #4

Honest question as a Canadian - what do you do about health insurance when you're 50 and get fired from your lifer job? Should you really have been paying for your own policy in parallel with your employer's so that you can continue with the low premiums post-employment?

I'm from Europe (Germany). Worried about insurance for your kid? Can't happen here, the government will deal with that. Losing your job? Get paid for one or two years by your work insurance. After that you fall back to a free basic income (for as long as you need). And still this system is generally not exploited: People work hard here. And it's not just unemployment. There are people begging for money on HN regularl…

> But it seems US citizens want to live like that.

US citizens, in aggregate, want to live like that (or, perhaps more accurately, want other people in the US to have to live like that) when opinions are aggregated by effective political power, sure, but effective political power in the US is largely a function of wealth, which is extremely unequally distributed.

Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#86

Post by mistermann »

dfxm12 wrote: post #63
mistermann wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it seems US citizens want to live like that. Why? Only "god" knows for sure, but I have a strong suspicion you answered your own question, at least in part: > And still this system is generally not exploited: People work hard here.

According to Forbes, Americans' GDP per hour worked is better than that of the Germans, and the Americans are happier while doing it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/10/30/the-pursui... This also shows Americans work more than the Germans and this doesn't say anything about how hard people are working, but don't forget the old adage: Don't work harder, don't smarter!

Agreed, but productivity per hour worked and moral willingness to abuse social programs are two different issues.

Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#87

Post by throwaway12312 »

Ageism is overblown to the point of being a myth. I'm 34 as well, my resume is not really that impressive, and yet I've had interviews with Google, Samsung and Amazon (+ some name-brand statups) in the past 6 months. Sure, I didn't land any of them, but I wasn't far off. If you're getting interviews, they want to hire you.

Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#88

Post by fencepost »

buckbova wrote: post #78

I'd love to be laid off with a good severance. It's an extended paid vacation. It might be a slam to your ego, but every doer out there needs to know, you are seen by management as a cog in a machine, easily swapped out. Everyone is replaceable.

If you regard it as an "extended paid vacation" there's a good chance it's going to impact your earnings for years if not decades.

It may be an opportunity to work on your side projects, get some training/education, reevaluate your options and direction, etc. but it's not a vacation. It's "unemployed" and just having that gap in your resume/job applications can really start to hurt you - in part because other people aren't treating it as a vacation. If you're a cog but nobody's chosen to slot YOU in place of someone else "easily replaceable," what's wrong with you? "What did previous interviewers see that I'm missing? Meh, he's a cog, why risk it, 'NEXT!'" Just ask some of the long-term unemployed about how hard it is to even get a call back.

Even if you avoid that, one of the questions you're going to get is "What have you been doing since you were at XYZ?" and you'd best have an answer.

Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#89

Post by badman_ting »

kevinstubbs wrote: post #10
smrtinsert wrote: post #5

It's really sad to hear him talk about his son. What department was he in, and what could the new direction be?

SDET in Windows.

Anecdotally it seems like a lot of the people let go were in SDET roles.

Re: Microsoft laid me off after 15 years of service. Life after Microsoft?

#90

Post by pc86 »

akg_67 wrote: post #61
chiph wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be willing to move. The hard part about this is convincing the HR department that you can self-relocate and don't want relo money.

The most common objection I have heard in past six months during my job search. Another two objections that I have heard are "too much experience" and "your past salary was too much, we don't want to offer less but can't afford to pay you what you deserve."

You're don't necessarily deserve $n if the market can no longer bare it. There's nothing wrong with taking $(0.8n) if that's what the market has determined your skills are worth.
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