Verizon says to shed 10,400 jobs by mid next year

The lay-off I did go through also involved about 30 people. This was in 2011. Everyone from developers, QA, L1 and L2 support staff had jobs lined up within a month. I suspect from the companies they went to had better jobs than they left.

Several of my colleagues (one with two young children and a brand new mortgage) needed well over 6 months to find their next job. Few places were hiring for their skill area and _many_ companies passed on them just because having a resume gap from the layoff is an instant HR filter.

This is why I focus my experience on two paths - one sort of specialized that offers better pay locally but where there are fewer jobs and the other where there are a lot of jobs/contracts but pay about average wages, ie. A bog standard generic full stack developer.

On top of this, paying for your own insurance even with COBRA is prohibitively expensive, like $600/month for an individual, upwards of $1500 for a family.

Life lesson I learned - don’t depend on CORBA. If the company goes out of business, their is no group plan to buy into. Even at full price. But yes, I thought about that. My wife has a secure government job and in a few years, will be guaranteed family health coverage for the rest of her life.

On top of this, paying for your own insurance even with COBRA is prohibitively expensive, like $600/month for an individual, upwards of $1500 for a family.

Ageism is overblown. I’m in my mid 40s. I was in my mid 30s when I first started getting serious about my career and job hopping. Companies don’t care how old you are if you have a current skillset. I also don’t try to work at the hipster companies.

In other words, your comment is hopelessly myopic and I hope you never experience the kind of grim unemployment that many people face, even developers in job-heavy cities, because you don’t seem equipped to survive it.

You mean by keeping my skills current, my network fresh, having a backup insurance plan, and having savings? Things everyone should do.

Right. Because I mentioned “In 20 years its never taken me more than three weeks to get another job” before you mentioned ageism just in case you brought it up. Do I need to mention my experience programming on an Apple //e in 65C02 assembly language in the 80s to validate my old man cred?

If you are concerned with your job as a means of financial stability instead of your set of marketable skills and your network, you’re doing it wrong. Jobs come and go. I can honestly say that I didn’t stay up one night worried about being laid off even though I knew the company I worked for was in deep financial trouble. I had recruiters chomping at the bit waiting to place me.

Those things don’t guarantee you’ll be hired again quickly though, not by a longshot. So negotiating severance is still a critical additional action to take over and above the other items you mentioned.

How much good would it have done to “negotiate severance” successfully at the one company that I was laid off from that went out of business and had no money left?

I’ll take my chances on having a marketable skillset, and negotiating a salary that allows me to save my own money.

If you assume pessimisticly that you will get laid off and have a 3 month gap in employment every three years, all you have to do is negotiate an 8% higher than market rate and save your own money.

From what I've heard from amigos working for big ISPs, you can often get 3-6 months of salary, and if you have decent skills (i.e. you've got job options) then it's often a paid vacation while you shop around for other gigs.

Meanwhile if you stay you know there is great acrimony ahead, big changes, lots of clueless newbies coming in, and potentially a crazy-high workload until the dust finally settles.

Why stick around when you can chill for a month, burn one-hitters until your homie at CenturyLink hooks it up, and bone up on certs or skills.