Whenever I read articles like this, I’m so grateful that in the U.K. healthcare is not tied to your job. The NHS may struggle and have its issues. But I have never had to experience the stress of the thought of losing access to care.
Losing two jobs in one year
51–60 of 192 posts
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#52This is something i think has been slowly changing in the US. At least among the people i know. Work is now just work. Five years ago it had to be your passion it is what you wanted or at least i wanted to be defined by. After seeing how little any company cares about people work is what i try to spend the least amount of time doing. At 5 or ideally 4 i clock out and only respond if I am paged. Additionally i have ch…
> This is something i think has been slowly changing in the US. At least among the people i know.
I think your cohort is just aging.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#53This is something i think has been slowly changing in the US. At least among the people i know. Work is now just work. Five years ago it had to be your passion it is what you wanted or at least i wanted to be defined by. After seeing how little any company cares about people work is what i try to spend the least amount of time doing. At 5 or ideally 4 i clock out and only respond if I am paged. Additionally i have ch…
I am almost 50 and on my ninth job. I haven’t been “passionate” about my job ever. It has always served as no more than a means to support my addiction to food and shelter.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#54"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 mo…
I stay prepared to look for another job
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37969302
This has been my mindset since leaving my second job in 2008. I’m now on my 9th.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#55This is something i think has been slowly changing in the US. At least among the people i know. Work is now just work. Five years ago it had to be your passion it is what you wanted or at least i wanted to be defined by. After seeing how little any company cares about people work is what i try to spend the least amount of time doing. At 5 or ideally 4 i clock out and only respond if I am paged. Additionally i have ch…
I am almost 50 and on my ninth job. I haven’t been “passionate” about my job ever. It has always served as no more than a means to support my addiction to food and shelter.
How booring. Has there really not been anything fun and exciting in any of your nine jobs?
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#56That's rough, and as my Grandma used to say "disasters always come in threes". I've been through too many rounds of layoffs, headcount reductions, down-sizing, strategic re-alignments or whatever you care to call them, and each of them sucked. The one thing to take away from it, is that these are just random chance events by and large and not a reflection on the performance of good engineers.
Getting re-hired itself can be another random event - and again, not making it through interviews may be more a reflection of the kind of morons running the hiring pipeline in whatever company than you or your abilities.
I'm in a pretty decent sized FAANG-adjacent tech company right now, and for example, the one team we have that's doing lots of hiring is run by the two biggest jerks in the place. Whether it's unconscious bias, or just straight-up discrimination, I've noticed that all the folks hired to this team all (mysteriously) happen to come from Texas and to have worked in a certain re-insurance company the jerks came from.
So you come along and interview with that team, with a good background and abilities, and don't get that job, and some bozo with a geographic handicap gets it instead of you - that's what's going on. But all you see is another rejection.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#57Learn a real craft instead that doesn't put you on a balance sheet. This career and economy movement has tricked all of us into building an identity from work.
I believe strongly that we should start more anti-work movements. No not like the one at reddit.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#58If 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 id…
It's not a tribalism thing. My work is how I directly make the world a much richer place than it would be without me - otherwise I wouldn't be able to skim off some percentage of that value as a salary/income. That's something to be tremendously and persistently proud of, no matter who you are or what you're doing. Besides: If your one and only goal with work really is "do as little as possible to not die", this is e…
"Yet we almost never see people do that."
There are plenty of people doing that (until their funds run out, which always happens faster than planned).
"My work is how I directly make the world a much richer place than it would be without me "
And richer in real ressources? Numbers of money are a arbitary thing and do not necessary relate, if they actually make the world a better place.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mo…
You do the work for the money, but you don't invest yourself in the work: you care about the people who love you back at home. In the end, the work (caveat edge cases) will be meaningless. You're converting time into fiat you need to pay for life. You can always make more money, time is non renewable. "Today is your last day." "Meh, whatevs, going home to my family." https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html htt…
I found out I was getting Amazoned in the 13th city of a year long “nomadding” journey with my wife where we were booking one way flights across the country.
My wife asked me what was the plan. I told her nothing is changing, we went to our 14th city, I interviewed for three companies remotely and had two offers in three weeks. I accepted one and flew from there to meet my cousin in NYC for the US Tennis Open and met my wife in Chicago where my new employee shipped my computer.
I flew back home to end our year long trip, had Amazon ship the box to me to send my work computer back to them.
One monkey don’t stop no show.
Re: Losing two jobs in one year
#60If 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 id…
I hear this argument and I should point out that it can hurt people saying something like that. I understand where you are coming from and I disagree strongly with your statement. Around age 12 I discovered software development and became my greatest passion. It helped me escape MMORPG addiction and being happy (have a family, buy a home, pursue my hobbies). If I lost my job I would be sad, no doubt, but I would stil…
I started programming in 6th grade in assembly on Apple //e in 1986.
By the time o graduated from college in 1996, I programmed as a hobbyist in assembly on four architectures - 65C02, 68K, PPC and x86.
The last time I programmed as a hobbyist was 1996.
For the next 15 years my hobby was teaching fitness classes, running and lifting weights.
I got married in 2012 and became a father to a 9 and 14 year old.
When the youngest graduated in 2020 and a year after Covid lifted, my wife and flew across the US from October 2022 to October 2023 visiting over a dozen cities while I worked remotely,
Software development supports my passions.