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Laid off? What are You Doing w/ Your Newfound Freedom?
dmorin asks: "Like many of you I'm recently laid off. So as I wake up every morning wondering what to do with my day I got to thinking, how everybody else is handling the new found free time? My original idea, that I would simply spend all my time working on my own software projects in order to learn new skills, went out the window when I realized that I'd burn out far too fast if I thought that the most important thing in life. My wife is working part time so I have at least 3 days a week to take care of my 10month old daughter, time that I would not have had if I was still employed. I'm doing my share of the chores around the house, not just taking care of the lawn but also doing groceries, laundry and so on. As for geeky stuff, I play with projects and technologies because they are fun, not because I think they will make me more marketable. I put away my "personal Java portal" and lately am playing with voice synthesis on my Zaurus just because I think it's cool. So how about everybody else? What are you doing with this new free time that's been forced upon you? How much of it are you using to job search? How much is 'honey do' list, how much is just free play time? Disclaimer: I'm researching an idea for a possible book. Not planning to quote anybody without their permission, just looking to hear what people are up to."
my $0.02:
... without having the ability to try out the things I was trying to learn none of it stuck. Also tried to catch up on music (I'm a songwriter), but it turned out without work to piss me off I didn't have as much to write about :-)
My last job ended late last fall when the company went under. 2nd time that happened to me in two years. The first time, I slid right into the new job with no gap in employement. Yes, I know I was very lucky. This past fall, I thought I'd take the rest of the year off, relax, catch up on my life, de-stress, and job hunt. Aaahhhhh, peace.
I made it 3 days.
After 3 days, I was going absolutely batty. Without having the regular schedule of work to frame my day, I just drifted along getting absolutely nothing accomplished. I'd never been one to do much work from home, so I wasn't really set up to do any programming or technical things. I tried catching up on my techie mags, reading some programming books
So I took part time contracting type work to keep myself occupied, and found my current job (working as a contract employee, programming) which started Jan 1.
I blame all this on my parents, of course.
0. Talked with EVERY developer I had known and asked about job leads.
1. Spent 2-3 hours a day targeting resumes for the job(s) listed on about 10 different sites. What a waste of time... Over 300 hiring gits that never responded to me. I mean _NO_ response.
2. Found a short term contract.
3. After 10 weeks, ended up taking an internship @ $10/hr. It was easy to get a job against others that had no experience vs. my 5 years.
4. Worked so DAMN hard at the internship, it has now evolved into a real job with decent pay.
5. Paid off ALL of my debt, so the next time I am unemployed, I won't have so many bills to worry about. Read: cut up ccs, stopped buying gadgets, paid off car.
6. ???
7. Profit and retire at 70?
Kill me now!
Antiquated competence won't be a job skill forever.
Join a programming project. Create something you can show when you're looking for a new job.
If you're single or polyamourous, now is the best time to start clubbing and have some fun while you can!
Sit in front of the TV all day eating pizza with extra cheese and drink diet coke.
Find a new job.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Go to Distributed Proofreaders and help put some public domain books online!
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
I started to realize that plugging away and over-pushing my resume was a bad way to do things about my 2nd month out of work.
To keep busy I started volunteering for non-profits I like, and even helped to get a candidate for mayor get 43% of the vote in Denver's latest election.
After 5 months of looking, I finally found a job. Now I spend a lot of free time working for NPOs and campaigning for a candidate sure to get the mayor's job in a month.
If nothing else, unemployment brought me a lot of connections I would have never had, and a sense of accomplishment that's just great.
On top of that, our daughter is due at the end of June, so I'll have my son, wife, and newborn to care for this summer. Have you priced infant care? If I find a job and go back to work, I'll have to make at least $24,000 a year just to pay for child care. We only get to pocket anything above that, but it's got to be significantly above that or we'll have to sell this house and find a smaller one.
We are truely blessed to live in the house of our dreams, on 5 acres out in the country, but we got it on two incomes and we won't be able to keep it on one. We figure we can go about one year before it comes to that. On average, they say it takes 9 months and at least three interviews to find a job here. After 3+ months I have had zero interviews.
Meanwhile, when I can find the time, I have to empty the basement so I can sheetrock the walls, build the bathroom and office/guesroom, and finish the rest as a playroom. So we can move the office/guest room furniture out of what will soon be the baby's room.
So I'm in limbo. Do I apply for any three jobs just to qualify for unemployment, become a stay-at-home dad, and move to suburbia where we can spit on our neighbor's houses without leaving our back yard? Or do I attend all the job hunt seminars, help an open-source project just to keep my skills up, and do anything to find another job, putting my kids into daycare in the process?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I'm a writer, so I was kind of waiting for the Writers Grant of unemployment when I signed up with a startup. It ended up lasting much longer than I thought it would, but when it collapsed I started in finishing my novel. Whoopee!
I built a webapp to help me do this, where I have to write a certain number of words per day or an email is sent out to all of my friends. The site is called SHAME. Writing through humiliation.
I've been fundraising for the AIDS/LifeCycle
Doing something good, to help people out, helps keep me from getting depressed. I strongly suggest that you find a charity and do some free work in your free time. It keeps you from wasting away.
This is my 4th such ride. I've got a team and everything. Though this year, I am WAY SHORT on donations.
best web host ever
I swore I would not use unemployment the next time I was laid off. So, as the result of my employer suffering the largest losses in corporate history for two straight years, I was laid off as part of a restructuring that was to help them save money for next year. The employer was gracious enough to provide out-placement counseling classes through a nationally-recognized out-placement firm and a fairly decent 3 months of severance pay. Funny, though, the out-placement firm also announced a 20% reduction of its own work force.
After taking the classes and doing the necessary soul searching, I decided I was doing what I wanted to do and set off to find a job where I could continue doing that. Independent of this effort I was solicited by a company who found my name through some publically-viewable projects I was doing at my old job. Even better, the job was to do much the same as what I was doing at my old job.
Now I have problems I would rather not have, like an excessively long commute and some serious personality clashes with some of the long-timers (this is a barely-surviving dotcom firm in an ultra-niche market). I miss the comradere at my old job--most of the people here are battle-weary and angry about what happened to their company. Normally that isn't a bad thing when your product is used by many people to enhance their lives, but this place is in an ultra-niche market with, as I might say, a very small potential audience. There's no sense here of using technology to better people's lives--just to find ways to squeeze pennies out of advertisers, clients, and the very few customers that buy the sort of things we sell.
I'm comfortable with the business problems with the new company, and I figured I would use the job to keep fresh and active while looking for other jobs in my spare time. It turns out that a big downside is that because of my huge commute I have no time to set aside for networking to get the job I really wanted at a location that isn't over an hour from my house by subway. Even though my former employer is hiring the very same jobs that were eliminated last year, and I could immediately go back and do those jobs at the highest competency of any of my peers, they are forbidden to hire me for 1 full year from my termination date. I am not even allowed to work through a subcontractor--I've tried but that annoying no-hire policy gets in the way of their contract bids.
So now I'm stuck in a rather boring job with lousy commute and lousy people (and really lousy salary), but I'm thankful that I got it because the COBRA health insurance coverage costs way too much. I'm not sure the benefits are worth the extra problems I've gained. I didn't have to dodge beggars and hop trains before, and I never had to worry about parking until after 10:00 AM (now it's 8:00 AM or no parking). Feh.
All I can say about this topic is that you should spend the time finding the job you really want and don't take the easy way out by taking the first job that comes along that you know you will be good at. The effort you put into your job search is directly related to the quality of the job you will get. If you have serious, honest credentials, like a good education, training, and serious, honest, real-world experience, maybe you should consider independent contracting. Don't get stuck in a rut--it won't be easier.
You may already be doing this but making the job search a full time job means getting out of bed at the same time as you did when you were employed, shaving, being fully dressed and awake by 8am, ready to take phone calls from potential employers or make cold calls to firms in your area who may have openings you can fill. Schedule time with yourself to work on cover letters and resume tweaks and to follow up on ones you've sent out.
The rule of thumb is: Expect the search to take about 1 month for each 10k in salary. I have been trying to find a position as a millionaire playboy for almost ten years so I expect some responses any day now.
About two years ago I went through this.
First off, I allowed myself one week of nothing, then I would get to schedule and do the job search and all that. I had severance to tide me over for a few weeks anyhow. So I made a short list which mainly consited of seeing all the sights in the city I hadn't had time to do, seeing movies during the day, running all the errands I never got around to, cleaning house, etc.
After the week was up it was hardcore job hunting time, but not so hard core I burned out. I did find the most important thing to do was not fall into a funk and sleep til noon. Get up, do your job hunt, take a shower ... basic stuff. I didn't want to fall into the pattern of waking up at noon, not taking a shower til 3 and realizing the day was over, so not going out, basically becoming a total hermit / night owl, playing video games all night. It was actually hard to resist this ... after all, when you're unemployed, you have no place to "be".
The next important thing for me was to cut expenses immediately. Seems like many people assume they'll get a job in a month and proceed to blow their severance on a trip to Thailand or something. Resist it! You should act as if you're not getting a job for months. Cut cable, cancel magazine subscriptions, stop eating out, etc. I think the only liberty I allowed myself was to keep the broadband going as it would aid my job search.
Once you find a job, that's when you get to slack off. The two weeks or so after you've signed the offer letter and you KNOW you just need to show up at work are the best two weeks known to humankind. That's when you sleep til noon and slack off, with not a care in the world because you know you got it made. I wish there were more times like that in a lifetime.
My idea was that braintrusts NEVER go out of fashion. I took 2 weeks off and then spent 8 weeks stalking Universities and BioTechs. I think i damn near resumed every University in the Western Hemisphere.
I shit myself when the fuckers didn't respond.
Thankfully, in the meantime, i'd spammed enough businesses in my neighbourhood with rent-a-geek flyers to keep myself in a hand-to-mouth existence. Savings got lower and lower until the a flood of invoices from mom 'n pops coughed up. I was actually making a living on my own! Whoopie! Some advice - work around retainers - sell saving 5-10 desktop + 1 server companies money on a dedicated IT guy - then hit 'em up for $2-400 a month + expenses or per Desktop + per Server flat rates. Resell 'em prerolled website packages (opensourcecms.com). Sell Dell machines. Sell soho firewalls. Sell MS SBS and SUSE office server. Swing by a couple of times a month for new machines, virus updates etc. Get 5-10 clients and you have enough to pay the mortgage and feed yourself. Do a good job and it snowballs from there.
After 2 months i started to get responses. A lot of responses. Universities are so swamped with dot bomb resumes that even getting a response is almost a bloody lottery. Academia moves at a glacial pace anyway.
When i started interviewing, i was in the luxurious position of having a choice, again. I was in the driving seat. After another 2 months, i accepted a position in Harvard. I.S. here is a mix of laid back, relaxed hippies and semi-rigid offloaded corporates like myself.
I can reliably state, i'm better off for the experience. Knowing i can bounce back and stand on my own 2 feet is a great comfort.