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The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed
SimuAndy writes "David Dvorkin, a programmer and writer of some repute, has published an essay on The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed. Well worth the reading time as a small break in a busy day."
I try to convince myself I've gotten out of the rat race of Upward Mobility, and it's morally superior to have Downward Nobility. But I just want a fucken job. I helped build this industry in the early 1970s, now I'm supposed to be in the peak earning years of my career, but I'm locked out due to the bad economy. It sucks. There is nothing good about being unemployed.
Actually, it's harder to get a job when your unemployed then it is when you are employeed. Because, when your unemployeed, any future employer will want to know why and how long you have been without work. But, if you already have a job, then you have a much better reputation for current skill status and thus a better chance of swiching over to a new company.
Life is not for the lazy.
Sheesh... a few of flashes of insight in there, but it's mostly bitter, sarcastic, angst-ridden despair... quite depressing read, actually.
Notice how he blames it on everyone else, as if some puppetmaster controls his destiny? (evil corporations, GW Bush, supervisors and managers). Sheesh, guy... I hate to sound like your dad, but that's life. Lots of people have been screwed out of jobs before, and lots of peolpe have had jobs that frankly sucked, but there's always work out there if you are willing to swallow some pride, and make some sacrifices. Go back to school for god's sake.
I wish I hadn't read that depressing little piece... I'd say it was a lot higher on the despair scale than the humor scale.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Here is where you are wrong. I'd rather that a guy like this spends his time improving himself and his skills, so he can be even more productive when the economy does improve, than that he waste his time flipping burgers at Macdonalds.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
But what if you have a lot of technical skills? MacDonalds won't hire you because they're concerned that you'll run off the first instance that a better job shows up! Of course you would run off, but it means that you don't get the job. They just look at the resume and say, "What is wrong with this guy that he's applying here?!".
So, I find myself in a situation where there is no work in my field(computers, and it's really, really dead), I don't have enough experience to work at a different trade(machinist or welder, for example), AND I know too much to get a job flipping burgers. Of course, the idea of an apprenticeship is completely out of the question, those are almost impossible to get these days. Employers *will* *not* train people. Period.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Hey -- are you the one spying on me from the adjacent building? :).
I lost my job (with a company often associated with the properties "blue" and "big", not necessarily in that order) nearly two years ago, back in January 2002. Since then, I've Open Sourced my PalmOS data synchronization project (v3.0 final is due out in the next two weeks, so go download it!!!), run about 20km per week, and do about 60 push-ups, 80 sit-ups, and 12 chin-ups a day. I completely kicked the caffiene habbit (switched from regular Coca Cola to caffiene free Coca Cola... :) ), and am eating quite a bit better (and a whole lot cheaper!).
The only things in your list I haven't done is any volunteering (unless you consider administrating and leading development on a large Open Source project every day to be volunteer work ;) ), or going to the library (I already have three bookshelves of books here, so I've been re-reading them all).
Oh, and I haven't kicked the beer habit -- having never picked it up in the first place, I haven't really seen the point of starting, just so I can quit.
Yup -- unemployment is the best thing that ever happened to me. More time to work on important projects, read, eat right, and get more excercise. If only I had an un-exhaustible source of money, things would be perfect (or, barring that, a decent job would do...).
Yaz.
Given my skill sets I'm sitting down and telling myself I need to leave the corporate world and go my own way. I even have a large cushion of cash to fall back on. Plus my significant hours have resulted in a minimalist livestyle anyway. I estimate I could live for 5 years on my current savings at my current lifestyle, less the costs of other activities I take up (especially significant if you try to start a business). I just don't have time to piece it together while working. And I'm pissing away valuable years if I try.
Only one thing holding me back. My attachment to having a stable respectable job that pays decently. All the skills are there, I could easily acquire support from skilled friends in any profession I could want. I could probably scrape together 50-100K for starting money if I begged a bit without approaching professional lenders. But it's pretty hard to actually quit to do nothing and take a huge "risk" on possibilities coming through. I'm much more the type of person to try to set it all up before I quit, but I just can't seem to get the time together for that unless I quit first.
Anybody else? Could YOU quit?
What good is 15 years of Netware experience today?
How about someone who knows that the original PC had odd size ISA slots, so that 286 and later cards wouldn't fit?
Who cares that you spent a million hours with DOS and QEMM getting an extra 60K of base memory so somone's blasted Autocad machine would work correctly?
It's turning out that spending 20 years working with computers has been a really poor investment.
Sad. I always thought of learning as something that makes you human (as opposed to insects? viruses?), not rich or job-secure. A lot of people specialize in some industry and when that culture/economy/technology/employer changes and they lose a job (or are about to), they whine as if they've wasted their life or they go cry to the government to try save that dying industry so that they may (selfishly) preserve their outdated niche in society.
Its called evolution. Its a way of life. Only the fittest will survive! And you know who survives? The beings who change. Honestly, if you feel your life was wasted because you specialized in something and the only thing that made you important was that job-field, then maybe you aren't really special. Sorry, but being an intelligent human means being able to use your knowledge for something beyond a stupid job. If all you are is someone who picks up knowledge with no intent to use it beyond the scope of its context, then you are not intelligent, IMHO. But I do not believe any human in this world is NOT intelligent, just someone who has a tainted definition of life.
So here is my suggestion to all you unemployed or job-security conscious people out there: Make yourself special, use your intelligence, and learn things with the intent of using them beyond the scope of their context. Not only will your expertise grow (hence becoming more of an asset), but you may end up creating something innovative.
...small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri...
In college, you'll hear a lot of talk about how engineering is worthless because it only pays some petty 5 figure salary. People like to talk about how you should start a business, and how real losers become engineers. Increasingly, there's a trend for good American engineers to try and get their MBA or JD. All in all, I find the situation really disappointing and hard to cope with. I got into engineering thinking that I would be able to build cool things and be creative.
People that run successful businesses must be good social engineers.
And Social Engineering, being the most difficult kind of engineering pays the most.
If you contribute to your company's success and help it to advance its interests and financial health, often making sacrifices of your own time to do so, then your company will reciprocate by making sacrifices in bad times to take care of you by not depriving you of your paycheck and benefits. That's the way I thought it worked.
Funny that, we got a nice speech today from our CTO or some guy who can walk around happily because he won't get outsourced. The speech focused on how we need to keep our performance levels "above the bar", or we'd be managed up or out. [Tangent: GOD I love that term, 'managed out' - HOW FREAKING AWESOME is that?! That's even better than right-sized!] then he goes on to tell us that no job is sacred, and that as a company who has to strive to cut a profit, if outsourcing is a more fiscal option, then they'll take it.
I'm pretty new so I didn't even think to point out the catch-22 he had presented us with. Work hard or get fired, but even if you do work hard, you may get outsourced.
Of course this is the truth, there's no two ways about it. Nevermind the questionable nature of a US company (enjoying US corporate laws, tariffs, quotas, et. al.) that has a majority of its workforce offshores, it's a simple fact that until something changes, be it now or thirty years from now, this is how it is. The flipside is that I have the right to work wherever the hell I want (provided they want me of course), and can leave them at any time.
Fresh out of college, yes, but I think I'll catch on to this twisted game soon enough. The question, however, is how do you maintain a sense of optimism in spite of all this?
Moo
Ok unemployment sucks, but this article is.. not that good but I digress.
:) Now I have a decent sized income bills are paid, and I get to play around with over 50 linux boxen hosting over 11,000 web sites.
I was unemployed 2 years ago on Oct 16th I knew it was coming, around March I realized (when quarterly earnings showed 1.9 million burned 4 million in the bank, can you say dot BOMB?). So I moved back to the small town I came from figuring it'd be easier to pay a $350 a month rent payment on unemployment than it would a $1300 a month payment in the Bay Area. I moved in July and telecommuted until the end.
I immediately started planning on starting my own business I was hoping to last until about Christmas 2001 but I got axed on Oct 16th instead. Oh well. Started my company, did some consulting here and there, made ends meet, got some customers, a few more, no more consulting was scraping by on the business, more customers, and more, and then tax time comes and I realize I owe uncle sam $13,000 in taxes (YIKES!).
Long story shorter, I get up when I want, go to bed when I want, leave when I want and stay at home with my 3 year old son (well he'll be 3 next week). I run my business from home.
I've always been a unix geek/linux nut/internet addict so why not make a business out of it, web hosting is the perfect job
My wife also just lost her job of over 10 years, company sold out and that's that (they were dying anyway so sell out or bankruptcy they chose sell out). So she stays home draws unemployment and plays with the kid too, a kid with two stay at home parents how lucky can he be? She also is doing some volunteer work.
When the unemployment runs out she might start her own business, she likes decorating cakes, or maybe open a daycare. Or get into real estate she likes going out and looking at nice houses, so why not sell 'em for a living. I told her don't look for another "job" do something you LIKE instead, the money isn't important the satisfaction is.
The economy truly sucks right now and I really would hate to be trying to find a job, but sometimes you might have better luck making your own job instead of looking for one.
--- www.f-theocean.com
I suggest that you look at your company in a different manner. The company can provide you and your family with opportunity. The opportunity to earn a paycheck and possibly learn something. When the company has no need for the job that you do or can find someone to do it better or cheaper you will not have a job with that company. On the flip side when the company is no longer offering you a good paycheck or opportunity you will quit. The relationship is really no more than that. The company is not a family, clan, or tribe, just an opportunity.
Stuart Eichert
Is America even "free enterprise"? Are you fucking kidding me? A country where a corrupt government regularly bails out it's richest? And gives billions of dollars to corporations, which immediately pay off corrupt CEO's. A country that doesn't give a shit about educatingg it's youth, because it's too busy gutting social programs and giving that money to Enron, Haliburton, et al. That's "freedom". Freedom means picking on the little guy. Apparently I'm supposed to understand that supporting a corrupt system is "freedom" to you. Call it what you want, I won't support it, and neither will a growing number of Americans. Let's not talk about fantasy land, I'm too busy trying to deal with the real world, I don't know what country you're talking about, but the country I'm living in is corrupt, and has problems that need fixing, and "freedeom" is the last thing that our business leaders are after. If you're too stupid to realize that, then I'm sorry for you.
Consider all of the years that Bush I and II were in the White House. For each and every one of those years, you know how many net new jobs were created? None! After each year of them being president, fewer people were employed at the end of the year. Bush recovery my ass.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
But at least it's income.
It doen't pay nearly as well as unemployment.
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Thankfully, the job market is gradually improving.
Remember, when you see the unemployment rate go down, it's not because people are finding jobs, it's because they've abandoned hope and are no longer trying to get a job, so they no longer get counted as "unemployed" - they're removed from the equation.
However, for those who are still looking, yeah, maybe it is starting to get better. I've got an interview tomorrow.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
That people are unemployed because there AREN'T ANY FUCKING JOBS TO BE FILLED, DON'T YOU? If there is a 7% unemployment, which is an understatment, it's really above 10%, then that means, that no matter how hard those people try, they are SOL. There just aren't jobs for that 10%, period. They can throw there shoulders back all they want, they can quack like a fucking duck for that matter, it's not going to make a bunch of jobs appear, stupid. According to your logic, all America has to do is throw it's shoulders back, and corporations are going to pull out of India, move back ashore, the government is going to clean up it's corruption, start investing in education, and everyone will be happy again.
I'm supposed to believe that your way of "not taking it for granted", is to promote an ideology that trivializes the plight of that 10+% that doesn't have a job? In other words, those poor people whose plight you are using, ironically, to trivialize their plight. You have to be the stupidest, most superstitious fool that I've met in a long time. Just because you worked in a children's hosptial and a job magically appeared doesn't mean that the same magic trick is going to work for everyone else. I know people that have been out of work for YEARS. I bet if you hopped on one leg and got a job the next day, you would be telling people to do that too.
If you're unemployed you don't have any money, if you're employed you don't have any time.
If you're retired, you have (some) money and time, but you're old. If you're young and independently wealthy, you suck and i hate you :)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Don't confuse the two. The days of corporate loyalty are long gone. Even very popular and successful business leaders of large and successful companies can not guarentee a job.
I view my employment as a mercenary contract. My loyalty is linked to my compensation. Don't get me wrong... I am loyal to my employer. But I don't do things for free.
1. Capitalism sucks as bad as communism. It just takes a little longer to realise...but you realise it well when you are fired and you can't find a job.
Making a comparatively huge wage for years, then spending a while unemployed before making another (comparatively) huge wage is much better than being forced to work in a tedious, menial, or back-breaking job for your whole life with no hope of ever escaping abject poverty. If that isn't clear to you, maybe you could use a stint in a poor country to help you see the real world. If you've never lived outside of the U.S., you've never seen what a hard life really is.
3. Companies sell their products with up to 90% profit, especially those that outsource production. And the profit fills the pockets of their owners
If you think that many companies make 90% profits, you obviously don't understand the costs of doing business. Any market where a company can repeatedly make a profit anywhere near that level is a market that will soon be flooded with competition. For a company to make actual profits even in the very low double-digits is very, very good.
7. If you ever realized how good rich people live, a revolution would be started in a minute.
If you've ever lived in a truly poor nation, you'd realize that you, by virtue of the fact that you're even posting on Slashdot, are likely within the wealthiest 5% of the entire world. The lifestyle accorded to an American working for minimum wage is literally an impossible dream to hundreds of millions of people.
9. If you ever realized that the rich people got rich by stealing,
Yes, we all know that poor people never obtain their means through criminal means.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Maybe for an encore, a bit more money could solve the drug problem, and improve student performance in our public schools!
Actually, a spending increase would definitely improve student performance. Spending more on education leads to more qualified teachers, better facilities, and smaller classes, all of which contribute to a better learning environment.
But what if you have a lot of technical skills? MacDonalds won't hire you because they're concerned that you'll run off the first instance that a better job shows up!
First of all who submits a resume to McDonalds? They have a little application you fill out and that's it. I have a ton of technical skills yet I still managed to get a job at Taco Bell. I was working their and fixing computers on the side. Fast food places are always hiring, and if you have technical skills they don't say "Hey this person is over qualified we can't hire them" they say "Hey this person is pretty smart lets hire them because they'll be a great employee."
The only time you'll ever give a fast food place a resume is for a management position, and the only way to get one of those is with past experience as a manager (or get hired as a regular employee and work your way up to manager.) If you really find yourself not able to get a fast food job you're too lazy to try, just show up and 99% of the time they will hire you and if they don't they'll send you to one of their stores that will (the taco bell I worked at was in desperate need of people, if anyone applied at one of the other 3 locations on staten island owned by our franchise they would be sent to where I worked.)
Rich people have much more influence over government than you do, and if you think that goverment is ever going to help you satisfy your envy, think again.
Believe you me, I was under no illusions there.. And I'm not saying "soak the rich". I'm saying "don't soak the rest of us to benefit the rich".
To get into making money from property today, you pretty much have to come up with the price of a house or condo that you can rent out.
Not really.. it just depends on how leveraged you want to be in the early going. It's actually much easier to break into the property market than most people think, and you have to start with shit-boxes with short-term neg-am mortgages hoping the value holds or increases. I shifted all of my invested money into property shortly before the bubble burst and my properties have so far held value (even slightly increased while others have dropped) but this was soley due to location. So far that is the only thing between me and a trailer park.
Dividends don't really help me here, only a capital gains reduction would (if I flip short-term, which I'm not doing).
Anyway, this isn't available to the majority of the populace. The middle and lower income folks just never see the benefit of a reduction of dividend taxes. This was intended to put more money in the pockets of business with the hope that business would spend that money creating jobs. In this economic environment, all it does is make business keep its cash reserves high for a little longer, hoping to ride out decreased revenue.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
It is evident that he HAS spent a substantial amount of time over the years improving his skills, to the end that he has better (certainly broader, likely deeper) IT skills than 99% of Slashdot readers.
And his reward for this? He's too expensive. The "improve your skills" meme is not successful when facing offshore competition at 10% of the wage rate.
The skills he has to improve in order to stay employed are those that cannot be shipped offshore, like becoming a plumber or an electrician. Of course, this means he is required to throw away a career he has invested over 30 years in, along with all that vaunted training and experience.
I would like to think there is a case for a domestic IT industry, but until the dismal sciences recognize the benefits of a diverse local economy over a specialized global economy, all the arguments are going to be slanted towards cutting business expense by gutting the middle classes.
One of the major reasons Linux is so successful outside the US is that foreign governments recognize that it would be nice to have an IT industry of their own, one that does not send all the profits overseas. They're not switching to Linux to be better positioned to export IT jobs to India or China.
Look, you want a simple life, go get it. You want a short week, go for it. You want a 35 hour job and can't get one, start your own business and see if you can provide one.
It's not enough that 46 cents of every dollar my company produces goes into a government coffer before hitting one of the employees bank acounts?
How many chains do you want to put on us.
Without excessive government interference, we'd be twice the size we are now (read that as "creating more jobs" for those of you that believe in our Marxist/Fascist economy).
The middle class is getting squeezed by your policies. The government bails out/subsizes the biggest businesses to keep the stop market rising, which shifts tax money to the richest Americans (because they own stocks). Then the tax code hits people generating income.
So: produce wealth, get it taxed away. Simply own wealth, and much of that money comes back to you.
The government taxes productive businesses to give it to unproductive ones to "keep existing jobs."
Sure, the Steel Tariffs saved jobs in the steel industry. For every job saved, how many jobs were lost/not created in the automotive industry because of higher steel prices. How many jobs were not created in corporate America because the company car-fleet costs more than it should? How many jobs were lost in the computer industry because consumers had less discretionary spending because their car lease costs an extra $10-$20/month.
All this meddling destroys economic growth, and is killing those of us willing to work 60-100 hours/week greating the economic engine that the rest of you live off of.
Alex
Actually, a spending increase would definitely improve student performance. Spending more on education leads to more qualified teachers, better facilities, and smaller classes, all of which contribute to a better learning environment.
The evidence indicates otherwise. Across the board, the school districts that spend the most per student are inner-city, failing systems like Atlanta, Washington, DC, Richmond, VA, Detroit, etc. -- usually several thousand more per student than the neighboring suburban districts. The extra money tends to go toward (1) gigantic, corrupt administrative bureaucracies and (2) security.
The single most important factor for a good learning environment is the presence of interested parents. Money doesn't help that.
I agree, and I'll even say I don't understand how anyone of even lukewarm intelligence can blame the dot-bomb collapse on Bush. Don't get me wrong - I don't *like* Bush, and there's *plenty* that he directly answers for - but this isn't it.
The economy was already heading south by the end of 2000, and the crash was, by that time, completely inevitable. Christ himself (I mean Greenspan) couldn't prevent it.
So if you actually feel like blaming a President for the collapse, Clinton's your man.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
If you have to worry about it I have three suggestions for you:
I'm sick of people complaining about how they are constantly facing all these great losses because they're too fucking retarded to learn that they just shouldn't be in the IT Business. If you are constantly facing the challenges of losing your shit, get out.
Make room for the people who deserve, love, and are good at IT jobs. I don't care if you love computers, if you are a retard, get out. If you can't hold down a job, get out. If you have been unemployed for more than a year, go to realty school and become a realtor.
There are two types of people that I hate in this world, those who aren't stupid but act stupid because it's easier and those who believe they're entitled to shit they don't earn.
You sound exactly like the latter, and I hope you are not.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Nowhere. Your government uses the "save the world" rant to get you onside whatever war you are in at that point; it's easier to get civilian support if they believe they are the good guys.
The world doesn't want us there, why are we interfereing all over the world.
The same reason that any other country interferes in another: personal gain. This can be in pure profit or political/strategic gain.
I agree wth you on Afganistan. It involved American lives. We had a right to retaliate.
It wasn't a retaliation. The Afgan war was in planning prior to 9/11. I believe it was around June/July when the Indian ambassidor was told by the US to expect a war in Afganistan "before the snow starts falling". 9/11 was used as propaganda to get the public onside.
The gain? Well, Harliburton, the company directly linked to the current US regime, has been attempting to build a cross-Afgan pipe line, to ship the oil resources of the former USSR states to the north to the Persian gulf. When the Taliban awarded the contract to an Argentine company instead, the adminstration fell out with them. Prior to that, they were best-of-buddies, always in negotiations etc for the lucrative contract. The pipeline was under construction by US interests before the war was over, guarded by US troops.
But Iraq? There was nothing going oon there at the time.
Ah, you miss the point there. Question: where did the majority of 9/11 hijackers come from? Saudi Arabia. Where does the US rely mostly for foreign oil? Saudi Arabia.
Back in the initial gulf war, the US convinced the Saudi's that positioning US troops in Saudi was neccessary in case Saddam advanced further than Kuwait. It is rumoured that the satelite inteligence shown to them of troops near their border was faked by the US. Previously, the US only supported the Saudi dictatorship with weapons and financing, in return, the US was able to access the oil. The US actually helped this dictatorship to power, after the previous democracy (yes, democracy) was toppled (again with US assistance) because it wasn't forthcoming to US interests.
When the troops arrived, that's when the anti-US terrorism there really kicked off, away from the purely religious fanatics that hate all non-Islam, and into a more mainstream position. Al Qaeda's stated goal is to remove the US from Saudi, allowing them to control their own government. The "hate freedom & democracy" thing is a US propaganda lie, to prevent you from knowing why they hate you so much. If anything, that's exactly what they want, although their idea of Freedom is a bit more strict than ours.
Anyway, back to Iraq. After Saudi, the second largest oil reserves are in Iraq. Under Saddam's regime and UN sanctions, this oil was essentially out of play for the west, increasing dependance on Saudi, a state with huge ties to terrorism and anti-US feeling.
With Saddam gone, and a democratic government in Iraq, this oil is now available. The Saudi troops have already mostly moved to Iraq, which will become the new US reserve of power in the middle east. There will be a large US army stationed there for many years to come, even if the guerilla war ends before then.
So, in essence, the west has actually conceeded to the terrorists goal. Of course, it's not going to work out. I estimate that the story of Saudi Arabia is going to be replayed in Iraq. There have been some good documentaries on recently on the BBC, and while there is some support for the war, the majority of the population were against it, and have lost family. Note we've never heard Iraqi soldier casualty figures on our news, they are very high. If the US is not careful, the hate for them could grow to the point that Iraqi becomes the source of a large amount of terrorism.
American history shows that it is neccessary to disagree with you government if it dooing wrong
And n