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."

Comments

Another Benefit of Being Unemployed

[inertia187]

Becoming a Slashdot Addict

I have time to become intimately familiar with all of the Slashdot memes like FP!, GNAA, In Soviet Russia, and CowboyNeal. I know all of the rules for them and when they're just being faked by copy-cats. Sure, sure, I can stop any time.

Re:Another Benefit of Being Unemployed

[Billly Gates]

I was more of a slashdot addict when I was employed. Now I have more time on my hands to do other things then sit here all day.

Re:Another Benefit of Being Unemployed

[KingRamsis]

the other day I caught myself telling a coworker "you are trolling the meeting you should be mod'ed down" ofcourse I got a blank empty void look on his face.

Re:Another Benefit of Being Unemployed

[ebay troll]

Excellent insults. Very pleased with seller's wit. Also informed buyer of availability of "0$" to refer to Open Source. Looking forward to doing business again.

Re:Another Benefit of Being Unemployed

[andyt]

Uh.. for the sake of those of us who haven't quite learned every new acronym, what is FP? :[

I am living the dream. Finally I can, without fear of being offtopic, do what I have always dreamed of but have never dared...

FIRST POST!!!!!!!!111!!111!1!!!!!!

I can now die happy.
Thank you :-)

The guy has no job and you say...

[JusTyler]

Well worth the reading time as a small break in a busy day

He has no job, way to rub it in, you inconsiderate clod! ;)

Odd Todd

[corz]

The greatest of all unemployed people will always be Odd Todd.

This man is my idol, and anyone who has ever been unemployed should appreciate "staring at the wall for an hour after waking 'early' up at 10:17, drinking a pot of coffay." I donated a few bucks to help his cause, and you should too, after all, he is unemployed :)

Been there, am doing that

[JayBlalock]

Laid off in April. The usual. Have to say, pretty much everything on this list rings really true. Although in my case, the biggest benefit was:

Time to read up on any obscure or interesting subject that sprang to mind.

I think I advanced my self-education more in the last few months than I had in years previously. I know a whole lot more about our legal and political systems, can tell you all sorts of fun things about Wicca and Buddhism, know more about more obscure European bands than I care to name, and I'm even getting closer to really understanding why the Middle East is the way it is.

But things are looking up. Getting out of the cube farms seem to have freed my mind. I've been taking on odd freelance jobs. I've just gotten hired by a tutoring company which'll let me more or less make my own hours. Been doing some freelance writing. I'm not out of the woods yet, but if things keep going the way they are, I may be able to build up enough contacts and experience to make a good enough living without ever stepping foot in an office, and 3/4 of it from home.

I feel oddly like the Campbellian hero having passed through the Cave. (Week of May 15th: Read "Hero of a Thousand Faces")

So, just to chime in with the message of this article, if you're unemployed, take heart. Look at it as an opportunity. If you've got the money to ride on for a bit, DON'T spend all your time looking for yet another cube. Use the time to boost your knowledge or skills.

Re:Been there, am doing that

[JayBlalock]

But ultimately, it IS all about food. We're plotting to get food, one way or another. (and shelter, and sex)

The problem, ultimately, is that as we moved away from the insular village\tribal life, the idea of people's contributions to society became more and more abstract. At its heart, the most romantic definition of money is that it's a symbol of how much you have put into society. (I know, I know) Without trying to slip into some idealized Marxist fantasy of a world-tribal culture where everyone does exactly what work they want, and is rewarded with a decent lifestyle in return, money is pretty much the closest you can get.

Those people who have the ability to make money entirely on their own are, ultimately, in the minority. Not bragging here - I have a real problem with self-motivation that's a hinderance. Many people simply don't have the resources to work for themselves. But more than that, as our world gets more streamlined, more efficient, there simply are not enough "fun" jobs to go around. Once we were a huge nation of millions of farmers, now we have corporate owned farms with thousands of workers.

But you can't get rid of it without getting rid of all the infrastructure we take for granted - power, the Internet, running water, etc etc. Every modern convenience creates a new category of menial drudge work that SOMEONE has to do.

It's pretty much an unsolvable problem. If you have the resources to get out from under the corporate thumb, then more power to you. But for our world to function as it does, large numbers of people have to stay put.

Yeah right.

[sakusha]

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.

Re:Yeah right.

[Triv]

Ever try to get a minimum wage job when you have a BS degree?

Have you tried working at a bookstore? They crave people like that because they're smart and desperate. Sounds like a joke; it's not - I used to work with a guy at Shakespeare and Company who had a masters in english lit and was making 6.25 an hour like the rest of us. :)

Triv

The reality of popcorn for the jobless

[JusTyler]

Speaking of things you don't need, what about that tub of buttered popcorn

Popcorn is actually an ideal foodstuff if you're on a very tight budget. It's SO cheap!

I bought myself a popcorn making machine for $20. Basically it's a big "hot air generating machine". You throw your popcorn kernels in, they get heated up and blown around for five minutes, then they all pop and out tumbles the popcorn.

You can buy a bag with two lbs of kernels for about a dollar. Lasts me about 15 gigantic bowls of popcorn. Keeps your regular too. High in fibre.

So you pay about 7 cents a bowl, which is a good stomach filler in the evening, and a cent or two for the electricity needed. Popcorn is a bargain, particularly if you like it plain, or with some salt thrown over it (as I do). Just make it YOURSELF.

Irony deficient

[watchful.babbler]

Surely I'm not the only one who finds a dark amusement in seeing both "The benefits of being unemployed" and "Where do I find an honest headhunter?" showing up simultaneously on the Slashdot front page.

Re:Yep, the benefits of you being unemployed...

[DigiShaman]

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.

Kind of unimaginative....

[puppetman]

What about,

- working on that interesting open-source software project. Good for the resume as well

- do some volunteering (hey - just go to the park and pick up garbage for an hour or two, till the unionized city employees chase you off)

- get in shape (running is cheap, and so are push-ups)

- eat better; too broke to eat out, so buy lots of veggies; kick the coffee and beer habit (too expensive)

- go to the library and get out all the "classics" (whatever your definition of a classic might be) and read them. No essay at the end required, unless you really want to.

Time like that should be used in a positive way. The silver lining around the dark cloud. And when you go for interviews, let them know what you've been doing - makes you look like a well rounded person who knows how to organize his/her time.

Re:Kind of unimaginative....

[Yaztromo]

What about, ...

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.

A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[randyest]

The article runs the gamut, from the mildly amusing:

Some of those benefits are obvious, and I could have anticipated them even before a supervisor tapped me on the shoulder and said he needed to talk to me about something. ("Do you have a minute?" he asked. What would have happened if I'd said no, that I was too busy?)

To the not at all funny but trying really hard (Snuffy Smith! Egads):

There was a character in the Snuffy Smith cartoon strip of many years ago who retired but would still get up at the crack of dawn and go down to the mill every morning just so he could thumb his nose at the place as the get-to-work whistle blew.

It does include a few good, creative ideas useful even for the gainfully emplyed:

Back in the glorious paycheck days, I used to think about telling [telemarketers and salespersons] I'd just lost my job. Actually, sometimes I really did tell them that, because I'm a cowardly kinda guy and it's easier to fib than to be firm. Now I don't have to fib. When I tell them I'm unemployed, they hang up or back away quickly, terrified of infection by the job-loss virus.

As well as a few really stupid comment that make me wonder about this guy's sense of self:

My Beard It's still growing! Well, of course it is, you say. Let me explain that, on an emotional, irrational level, I still feel relieved every morning when I realize that I still need to shave. It's still growing! Despite the way I frequently feel, I haven't really been unmanned.

But, it also has quite a bit of offtopic, annoying, and really rather insulting partisan political nonsense:

These [fake-job advertising scammers] are rotten enough to be members of George W. Bush's cabinet. Encountering them has taught me something about the depths of human nature.

But perhaps the greatest benefit of being unemployed is this. I now feel absolutely free to despise George W. Bush. Oh, of course I despised him before I lost my job. But now I know I'm not alone.

And it closes with a really stupid anti-Bush link. Sigh. Bring a salt shaker if you're going to read it all.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[inertia187]

I blame the French.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[be-fan]

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.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[driftingwalrus]

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.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[Golias]

I've been working shit jobs for two whole years now. Temping, laboring, substitute teaching. If you have any kind of education and experience at all, I assure you that you still feel unemployed when you are that badly underemployed.

Were it not for my sporadic tech consulting jobs, I would probably be forced to throw the last 15 years of my life out the window, and start pursuing a new career.

Thankfully, the job market is gradually improving. I've had more interviews for programming jobs in the last 2 months than I did in the previous 22, and I'm expecting an offer sheet in the mail from at least one of them this week. I suspect that, a year from now, people will be talking about the "Bush recovery," and whoever emerges from the Democratic primary is going to be scrambling for issues to run on.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[Phroggy]

But at least it's income.

It doen't pay nearly as well as unemployment.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[Phroggy]

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.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[danheskett]

A few points:

We're hemorrhaging 400k jobs a month,
No, not exactly. The most recent month statistics shows a net loss of 93,000 jobs. Check it out yourself here.

consumer confidence is going down
In the link above, you'll notice that one month of stastics shows a decline. The trend was upwards all summer long. Essentially things trended upwards over the summer, and are starting to trend downward. One month or two months or even three months is a very small trend. It is *NOT* considered a big economic indicator to have a month of declined consumer confidence.

we're spending more on social services in Iraq then in the U.S
That's patently absurd. The entire budget for the war, social services, rebuilding and operational expenses for the next 12 months does not exceed the cost of one month of social services in the US. Second, are you somehow suggesting that the social welfare of minorities like the Iraqis and muslims is somewhat less valuable than an unemployed person in the US? Which is worth more? Is one okay to be unemployed and the other not? Why? One the surface your statement belies a latent racism/nationalism that is offensive at best and abhorrent at worse.

top administration officials are leaking the names of covert CIA agents
One agent is in question. It is two "senior officals" in question. The persons status has not been necessarily declared to be covert. Not every analyst in the Operations Directorate is a spy. It is likely the husband of the outed agent tipped Novak off himself. Wilson told Novak that he went to Niger at the suggestion of his wife. Novak called around to confirm the story. Additionally, before Novak broke the story it was common knowledge that Plame worked for the CIA. Read Novak's defense of the situation and you'll probably change your mind on the situation.

we have a humongous deficit and an administration that doesn't give a rats ass
Deficts are a long-term problem, not a short-term problem. What you seem to forget is that the world economy and the US economy specifically are cyclical. Boom-bust-boom-bust etc. Look at over time and you'll see essentially its a 9-10 year cycle. I do not agree with the spending patterns of Bush or even of the last administration (or any in the last 40 years really), however, to suggest that the current administration cares not for deficits is false. To solve current deficits would require drastic short term action that is not justified by the severity of the problem. A deficit of 5% of the budget is not a serious long-term concern.

Next November you're going to be enjoying a democratic president back in the white house
Of course, that is possible. Anything is at this point time. But it is speculation, just FYI.

I know, the freepers and little green footballers and NRO and all you guys will attempt to smear the shit out of anyone who shows up but I don't think it will matter
Thats an odd statement, but I dont quite follow. NRO (I assume you mean the NRA?) is as far as organizations go blisteringly forthright about how it selects to endorse candidates. They rate candidates based on issues determined by the executive board and membership at large. They assign points on a 100-point scale and then give out a grade-letter. Are you suggesting that somehow the NRA doesn't have the right to lobby citizens to vote for candidates they support? Are the 1 Million + memberso the NRA not allowed to express their collective political opinions?

Kiss president fucktard good bye.
Bush may well be voted out of office in favor of a democrat. But the bigger issue here is why yourself and the author of the article puts so much weight on the office of President of the US.

The United States is not a central

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[craigtay]

If you can call a 500 billion dollar defeceit "recovery" then I guess we are ahead of schedule.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[gdarklighter]

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.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[Zakabog]

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.)

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[Penguinshit]

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.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[constantnormal]

You apparently failed to read the guy's resume.

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.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[VT_hawkeye]

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.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[Xerithane]

I'm sorry, but when I'm constantly facing the loss of MY home and MY standard of living, I have to think about MY family first.

If you have to worry about it I have three suggestions for you:

1. Life insurance, accidental death.
   
2. New line of work.
   
3. Stop worrying.

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.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[dustman]

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!

Last year, I got a job stocking shelves at the Home Depot. When I applied, I was up front about the facts: I am a computer person, looking for a computer job. When I find one, you'll get two weeks notice. I am also a hard worker.

You just have to find the right places. And the job wasn't that bad, either... It was nice to do something physical.

Re:A thinly veiled political rant, actually

[glesga_kiss]

Where is it written that we, as Americans, are responsible for the rest of world.

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

CATO

[C10H14N2]

No, the CATO institute would probably have a paper on the moral duty of the unemployed to increase downward pressure on wages and how the recently homeless have merely chosen to realize capital gains by selling their houses to pay for food. The Heritage Foundation would no doubt follow up with a paper on how eliminating the capital gains tax would then be in the best interest of the future homeless population. It's the compassionately conservative thing to do.

unemployment

[Unominous Coward]

The boss told me that if I'm late for work again tomorrow, I shouldn't bother turning up on Monday.

Woohoo! Four day weekend!!

For perks of being unemployed without the guilt...

[goodbye_kitty]

For all the perks of being unemployed without the guilt, frustration and lack of income that it brings with it...Do a PhD! ......back to the grind, another day of back-breaking research ahead...ooops...dont feel like working, i think ill go home and sleep instead....better tell the boss...wait...there is no boss...hehehe....my paper is not due till next month, ill just do it the night before.

Who said the Slashdot editors weren't smart ?

[tmark]

After all, they're smart enough to realize that articles about being unemployed are likely to be of great interest to a large proportion of those people spending the most time reading Slashdot.

Way to go after your core readership guys !

"simple living"

[penguin7of9]

There is actually an entire movement of people that have discovered this. Look for "simple living" on Google. "The Simple Living Guide" by Luhrs is pretty nice reading, too.

Even if you don't want to adopt frugality and simple living right now, just knowing that you could can make you worry a lot less about the future.

Bitter much?

[The Tyro]

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.

Everything this man says is true.

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently had quit a job at a large fortune 500 company developing systems software for a shaky startup. I figured, I'm young, so why not give a less structured job a try where the fruits of my labor would come back and benefit me. Well, long story short, this particular startup had some issues; there wasn't a decent chemistry, and the management was somewhat capricious, fickle, inexperienced, and unaware of just what was involved in having a legitimate, organized business. (In fact, I think unemployment caused me to realize the importance of great management.) So, with legal dilemmas and financial dilemmas at hand, I decided maybe I made a mistake joining this particular venture. So, I ended up unemployed. I stopped going out because of a lack of health insurance, and COBRA didn't really cut it, because the insurance premiums were ridiculously high.

I ended up finding another job, but I went through everything the man who wrote the featured article went through. I was dating a girl at one point; when she knew before that I had been making money, things were fine. However, as soon as she found out that I was in trouble and that I needed employment, suddenly I became a lot less attractive and we went our separate ways. (She's now dating another guy with a nicer car and presumably more money in the bank.) Everyone kept insisting that my failures were somehow my fault. Perhaps they were, but I like to think that in the grand scheme of things, this little experience of unemployment was to teach me a lesson about the value of a job.

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. Instead, I found insane market deadlines, invasive work spaces, no offices, ridiculous cubicles, no room for creativity. But, one thing is for sure, ... unemployment taught me to have more respect for having *a* job. I just am wondering how long it will be before the pendulum swings from "job is good" to "fuck it, maybe I need the fear of unemployment or business failure to drive me into a state of action again."

Anyway, I wish the best of luck to anyone else out there in the same situation.

Re:Everything this man says is true.

[mc6809e]

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.

Puss

[HarveyBirdman]

I have worked steadily every single day of my life since I was four years old. That coal mine taught me to be a man, and it put hair on my chest.

Yes but could you actually quit?

[roninbix]

I've gotten to the point where I wonder if I couldn't make something really cool happen on my own. Except of course I'm on salary so I end up working around 2 times what I should for the job. Add to that significant travel expectations and I just have no time to advance any ideas or any side ventures on my own.

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?

Re:Yes but could you actually quit?

[cbdavis]

If I had 5 years cash I'd be gone in an instant.
Ive worked in computers since 1969 and have only
a heart attack to show for it. I can never retire and will probably die at my desk.

Dont do this to yourself. Take off for a long time, learn photography, go to culinary college, volunteer as a computer mentor at a local school, etc.

I'd give anything to have trained as a plumber growing up. But no, I had to be the geek and go into computer shit.

Unemployed? Can't find a job? Try evolving.

[protogoogoo69]

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.

The most important benefit

[techno-vampire]

He left out the mst important benefit of all: the grapes are sour, anyway.

Corporate Loyalty

[The Kow]

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?

What I "Learned" from being out of work

[SupahVee]

1 - That while average Joe Worker makes 66% more salaray than he did in 1980, Joe CEO is making 1996% more than _he_ did in 1980.

2 - that having to sell your house after 8 months of being unemployed, SUCKS, worse than anything you can imagine.

3 - That moving a thousand miles away from a place you consider home for a job fixing Windows boxen is about as fun as it sounds.

4 - That companies do job postings with no intention of filling them.

5 - That of all the oddball things that helped while having a mortgage, a newborn and no job, Wife's Unionized insurance plan is at the top of the list.

6 - that I can now be lazy at work, and get fired, or bust my ass at work, and get fired.

7 - that startng over is as shitty as you think it is.

Yeah it sucks...

[Grimster]

Ok unemployment sucks, but this article is.. not that good but I digress.

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 :) 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.

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.

Depressing read.

[zapp]

This is one of the most depressing things I've read in atleast a month. This guy lives in Denver, an hour away from me.
His resume is filled with the same buzzword bullshit as mine, only more of it and with more experience.

I feel right now like I just lost everything in the stock market. 4 years ago when I started college (investing in a skillset), those skills were climbing in value at a good rate. I remember being told that I'd be making an easy 50-60k right out of college - as in the day I graduate.

Now the prices on my skills have collapsed. What once went for $60/share now goes for $2.50. Everyone knows Java. Or Perl, or SQL, or blah blah blah.

I want a real career. Without computers. Without the corporation.

Fuck this.

Company != family

[seichert]

The real benefit of this recession is that more and more people are starting to realize the difference between company and family. Your family members love you and will remain loyal to you in good times and bad. They have a vested interest in your success and happiness. They want to see you succeed at work and enjoy the fruits of your labor. The company you work for does not love you and is not loyal to you. That does not mean that individuals at your company are not compassionate and loving. However, they are not your family members.

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.

People know corruption when they see it.

[composer777]

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.

Al Franken said it best

[Raul654]

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.

Re:Al Franken said it best

[Mikey-San]

As a matter of fact, when the Clinton Administration moved into the White House, their audit team discovered that things were far worse than they knew:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cl in ton/chapters/2.html

The excerpt:

Reich: Well, we knew the deficit was large. In fact, years before [Reagan budget chief] David Stockman had referred to '$200 billion-a-year deficits as far as the eye could see." And during the campaign, the president did talk about the importance of reducing the deficit, but it had been of second order priority to investing in education, in job skills, in health care, and a lot of other things that the country needed to do. But, obviously, when the president is on the cusp of actually governing the country, he's got to know how bad that deficit projection really is, how much damage has been done, what he's inherited in terms of an economic mess.

And so I headed over to the Treasury Department to talk to officials over there, officials in the Bush administration, and try to get the best estimate I possibly could as to how bad the numbers really looked, how bad that deficit was going to be the next year and likely to be in years to come.

Frontline: And you found out it was going to be worse than you had been told, and on December 7th I think it was, you go to tell the president the news. What's his reaction?

Reich: The president was not happy when he heard that the projected deficit was much larger than we had assumed, larger than we had been told, larger than the Bush administration had told the public. He knew that it meant that we couldn't do everything that he wanted to do, everything that he had promised the public. Now, he was both upset, but he was also -- I remember this very vividly, and I was surprised at the time because he was also kind of excited. He said, "Gee, that's a great challenge. We're going to really, really have to work on that." And I remember sitting there thinking, "Now, wait a minute. This is going to set a lot of our plans back. Certainly this is going to put a major crimp in all of this public investment.

Re:What kinda 'diot would want to be unemployed?

[Ohreally_factor]

Being unemployed and/or underemployeed is really kind of cool. You really ought to try it for 6 months or so. I don't live in a ghetto, I'm not next to prostitutes or crackhouses. My needs are really pretty modest I've found. If I was trying to raise a family, and if someone with those kinds of responsibilities has lost a job, you have my sympathy. I live with roommates. I drive a 12 year old car. I cook most of my meals. I steal music. Oops. I mean, I infringe copyrights. =) I do occassional low stress jobs to pay the bills. My standard of living has plummeted, but I really don't care. I'm much happier. Let the Indians or the Chinese work their asses off for a change. They need the money more than i do.

Keep dream'in

[Colonel Panic]

I suspect that, a year from now, people will be talking about the "Bush recovery," and whoever emerges from the Democratic primary is going to be scrambling for issues to run on.

For the last two years I've been telling myself that things would be better by this time next year. Now I really doubt it. With the Gartner Group saying that over the next 18 months 10% of the remaining IT jobs are heading overseas I really don't think it'll be any better next year at this time. With consumer confidence back down where it was just before the war started because so many people are afraid they'll lose their job, I really doubt things'll be much better next year. With us spending hundreds of Billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq, I really doubt it. But maybe I'll be wrong again this year?

Nah, I doubt it. Bye, bye Bushie, looks like it'll be a democrat next time.

You do understand..

[composer777]

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.

Well duh!

[Daetrin]

The _only_ disadvantage to being unemployed is that you don't have any money. (At least if you're like most of us and aren't independently wealthy)

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 :)

Re:Why be loyal? Your employer is scum.

[_Sprocket_]

Several years ago, someone posted an interesting observation on this site:

Your employer owns your job. You own your career.

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.

Re:Simple truths

[NerveGas]

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

Not just a rant it's true...

[Savage-Rabbit]

<rant>

This is true, my brother in law decided to get a new job and got the idea to move into locomotive maintenance (he's a truck mechanic). He called up a number of train operators in the UK and was told at every turn that they don't train people any more, he should go to Virgin trains (apparently the only ones in the UK who still train/educate personnel), complete their training course and then when his contract with Virgin expires they would be happy to hire him. So in summary the training program of every train operator in the UK consists of poaching the people trained/educated by the few haples idiots in the corporate community (in this case Virgin trains) who still still live up to their obligation to provide their field of industry with a new crop of trained professionals. This attitude is pretty typical for much of Europe, of course I dont know how things are in the United States but I can't imagine they are much different. Companies are screaming for:

- Experienced personnel

They are not:

- Providing training programmes
- Entry level jobs

Apparently the overhead involved in training new personnel or hiring somebody with less than a minimum of 5 years experience is too great for this to be a viable option for modern European companies. Just getting an engineering degree is insufficient. They only ray of sunshie here is that they are prepared to hire you, even if you are not especially experienced, if you have a set of cetificates the length of your arm. Unfortunately most certificates are obscenely expensive to get, they are slightly less obscenely expensive to maintain and in Germany at least, where I used to work, many companies seem to expect you to pay for your vast portfolio of obscenely expensive certificates out of your own pocket and to do the studying on your own time. And with all of this plus the ever present danger of being dropped like hot potato (ie getting your ass fired) every time one of the CO's feel in a mood to draw the magic cost cutting sword from its stone and go on a crusade, they expect you to be loyal to the company. It kind of makes me glad that after 6 months of being unemployed I finally found a job with one of those haples idiot companies that will still hire people with limited experience.

</rant>

Have karma will burn it!

Americans who have work work too much

[Nice2Cats]

(I realize that my subject line might sound cynical to those out of work; sorry for that.)

There is actually an entire movement of people that have discovered this.

There is at least an entire continent that has discovered this: Europe. Industrialized nations all of them, the top nations on all quality of life rankings, little violence, though a bit crowded. Now check the hours they work. Now realize that, by law, they have weeks and weeks of vacation time -- if I remember correctly, it is 20 days by federal law for Germany. You have 35 hour work weeks in a lot of places. You have paid maternity leave and sick leave. You can't be fired at the drop of a hat.

Why does this work? You don't buy every piece of crap that some ad throws in your face. Consumer spending is two-thirds of the U.S. economy. In Germany (to stick with the example), it is about one third. You don't pay your CEOs so much money that a company's pay chart has to have a logarithmic scale: Read up on what the Daimler managers at DaimlerChrysler get and what the Chrysler managers get. Try to explain -- with a straight face -- why some Chrysler manager who couldn't keep his company from being de facto swallowed gets more money than they guy who is now his boss.

It used to be that the U.S. economists pointed to all of this and said, yeah, sure, you have universal medical care while we have children who can't get antibiotics, you are home with your families while we are putting in more hours than the Japanese, and you are getting tan on Spain's beaches five weeks out of every year while we don't dare take those pitiful few days of vacation we have. But your unemployment is high and not coming down.

Well, guess what: This is basically going to be a jobless recovery. Maybe some of Europe's prices can't compete with the U.S., but nobody can compete with India, and even India can't compete with China, or government-sponsored slave labor in Burma. Your job is ending up in Asia just like everybody else's. And do you really think that it is going to come back in our lifetime? Fool.

Tell me again why you are spending all that time at work while those Europeans are at home after 35 hours and playing with their children. What is the justification? More to the point, what is wrong with you? Why are you supporting, maybe even defending this system instead of trying to change it?

Remember when Tyler Durden told you that you are not your job?

Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they really don't need.

Fight Club, book (which this quote is from) and film, are so hated by the establishment not because of the violence, but because the CEOs and such ilk are deathly afraid that the American middle class will figure out that it isn't worth it -- that the Europeans (though politically they might be loathsome cowards), might have the right idea here. That you don't need to by the latest gadget, follow the newest fad, buy the newest gizmo. They might decide that quality of life is more important than blowing their paycheck on crap just to keep the GDP up by one more decimal point. They might decide they don't want to be bombarded with ads morning, noon, and night.

They might not want to make their carreers the center of their lives anymore. They might not want to define themselves by the job they have. They might not be content anymore to start living only after they have stopped working.

It's you choice, really. The U.S. is just about the only real democracy on the planet (ironically, all of those Europeans are living in republics). You can change the system, and get this country's priorities straight -- once you have gotten yours straight.

Leave the government out of it...

[alexhmit01]

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

A rant that doesn't even make sense

[siskbc]

And it closes with a really stupid anti-Bush link. Sigh. Bring a salt shaker if you're going to read it all.

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.

sleep...

[kidlinux]

As a student one of the most important things I've learned is getting up early. That is, not sleeping in. Getting up by 8am every day makes me more productive than I would have ever guessed. Any later than that, and my day is toast. It's strange.

An even better combination is getting up bloody early and going to the gym. My gym opens at 6:30am, and I'm there when the doors open. A jog and some good stretching is a great way to get fired up for the day. Some weights too, if I have time. I did this in the summer before work too. Makes my day much better.

I even did it when I was home from school and before I started work. You'd be surprised at how nice mornings can be.

Whatever you do, don't sleep in! (well, maybe on the weekends once in a while ;) Seriously, getting up early makes a big difference. Even when I'm fartin around on my computer. I though hackin code was all about stayin up late - it's all about gettin up early! It's just a matter of self-control. You're workin on somethin and you just wanna keep goin - but it's that much better with a fresh mind in the early morning. Some problems I've spent hours on the night before I'll wake up the next day and solve in 5 minutes. It's crazy.

Try it!