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When to Leave That First Tech Job
An anonymous reader writes "Chris Wilson has an interesting piece about a scenario all CompSci/Engineering students dread, getting a job out of college and having it quickly turn sour. He writes: 'The first layoff is tough. After bending over backward, after being a loyal employee, this is the reward? To summarize how I felt: Disillusioned.' He discusses warning signs you should look for in your own work environment that point toward "Getting out". An interesting read, especially for aspiring engineers or engineers out on their first job."
Relevant quote:
Nuke plants do explode.
The reactor cores themselves don't(not in an atomic way at least, but I could imagine a bizzare failure where water got in, turned to steam fast, and exploded the core), but the overall plant is quite capable of exploding violently and spreading fallout over a very large area, essentially the worst case scenario for a nuclear power plant failure is that it becomes a very large "dirty bomb".
When I was a code monkey at a manufacturing company in the midwest, it was well-known that we were going to go through a down-sizing. But nobody bothered telling anyone when. The first date given was in September. September came and went without any problems. The next date given was in early December. Then in the week between Thanksgiving and the first week of December my team held their team "christmas" meeting. We were doing the 'gift-exchange-thing' and then afterwards holding our monthly team meeting. So, we exchange gifts, then during the meeting part we were assigning upcoming projects. As the meeting went on, two things occurred to me: 1) I wasn't being assigned any projects; 2) the projects I was working on were being given to other people!!!!!! Talk about a hint.
It turned out that the company pushed off their downsizing until AFTER the holidays. So, I got paid to do nothing for the month of December. When January came along I was given a severance package for 3 months plus my official release date wasn't until Feb. 1. Part of the severance package was a 'free' out-placement service. By the time I got home that day (I stopped at a few bars before going home to party a bit) I had 4 messages from headhunters; 2 guaranteed interviews. Within 2 weeks I had another job to start in Mid-Feb. I took a few months off. Played lots of video games. Drank lots of beer. Enjoyed being laid-off.