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(tye)Re: Surviving Layoffs

by tye (Sage)
on May 30, 2001 at 21:08 UTC ( [id://84309]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: Surviving Layoffs
in thread Surviving Layoffs

For years (in college and for a while afterward), I rarely lived in the same building for more than one year at a time, by choice, even during the 5 years right after college when I worked for this one small company.

Then that company laid off 1/3 of the employees1 so my new wife and I gave away our 4 cats so we could move in with my parents while I looked for a new job. After 6 months I finally found work in a consulting position in Dallas so we all moved across the country. (I would have had a position that was perfect for me in Oregon instead but the "human resources" [spit] department managed to prevent me from effectively conveying my qualifications and situation to those seeking a candidate just like me and managed to delay the process by 2 months so that I had already accepted the silly consulting position by the time I finally heard back.)

Ever since, I find that I end up changing jobs or companies about every 2 years (usually sooner) due to exactly the things coreolyn mentioned. And now it appears that the California housing providers are doing the same stuff so that I haven't been able to live in the same building for much more than a year, but not by choice. The current forced move is a killer because it looks like my rent is going to increase 50% no matter where I move (and in California, rent is a bigger chunk of your paycheck than in most places).

During one of my "move before my department disappears" job changes, the president of my new employer was concerned about my not having stayed with the same company for very long recently. Of course, he ended up being the driving force behing selling the company to a huge multi-national using some pretty "creative" "facts", then kept the new owner in the dark for several months to cover the shiftiness of the deal, and then bailed before I did.

Just recently that "new division" of the huge multi-national was shut down (in no small part because the "merging" of the companies was delayed way too long while the president hid the truth) and the neat stuff that me and my former coworkers were so proud of is just being thrown away.

I'm starting to feel like I have some strange, nomadic existance. I'll be glad when I finally get the 100% work-at-home thing going so I can buy a house (again) and play tag with the shifting landscape of companies without having to tear down and rebuild my personal life annually. (:

1The president decided he wasn't acting enough like a "big business" and tried to shift from continued, healthy, slow growth in a delightful work environment to really pushing for making profits and a tougher work environment. I could see the business suffering because of this but he wouldn't listen to me so after a year of this the company finally had a quarter with zero sales and laid off 1/3 of the employees, including me.

I was on vacation at the time and the president left a message on my answering machine saying something "serious" had happened and I should check in when I get back into town. So I called him back at home but he didn't want to "ruin my vacation" by telling me. I convinced him that not telling me was worse. I was glad to hear the surprise in his voice when I said "Well, I have to be back in town Tuesday to close on my house anyway, so I'll drop by the office and pick up my stuff." "You sold your house!?"

Yes, I'd seen the writing on the wall and was increasingly hating the job that I had previously loved. When I put my house on the market I told the agent that I didn't want a sign on the lawn because I didn't want to deal with the company finding out (small company, fairly small town).

The guy who would be my new boss (who got hired right before the layoffs) kept calling saying that they'd really like to have me back (to which I always said "Then you shouldn't have fired me"). Most of the laid-off employees had family in the area (which had very few tech jobs) and so ended up returning to work at a lower salary.

Sorry, no grand conclusions. Just another story to throw on the pile.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

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