Discussion on:

Are you aware and prepared to escape? Your IT future depends on it.

Good tips, they worked for me! I would add mental preparedness to the list. You can overcome so long as you never stop believing in yourself. Remember being "laid off" is a reflection of the entity you used to work for, not a failing on your part. You will have to deal with potential employeers who can't distinguish between "laid off" and "fired" though. So be mentally tough and come across as valuable, not needy or downtrodden.

Absolutely: mental preparedness is essential. Just like in a wilderness survival situation or zombie attack, state of mind is the most important thing. The moment you start thinking of yourself as defeated, you are.

Thank you for adding this. You are 100% correct.

Short of SERE training.

Even if I haven't often followed it. As someone who has been a contractor for over 22 years, I am well aware how the carpet can be pulled out from under one's feet. The trouble is that people get too comfortable in a job and assume that it's forever. As a wise maintenance man once told me, all jobs are temporary. Once you get that through your head, you are much more psychologically prepared for the worst.

The only quibble that I might have with this valuable article is here: "Being laid off or fired is a young persons job. If youre over 40 or 50, becoming unemployed in the tech industry can seem like the beginning of a very painful end of a lifetime career and an uncertain future." No, it is not the end of the world if you are "over 40 or 50" and suddenly unemployed. That wealth of experience can be put to use as a contractor or a consultant. Here's the kicker, though: Most of us get our health insurance through our employers. Someone over 40 who loses his job is losing it at a time when he is more likely to become ill (or perhaps loved ones will get ill). Private insurance is more expensive the older you get. I think that organized labor was originally responsible for getting employers to provide health benefits, and that was a BIG mistake. When you let someone who doesnt give a d**n about you provide for you what you should be providing for yourself, you leave yourself vulnerable. Then, losing your job in your mature years becomes a disaster instead of just a bit of bad luck. Being a contractor, I've carried my own health insurance since I was 38. It was under $100 a month then. I can tell you that it isn't under $100 a month now. Still, I don't regret for a minute that I am privately insured. It certainly has made it easier to take the hard knocks when a current gig comes to an end.

I too provide for my own health insurance. I pay $119 per month with Sierra Health and Life here in Nevada, and I'm 53. Of course it does include a $10K deductible.

I too am an Independant Consultant who caries private insurance for my girls and myself. I never have to worry about jobs / contracts comming to an end unexpectedly. My wife carries her insurance through her employer. She has been through 5 different companies in the last 10 years and each time the most frightening issue has been the insurance coverage.

Bottom line, if your employer holds the keys to your family's health security you have fewer options and become owned. It's your health, your responsibility, own it. Don't let someone else call the shots.

I pay under $250 per month for myself and two children. I have a 7,000 max family deductible which is covered by my pre-tax medical savings account. Not too bad relative to what I used to pay as an employee for a large software company.

More people should follow your example. I've seen so much hardship from people who get blindsided by this when suddenly back out in the job market... There should be more info available and inducements for individuals to carry their own insurance rather than rely on their employer. As you so rightfully point out, it removes the chains and false sense of security.

Is the article directed at the few TR members from the planet Zarg?

I mean how could you possibly not know this?

....its much easier to pretend that you have a "safe, secure job" and Americans tell their kids to get a "safe, secure job." I mean if Mom & Dad tell you that there is such a thing, you believe it, right?

Back in the 50s and 60s, an American could believe he had a "safe, secure job" because it was possible to work 40 years for one company and expect a pension afterwards.

My generation will be the first to have it worse than their parents did.

I just wrote a reply to LeiaShilobod's post that very much addresses what you're saying. The poison that makes us so vulnerable to today's transient, unstable career market is distilled from the 50's-60's when a career meant being with one company through retirement. Rather than re-phrase what I just posted, check out my reply to LeiaShilobod.

The intelligent ones stayed you see.

Sorry but anyone who hasn't figured out that their career and employment prospects aren't exclusively in their hands deserves everything that happens to them.

Now who would like to own a bridge. Highest bidder wins money in advance please....

Actually, Tony, it's only in the last 30 or so years that this has really become a problem for us. Up through the 70's, there was a deep-rooted faith and belief in America that a good employer equaled stability through retirement. It was a belief system based on a long tradition of this actually being the standard rather than the exception. Our problem is the clash of this past belief system and the modern deconstruction / synthesis of our core economic models over the last 40 years. We aren't the country we used to be. In fact we are rapidly self-destructing and falling apart. But that's not what made us what we once where. The real question is if this is indeed the final eulogy, or if the system can be saved. We just might be at the end of this Grand Experiment, and it is ending not with a bang but an economic whimper.

We had that tradition as well.
It might be you kept the industries without the tradition, Thatcher and her cronies solved that problem, they got rid of the industries....

Doubt it can be saved, general raise in standard of living, huge raise in the expectation, and mobility, the solid state revolution, so many things you'd have to ditch.
Or you could all become socialists.

After all, if the company somehow feels that it oughtn't sack people, but still does - then it would need to tell itself that "Well, that employee was bad. Nasty business, but it had to be done".

When friends ask for my best recommendation on a "business primer", I refer them to the selected discourses of Machiavelli. Consider this bit of wisdom: when you help someone to power, they will resent you. They will begin to treat you badly so as to provoke bad behavior, and thus justify getting rid of you. Once you're gone, they can take all the credit for having gotten into power in the first place.
People do this all the time, even in relationships. The sad thing is many people do it subconsciously. Consider this scenario: a person is unhappy in their marriage and wishes to date other people. Rather than admit their own goal, they will begin to treat their partner badly in little ways. Cold distance, less communication, little criticisms and insults.... and then when their partner responds in angry confusion, the person uses that reply as a validation / justification for ending the relationship.
It's the same principle in work. Some employers will want to remove an employee for a variety of reasons, but rather than admit their own motives will instead begin treating the employee badly so as to provoke behavior which can then justify firing the person. But sometimes the provoked individual reacts in unexpected, desperate ways as their own world collapses around them.

What a guy, huh?
Then, the employee - being a good employee - should do whatever they can to ensure that their employer - being a good employer - sees no reason to get rid of them - which would be a waste.

Right down to incriminating photographs

You know what a puffer fish is, don't you?

...painful when swallowed alive?

it would seem.
And spines....

Many think we here in the US are already well on the path to becoming a socialist state.

The goal is not to want a welfare state, it's not to need one...

Or at least a bumper sticker.

... and obviously I should imbibe more. This is a lacking I admit, and will immediately attempt to rectify.

Most of the baby-boomers grew up in a time when one of their parents (usually the dad) had a career position where they expected to be until retirement. Up until the 60's and late 70's there was a presumption in America that a good job with a company equaled a life-long commitment and security. That "value system" did sort of trickle into the baby-boomer subconscious. But we live in a different world now. To people born in the late 70's onwards, this cultural "expectation" has rapidly decreased to the point of a negative expectation wherein no job is stable. But the older you are, the more likely you are to have a baseline belief that good work and company loyalty will be rewarded with retirement stability.

It's like growing up in the 1960's and having a world-view that all police are like sheriff Andy Taylor: wise, human, and interested in helping people. Is it a bad world view? No. Is it realistic? Ha! But people still want to believe. Hope springs eternal that things will make sense, and all will be right in the world if we do our best. This was once a valid philosophy to live one's life by. Now it's become obsolete, an opiate at best, a poisonous meme
at worst.

I know I'm going to be targeted for rebuttal for this, but you'd be surprised how many techie types are oblivious to the corporate / business side of their employers. They focus on their projects, deliver genius to their clients, and proceed on the assumption that great work will be appreciated and always in demand. Silly, silly geniuses.

horrified...

You crack me up, Todd. However, even through your joking & jabbing, there is such truth in the idea that if you are an employee, there is truly NO SECURITY. You may feel secure, your company may tell you you are secure, but at any moment, you could lose your job.

I own my own company, so if I fail or have no money - its totally my fault. It's certainly not for everyone, and I'm not saying that your readers should just strike out now and start their own firm, but the reality is.....you've got to take the blinders off and be prepared!

PS - thanks for giving me a laught today!

Leia Shilobod, IT Princess of Power

...who were of the generation that espoused the "get a secure job with a big company and climb the ladder" philosophy. They were less than impressed when I went "independent", and were for a long time worried about my future. It's a good thing I ignored the advice, because if I had taken that track, I'd be far less well off today than I am. In fact, my status is actually more stable than my corporate peers, since I am not dependent upon any single client for my well-being. Even though I have lost big clients over the years, I've never been a single pink-slip away from doom.

Beyond the excessive metaphors above, the advice is sound. Even if your job really is "secure", If you are a "single paycheck" away from disaster, you are already in trouble. When you're basically broke, events tend to control you than the other way around. Having a savings cushion makes the difference between a desperate state of panic and a comfortable, controlled response.

If you are one paycheck away from disaster you have far worse problems than just waiting for the pink slip. You're going to lose your house the first time that car breaks down and you have to choose transportation to earn that check versus the rent / mortgage payment.

Bottom line it is not what you make it is what you are spending. Do this: Get your check and automatically take 5 or 10 percent off the top and stuff it away in a money market account. You can't transfer money out of it online you have to go into the bank to do it (a little safer than a savings account you can easily raid with the click of a mouse).

That money is now gone. You didn't get a pink slip but you did just get a pay cut. Live with it, get over it. You know what? It's gonna suck for a short period, but you will adjust. You will find a way to live with it. Best of all, in very little time that money is going to amount to something big. And your stress of living paycheck to paycheck is going to leave. More importantly, you're going to have more confidence in yourself and you will be better prepared for those curveballs life like to pitch.

More people need to think this way.

In fact I also live for extended metaphors the same way a moth lives for a bright candle shining in the dark but always in danger of immolation if it dares fly too close and catch fire with all the raging violence of a badly over-written run-on sentence.

Regarding proximity to disaster, current statistics seem to indicate the vast majority of Americans are less than 2 paychecks from possible homelessness.
These are scary times.

...who really are responsible for their own disasters.

After the meltdown started about 4 years ago, I quickly lost count of the people who "lost it all" so quickly. And it certainly wasn't because they weren't making enough before that to get by; most had big new houses, new cars, nice vacations and all the cool toys. The one thing they didn't have was money in the bank and "net worth". Their lifestyle was 100% realtime-dependent upon their paycheck, and all it took was one bump-in-the-road to derail it all.

(had to throw in a few metaphors!)

Anyway, one of the seemingly oxymoronic benefits of being an "independent" is that you always have to be prepared for at least some of your business to not be there. The bumps should neither be a surprise or a tragedy that leaves you homeless in 4 weeks.

All the preparation in the world won't help a bit if you weren't being paid enough to build up a rainy day fund, and no amoung of attaboys and certificates socked away in your portfolio, and no amount of continuous learning will do a bit of good past a certain point. We've got Mensa-class, industrious, knowledgeable, creative US citizen STEM workers who have been unemployed for years, and even more under-employed, i.e. unable to refresh their software dev capabilities on the job.

The STEM worker economy won't improve until the bodyshopping and unless the flood of cheap labor are stemmed and the executives are made to realize that we're valuable and to be actively recruited and developed again rather than disposable commodity parts to be tossed and replaced.

I agree with you. The problem is that no practical solution is really on deck. We are currently adrift in troubled economic seas. So do we throw our hands up in despair? Blame the weather or ship captain? Well, yeah, some. But the main thing I'd like to try to do is to open people's eyes to the fact that in the end, we can't rely on our employers or government. This subject needs better minds than mine on it, but we have to start addressing it soon before all of our careers are outsourced abroad. We need competitive strategies to keep our jobs growing here, and to keep ourselves afloat when they don't. I don't really have any answers. But I do know there's a problem, and we need to start paying attention.

...then you either were spending too much, or in the wrong business.

Either way, whining about it and waiting for someone to fix it will get you no where, as millions of Americans are beginning to figure out.

I was trying to communicate to folks who grew up in a traditional "career employer" culture or others too project-focused to see the real-world perils that may threaten their stability. These aren't people "waiting for someone to fix it.." but people who may not realize how fragile their stability is. This is something no one can "fix". It's a byproduct of the Darwinistic Techopoly we find ourselves in. The question becomes how can we best adapt and survive. That's what I attempted to address. Tactics for survival. The government can't fix this, nor can a well-meaning employer. Only us.

Every fighter pilot knows it's a very nice thing to have a parachute. Their smart ... as are your preparedness tips. But every fighter pilot also knows that it's even better if that parachute is strapped onto a state of the art performance machine ... and I'm not talking about your jet (the company you work for) ... I'm talking about YOU!

Your tips for dealing with the ups and downs of our industry, to my eyes, while all wise and reasonable ... lack "teeth" for dealing with the real world. I'm not young. I haven't been for a long time. And I took your approch to protecting myself from the ups and downs of our industry for a long time. They weren't enough. Then it hit me ... I was completely missing the point.

We can't completely control what happens to our company or our industry. We can't control whether or not we might someday end up working for a bone head. THOSE things lie always beyond our control. But what we can control is the impression people have of us, as professionals. Your entire network should KNOW that you are a "state of the art" performance machine, whose made it their business to leave their customers utterly delighted, every time. Do everything you can to make sure that's how your network sees you, inside and outside your firm ... and you're security will have been optimized.

Some years ago, I was an independent IT contractor with a role as DBA/Developer for Australia's largest telco. The system only had a year or eighteen months to go before it was replaced by a new system already being set up. However, after 9 years in the job, my contract was terminated because a senior manager had expressed an opinion that "contractors should not be in charge of our major systems". Nobody in the telco wanted my job, so a couple of people were brought in from outside, trained and let loose on the system. After 3 months, they had both left as they could not stand the pace (after all 2 of us had been running a system that IBM reckoned needed 7 people!). The situation was only saved when my co-worker agreed to take on a permanent position.

How often senior managers have no real grasp of the practical production of the project they supervise?

Given the quality of the material I have seen here from you and others, I am sure that you would have no trouble fitting in! The great thing is that we have half a dozen states, all with totally different characters, so all you have to do is wander around until you find the one that really takes your fancy. You would also have a good chance to meet people who would appreciate the profile set out in your bio!