In August my erstwhile employer “cut me loose” to use the euphemism they employed. It didn’t make sense. I had generated a considerable amount of net revenue for my employer during my tenure. I had excelled at everything I did. I had been something of a rainmaker. I was well-liked. I attribute my termination to a combination of bad management, company politics, and bigotry (not mine).
After a week I updated my resume and uploaded it to a variety of job sites. Then I enrolled in and took a couple of courses, got a couple of new credentials. Updated my resume accordingly and began to field job offers.
This month I’ve begun working part time and will begin working full-time after the first of the year. Now that I know how the game is played these days, I’ll continue to update my resume and interview for new positions.
I went without work for about four months, the longest such period of my adult life. It was stressful and nerve-wracking.
For me being unemployed wasn’t a complete disaster. I save ferociously and assuming I remained in good health I could continue without a reduction in lifestyle for years.
I can only imagine what people who are in more difficult straits or have been unemployed longer are going through. Keep that in mind.
The unemployed don’t exist, haven’t you been listening to the Fed?
Dave, I don’t know you, I follow your blog because it’s interesting to me. I always assumed you were a wealthy, comfortable professional.
Sorry for your troubles, congrats on your grit. That right there is the difference between you and the long term unemployed, grit.
I really do wish everyone had that.
I too am surprised to hear you had some stress over such a situation. Glad to hear you have overcome, though not surprised.
I remember the first 5-7 years of my career in which I pinched pennies like mad. Saved everything. Didn’t know what going out to dinner really meant. Then I spent it all on tuition. Graduated at age 30 with $7k debt on a credit card. But that all worked out pretty well. Risktaking and hard work.
Funny how that works.
PS. I still don’t spend like I could. Old habits.
Not exactly. I had my own business for more than 20 years, foregoing more than $1 million in income in the process. I went to work for somebody else 3 years ago.
If I’m comfortable it’s because of my wife’s patience and income and my own mental attitude. I know my skills are much in demand.
Although not as much in demand as the advance publicity might lead you to believe. I’m convinced that a lot of the job openings out there don’t really exist. However, there are lots of people who are looking to buy quarters for a nickel a piece.
Let me translate that. I think that lots of companies fish—they want to see if there are people with advanced degrees and 10 years plus of experience who’ll do the work of a $200K employee for $50K a year.
Grit, sure, if you have something to sell. If you don’t, all the grit in the world won’t help.
We are the products of DNA and environment and random chance, three overlapping fields. Within that universe we have free will (well, depending on who you believe). But that grit and determination – free will – is not somehow separate and discrete from DNA, environment and chance, is superficial at best.
Dave has the advantages of outstanding intelligence, a stable family background, love both given and received, reasonable physical and mental health, and both the right skin color and gender. Very little of that is free will. He wasn’t dealt a royal flush, but he did get a pair of aces, as did I, and neither of us dealt that hand. It’s a whole lot easier to win the game if you’re dealt a good hand.
I agree with a lot of Michael’s comment above. One quibble I have is about intelligence. Above average smarts are an advantage. Smarts greatly above average are in many ways a detriment.
I just learned that one of the smartest guys I know was committed to a mental institution. As Dryden cautioned “Great wits are sure to madness near alli’d And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”
However, where Michael’s observation is truest is at the median. When you get two or three standard deviations above the median all of the competition was white males, too. It got you in the door but didn’t mean you were going to succeed.
Bill Gates got into Harvard because he was a smart white guy. That isn’t what let him build Microsoft into what it became. There were a lot of other smart white guys around trying to do the same thing.
Two personal observations.
The smartest guy, outside of the physical sciences, that I’ve known is a former partner. He’s smarter than anyone I’ve run into by a fairly wide margin. Also, note I said former partner. For he was neither a good investor, nor a good partner. Good consultant and strategist, though.
Secondly, as an overwealmingly valid state of the world, at least in my experience, raw talent is helpful, but not determinative. I’ve seen too many people of lesser innate talent prevail on different attributes, primarily preparation and will. In the sports world, Jack Nicklaus (horrible privileged white guy, you know) wasn’t the best ball striker ever. That honor probably goes to one of Sam Snead, Ben Hogan or Lee Trevino. But Jack had better preparation and strategic skills, and a will under pressure perhaps only seen again in Tiger Woods. But now we are in the trap of using the extraordinary to make a point. The vast majority of ordinary to just one to two std deviations better make it not out of luck, although some get lucky, but by their efforts. And very few make it on luck. There aren’t that many rich people who won the lotto……
Congrats on the new job. The combination of luck and determination that led to you being able to weather four months of unemployment reasonably comfortably should serve you well going forward.
I’ve been unemployed and looking for work for a long time twice — once for a year during Bush I, and then six months in Bush II. Recently, I took a year off just because I wanted to, and got two job offers after sending out two resumes. Luck has a hell of a lot to do with it — being in the right industry at the right time, and having the start in life to be in a situation to make that happen.
As hard as unemployment is for you, it is way harder for a lot of folks.
This country hollowed out its middle class to the point where a lot of people who think they are middle class are really the working poor — no large savings and the regularly scheduled emergencies of life come at a fast enough clip to wipe out what they do save.
Intelligence, talent and grit can prepare you to take advantage of opportunities, but they cannot make those opportunities.
Guarneri: “The vast majority of ordinary to just one to two std deviations better make it not out of luck, although some get lucky, but by their efforts.”
I don’t know about that. Being born in this country, rather than Somalia or China or India, to upper middle class white folks with a house in a good school district is pretty damned lucky for me.
Being able to afford a good enough college degree, and being born at the right time that software engineers are allowed to get gray hair (very recent) and not have crushing college debts is pretty damned lucky.
It helps that I am brilliant in the right ways, but if I was born fifty years earlier, I would have no useful skills and be cutting sandwiches for a living.
“There aren’t that many rich people who won the lotto……”
Every single one of them did.
Also, I am convinced that this is why the entire H1b system works on a lottery — we don’t want the best and brightest immigrants, we want the luckiest immigrants.
If i have the choice between hiring the smartest doctor with average communication skills, and the doc with average clinical skills and the best communication skills, I will take the latter. In reality, I have a mix. What I tend to find is that the brightest of our bunch actually tend to have below average communication skills. However, there is a second group just below that who are very bright and have good/great communications skills. Those are the best.
I frequently hear people say they were let go and they didn’t know why. Never really sure what that means. Company politics seems likely, but I also suspect a lot of other reasons. In your case it wouldn’t surprise me if age was an issue.
Steve
Congratulations on your new employment, and your composure, I think if I were the one without work or income, the world would hear a bit more about it!
Congratulations on your new job!