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I graduated college in 2010 and it took the better part of four years to land a decent paying, professional job. Mentally, I know I'm still a bit scarred from the experience of working in call centers, for low pay and often few benefits. Even though my job appears to be stable and I got a pretty good raise this year, my mind is still conditioned like the bottom could fall out at any time. I was fired once and had no idea what I'd done, and saw many employees and contractors fired instantly from these call center jobs.
If you were hurt by the recession, do you still feel like you're in a recession style mindset?
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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We almost lost our house and drained our savings in 2008-09, when I had to close my business after 16 years of great success. When I finally got a good job in 2009 it took a couple of years to get back in the black financially, but then after a couple of promotions with raises, things are better financially than ever for us. Other than one relative, things are also better for everyone else we know, and the construction of office buildings, apartments, and new home developments all around us, plus the many "now hiring" signs definitely help us forget about those hard times. The posts on this employment section are about the only reminder that some people are still not part of the recovery.
Always. Only the paranoid survive. Be in tune with what's happening around you in your company and your industry. Don't trust anyone, anything you say can and will be used against you. Always side with management and not with the line workers.
We almost lost our house and drained our savings in 2008-09, when I had to close my business after 16 years of great success. When I finally got a good job in 2009 it took a couple of years to get back in the black financially, but then after a couple of promotions with raises, things are better financially than ever for us. Other than one relative, things are also better for everyone else we know, and the construction of office buildings, apartments, and new home developments all around us, plus the many "now hiring" signs definitely help us forget about those hard times. The posts on this employment section are about the only reminder that some people are still not part of the recovery.
I agree with this.
For myself, I don't have my own family and I just finished college so the only struggle for me was the start-up. I was constantly being laid off.
Yes, I still have the recession mindset, but in a positive way.
What I learned from the recession is nothing is permanent, so c'est la vie!
Do what you got to do, save when you can, always be prepared and go from there. You can plan your life all the way through and when the unexpected happen, just keep going. Work hard and something will turn out.
I notice a lot in here that the OP will say they've sent in a couple of resumes here and there and "nothing" is happening. ZOMG, lol! That phrase drives me insane. I sent about "a couple" a minute (ok, not literally). I have a generic one I sent out to everyone, just for the sake of sending a resume (entry-level jobs) and for the "special ones", I'd tailor my resume to it. I literally sat down for hours, every day, applying. I have a list of online job search, (monster, indeed, craigslist, kijiji, non-profit sites, you name it). I've taken call-centres, door-to-door, selling water...anything...just to get out there. Every one of those non-related jobs have taught me something in life, so I take that and continue to move forward. Recession or not, you have to work for it in life.
Long time ago, in the late 80's and 90's I got my AA in college and landed a job at a bank doing computer programming. I was estacic. My boss was sufficently impressed, I got the stand alone job of updating some of the old programs which were not working. I think now it was in part to see how well I did, since fixing things which are not working is always a priority. Later I got a raise and no trainee. I'd been working with this one small but important system and had sketched out a rewrite of the system. I, still just out of college, got the go ahead to run the team to create the new system.
It was awesome. But tech was changing and they were going to dump the current system and buy one which was pre written. I did finish my small system and it would live on in the new one, but as the bank who owned it was losing money, they let go most of the shop, even the people with years of experience.
I got another job, but they downsized. It was great that they liked my work. It was just that they were making changes and I didn't have that.
How do you get experience in something when a company runs it but nobody is really training it?
After, I had more problems from health. I moved where I could go back to school, but didn't really feel up to it. Then came another surgery, and it helped, but made me more tired. Disability was discussed, but not yet. And the industry wasn't hiring but might later.
But I met friends, and people LIKE me, and it was wonderful. We spent a lot of time together. It was awesome. These are friends I still have, these many years later. Even more, they're like me, seeing things differently than the norm. Even though since I moved going to California to go to a science fiction con hasn't been in the budget, I'm still a FAN and will be trying again to get a way to go to local ones. Its still a place I belong.
I might have ended up there anyway, since a lot of fans are also involved in computer tech, but even if I can't go see them often, I still feel like I have this family out there and will find a way to go join them again.
What I learned from the recession is nothing is permanent, so c'est la vie!
Do what you got to do, save when you can, always be prepared and go from there. You can plan your life all the way through and when the unexpected happen, just keep going. Work hard and something will turn out.
Excellent advice and thought process. Scarcity mentality begets...scarcity.
I finished college right as the dotcom bubble started bursting. I got a job after a lot of looking (I didn't intern during college) and ended up getting fired after about 6 months (it was a sketchy situation basically I had a new boss that hated me. I had excellent reviews, and suddenly 3 months later I had "performance issues" and no performance improvement plan identified. The only negative feedback I remember was a complaint about using arial over times new roman in an internal document. And one time missing the mail pick up deadline by 30 minutes and having to drop it off myself at Fedex in order to ship on time that afternoon. So yes, it seems sketchy and I probably had recourse to sue in retrospect.) I did get some severance on my way out the door so I just called it a layoff because that industry contracted with the dotcom bust.
I could not find a job in that industry and spent the next few months looking for work. Then 9/11 happened and basically, all of the jobs dried up for inexperienced people.
I ended up working in retail for low pay for a year - more but I can't remember. I eventually found some better roles. And got more experience.
I figured out there was too much competition in the roles I was seeking, so I decided to find some new skills that would make me stand out more. I eventually ended up doing software implementation consulting. This made it a lot easier to get a job. I am now back in-house, but I know I could always pickup consulting again and work as a contractor pretty quickly. My network is a lot better now too, so I have more backup plans.
you should ALWAYS feel that way since our leaders and corporate interests have sold us up **** creek without a paddle. The days of job security are long gone and leaders today are nothing but sociopaths who want to see their fellow man suffer.
Alot of it has been the degradation of our society and the Just World Fallacy along with a loss of religion/Morals/Ethics.
Why anyone would back any of our leaders or company higher ups are beyond me. You would be hard pressed to find a decent person who rose through the ranks to the top without being utter SCUM
If you were hurt by the recession, do you still feel like you're in a recession style mindset?
I wasn't "hurt" by the recession. Sure, the paper value of my 401(k) plummeted... but I just kept making regular contributions, bought cheap, and wound up better than ever for it. I did lose my job in November of '08, and I figured it would be at least two or three months before i could even get a job search going due to the environment, the holidays, etc. I was very lucky in that I stumbled across an opening I was perfect for, and that while it was a lateral move for me (like I was going to complain!), it launched my career on a whole new trajectory.
But we should always be in a "recession mindset". You could lose your job at any minute, even without. So get rid of debt, live below your means, save up for several months at least of living expenses, build up a store of essentials to weather a day, then a week, then a month. Always be building your network just like you were let go yesterday and need to find a new gig ASAP. If that's well-developed, your job search won't be nearly as long as if you wait to prepare until it's too late.
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