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What would you do if you just got laid off?
How would it change your life?
What good would come from it?
I'm curious to hear what others would do...
So that leaves #2 and #1. Possibly in combination?
Suggestion for #2, focus on one site and get it properly launched, don't let your attention wander in too many directions at once.
[edited by: buckworks at 4:57 am (utc) on Mar. 3, 2008]
I thought they liked me and I had a job for life. Hello..what was I thinking!/
After a couple of more lay offs (what a loser) I decided to be my own boss and
ran a successful B&M business for 20 years. Now I am seeking fame and fortune on
the net. Stay tuned for further developments. ( the moral of this little tale?
lays offs can be what you make of them! Make the best of yours!) Good Luck...KF
1st layoff notice came when I was 36 with three kids and a wife. After the intitial shock, got a $1500/mo raise in a new position with actual career advancement opportunities.
2nd layoff at 48. Had to move 300 miles to maintain salary in new position. Sold home, packed up family and ended up on a beautiful piece of property with 900 feet of creekfront, swimming holes and more.
Both time forced me to expand options, skills, education, etc. in order to prepare for the worst.
Next layoff = retirement. Life is grand!
Don't sweat the layoff. It is the change that is the most stressful. If you've got the skills and the drive things will work out in the end.
I know that things will get better, this is not the first layoff I've had, and ironically, not the first layoff from the same company either. They let some of the tech support go about 9 months ago, and I had a perverse loyalty to the company at the time that led to my looking elsewhere within the company.
I know that when one door closes, another opens, and that sometimes we have to burn bridges in order to cross new ones.
Ultimately everything will be just fine in the end, I know that, as it has been my experience before.
I have a site that could use a couple of weeks of hard core work. Once that is completed, then it can go into maintenance mode with weekly updates. I've committed myself to completing that regardless of what happens.
Buckworks, your funny, that made me smile, hopefully your wrote that with a deadpan face.
King, thanks for the inspiration, you reminded me again that I get out of life what I put into it.
The last crisis we had was when my husband's job was transferred out of state and I really didn't want to move, so I talked him into giving up his job and staying put. Then I had to make an income from my web sites pretty fast. My sites had been more of just a hobby income up to that point. My husband got another job, but I've always kept my sites' income up through the past few years just in case.
If I were in your spot I would look for a new job and build up my sites in the down time from job hunting, as a regular job is more likely to give you immediate income plus benefits. I think there is more competition on the web these days so it may be harder to get up to speed making a full time income in few months' time, unless you already have a number of well established sites.
Just some ideas.
Not in Austria - with several years of experience maybe 35.000 Euros a year. Unless you are self-employed with a decent portfolio of customers.
Like others here (including yourself) I have been laid off and it's a gut-wrenching experience. No matter how much you try to tell yourself different, it feels like being sacked.
That said, willybfriendly is absolutely right and in the long-term this event in your life will inevitably reveal a doorway leading to the discovery of opportunities which otherwise would have remained hidden to you.
I've only been made redundant once.
The biggest mistake I made was to stick to the spending habits I'd had when I had an income and to not ration my money. This meant that when my redundancy pay and my savings ran out, I got into debt faster and deeper than I ever had before. It took me more than half a year to learn to curb my spending - in hindsight I should have learned in 4-6 weeks.
Actually, the best decision I made was not to throw myself straight back into full-time work for the sake of topping up my income to its former level. Instead I spent eight months alternating between temp work and unemployment. During those eight months, because I wasn't working 9-6 every day, I had a lot more time to think about where I was going in my life, what I really wanted to do and how I was going to achieve it.
Eight months of redundancy and unemployment and I made the best decision of my life bar none: I would start my own business, I was determined to make it succeed and I knew how I was going to do it.
Ill-advised as it sounds, I borrowed some money and went travelling with a friend for a month to lift my spirits, inject myself with some fresh enthusiasm. I came back on a high, picked up a part-time job and worked at my job part-time and on my business project part-time for three months. I launched my business almost exactly a year after I got laid off.
It was undeniably painful at the time - but looking back on it now I'm not at all unhappy that someone took my job away. I wouldn't be where I am now, if they hadn't done.
I have been released from every job I ever had! Every single time something better happened! The last time I got canned was about 6 years ago. The first thing I did was get a nice fat life insurance policy to protect the wife and kids. The next move was to learn how to build useful web based applications. Haven’t looked back since.
The irony is that I thought that my last job was the best thing since sliced bread. It was in a field that most guys would find very interesting and the money was great. At the time I really believed there was nothing better. Boy was I wrong, I should send them a thank you card for canning me!
Look into contract work between jobs. I hire contractors now who are between jobs. Craigs List is very helpful, but be careful, of course. If you're willing to be paid by the job instead of the hour, you'll be popular.
Overall, looking at the next move, the trick is to figure out what you would like to do, then try to do it. Or, what kind of company you would like to for, what kind of people you enjoy being around.
Are you laid back, or do you enjoy an intense environment? Do you like being the leader, or do you enjoy working with people who are smarter and more experienced than you? Do you like to have a plan of work handed to you, or do you like to figure out what needs to be done and how it will be done for yourself?
Ask your wife the answer to these questions. And on each answer you or she gives here, you have to give an example. Find a good fit. And, to do that, be honest with yourself. The world needs all kinds of people, except lazy ones.
I just had a friend take on a high-profile assignment. It was a complement to be asked to do this job. The problem was, he hated that kind of work but he didn't see that. He had stars in his eyes. One month into it, he quit. Wisely.
Also, thinking of my friend: When looking at partners or jobs (short term and long terms)--ask lots and lots of questions. Remember: Everything is easy for the people who don't have to do the work.
Being laid off was by far the best thing that ever happened to me. It pushed a weekend hobby to the forefront of my priorities and that was basically all it took. I already had a couple websites in place. What I needed to learn was how to promote them. Suddenly I had a lot of free time to do that and within a few months the money started coming in. Not much at first but it encouraged me to keep after it.
A sympathetic girlfriend who backed me 100% helped too.
When I was working for someone else I always prayed that I would get canned and get this free window of opportunity. It never came, BUT I did get fed up with my current working for someone else, make them rich, get no cut of the action, get pissed, quit and repeat...and figured it was time to do it on my own.
If you decide you are ready to work for yourself, then I think one of the most important things to do would be to trim the fat. Do you need cable tv, a car, netflix, can you cook a meal rather than go out to eat, etc?
When you lower your living expenses you open new options.
If you figure out what your true monthly budget and divide that by 30, that is your daily earnings requirement. if you need $1500 a month to get by, then you only need $50 a day. Look at that and see how it aligns to your hobbies, interests or passions.
If you find a match and see an industry that is lacking your passion, take it by storm and get 100 $.50 clicks day.
Regardless of what you choose, I wish you the best luck!
then you only need $50 a day
Remember that $50 will need to be net after taxes.
Never forget about taxes.
Throw a few clothes in a backpack and meet me at Little Five in Atlanta; I'll show you how to live on next to nothing and still have a good time (most of the time).
Wow, what memories. Is The Point still there?
Throw a few clothes in a backpack and meet me at Little Five in Atlanta; I'll show you how to live on next to nothing and still have a good time (most of the time).
I'm on the next flight. Have you still got that drum?
Never forget about taxes.
Very true...
At some point he was basically asking me if I had special reason why I was sticking to my commitments at work. He later run up to a lawyer to get some papers and agreements written which I didn't bother to read beyond the introduction on the first page. I wasn't ready to sign anything.
The best part of that day, and the one I was dying to tell you is this. The feeling I got driving off that parking lot that day, and all the 35 miles back home was nothing you could explain in words. I didn't look back, though I tried to show some understanding in the office moments ago,on the road, I felt a great need to work more, go chase my dreams again, I was very much at peace with myself.
You can turn this into a golden opportunity, in the words of General Douglas, there is just no security on earth, but only opportunities. Good luck.
Get a temp job, maybe part time and always watch how your experience can be puffed on your PC. I still get offered Oracle DBA jobs on the basis of 6 months clerical temping where the boss discovered that I could write some SQL for a feed from their database to populate some of his spreadsheets.
Work on the self employment options in the gaps and at weekends. If they pay off then you can drop the temp work, if not start looking to go permanent again.
I just wish that web development had been an option when I was last laid off - at that time email was just starting to replace fax and home PCs cost half of what I now take home in a month. Hopefully the next time will be when my pension funds kick in.
Not in Austria
Why limit yourself to just Austria?
Before I closed shop and fired my customers just to focus on my own properties I had customers all over the world and met very few of them face to face.
Good news is that I start working Monday, doing what I went to school for, (computers- (except Vista, which I can't freakin understand their networking setup)) so its all good.
Spent my off time sleeping, drinking coffee, playing battlefield2, farcry, and working on the sites.
It will be good to get back to work though..
Thanks for all the encouraging words...
Jake
Spent my off time sleeping, drinking coffee, playing battlefield2. . .
...and posters here were worried as hell :)
Excellent news, congrats!
