Me too. I was laid off three months ago.
Unfortunately, I’m in a niche market. I’ve been an RPG programmer on and off for 25 years now. (I went off into real estate and construction for 3 years but got sucked back in to computers about 15 years ago.)
Anyway, In my part of the world there are precious few RPG jobs available and a lot of programmers looking. I haven’t gotten a single interview, I’m not even getting rejection letters back! (with one exception). Oregon has the highest unemployment rate in the nation.
Fortunately we had some money put by this time, and my wife is doing okay in real estate. so I’m studying to get my real estate license again. It’s highly doubtfull I’ll make as much as I did programming. I was a very senior programmer, and I’m a so-so salesman, (too honest?) but it’s a fun gig, and maybe something steady will come along when the economy warms up again, or maybe I’ll make a million dollars in the real estate market. :rolleyes:
Anyway, here’s good luck and a glass of cheer to all of us!
Well I was laid of today, exactly five days after my birthday. At least they waited eh? I got to weeks severance, and payout for vacation and sick, plus this past week. Single, but with manageable rent. I did have to drop all of my morning college classes to be more desireable workwise. The bright side of working at a start up company for 2 years is I have a helluva duties list on my resume.
My last day of work was June 5th. It was supposed to be a temporary summer layoff, so I’m still receiving unemployment benefits, to the tune of 116 bucks a week.
I just found out last week that teacher assistant positions were cut, so now I’m really, really out of work.
That’s pretty much my only skill too. (Outside of 35 words-per-minute typing skills.) I’ve been an assistant for over five years, but little good it does when there are no TA positions around here.
To make matters worse, my car is dead. DEAD! With no way to pay for repairs, I’m screwed. The bus would be fine if it wasn’t such a hot, dangerous walk to the bus stop.
With my check, I can afford to pay the rent but not much else, and I have a growing kid. I won’t be doing much Doping soon, since I’m already about a month behind on the phone bill.
I think the worst part is feeling like such a loser. I hate begging rides, I curse my stupidity for not going to college, and my daughter! She’s so kind, but I know she’s miserable, and her kindness makes me feel like even more of a jerk.
Bumbazine, forgive me if I’m being both clueless and geeky here, but does “RPG programmer” mean that you used to program games, or is RPG one of those many tech acronyms that I know nothing about?
RPG is a langauge that is used to program on many mainframes based on my very limited knowledge
MannyL
Formerly unemployed for bot over a year, now part time employed by the State of New Jersey, still looking for full time Technical Support/System Adminstration/Network Administration work in NJ,NY,PA and depenidng on pay (MD/DC/VA/Tampa FL Area)
I’m looking for a job too. I wasn’t laid off recently or anything, I’m just a bum. So now I want to become a bum who’s got a job. My main problem is that I have very few skills. Well, I can type, use computers, file quickly, answer phones, I’m pretty smart, I work well with people, I can think on my feet, and I’m a fast learner. But I don’t seem to have any marketable skills. :rolleyes:
Another problem is that I can’t stay motivated with the job search and I’m easily discouraged. I had a line on a really cool job a couple of months back, and sort of dropped the ball on everything else, so when it didn’t work out, I had to start again from scratch.
I was incredibly lucky last week to find some temporary mailroom-style work with a local consulting firm which wants to pay a ‘college student’ $20 an hour to pack and ship boxes of books. So I made some cash doing that last week and they said they might call me this week for another project. So that’s keeping me in beer until I find a real job.
I’m going to a ‘Hiring Event’ tomorrow for a hotel that’s opening soon, and they’re hiring for all positions, so I’m hopeful that I find something there that has some potential. What I really want, though, is a job dealing poker at this card club in Emeryville. I’ve got an in with a guy that’s been dealing there for years, and supposedly they’re sort of vaguely hiring right now, and willing to train, so I sent them my resume about 10 days ago, but I need to be more aggressive about calling and keeping my name in their mind. I really want to do that.
So, good luck to me, and especially GOOD LUCK to all of you. Go get 'em, tiger!
[paraphrasing a Dilbert strip]*“When I first started programming, we didn’t have any of these sissy High Level Languages, we had to program with nothing but '1’s and '0’s.”
“You had zeros!? We had to use 'Oh’s” *[/[paraphrasing a Dilbert strip] MannyL is correct, RPG stands for Report Program Generator. It started out as a very simple language to facilitate putting ink on paper, hence the name. It has evolved over the years into an extremely powerful language, but just about the only place you find it anymore is running on IBM AS/400 computers. (Argueably the best server available on the market today, but IBM is totally incapable of convincing the general public of that fact.) Anyway, it’s dying out. Even IBM isn’t too interested in it anymore. They don’t teach it in schools, at least not around here. The youngest RPG programmer I know is in his late thirties. Most of us are in our forties or fifites, or older.
Added to that fact is that Weyerhauser just bought out Willamette Industries, whose headquarters is in downtown Portland. When I worked there 8 years ago there were ~75 RPG programmers just on the floor I worked on. It was really hard to walk around in there, 'cause they wouldn’t lay still. I don’t know how many of them were laid off, or are being laid-off, but it’s a lot more then there is a market for around here. And a lot of them look better than I do, (I don’t have a college degree). And to be fair, quite a few of them could program rings around me, and I’m pretty darn good.
Hey, fighting ignorance and all that, right? And at least now I’ll remember it (even if my eyes glaze over when I do ).
** White Lightning**, if you want to work in a casino, you may also want to check jobtrack.com (now part of Monster?). When I was in CA, there was a job that would pay you to basically sit around playing the casino games (well, blackjack, anyway). Sorry, but I forgot what the position was called or what company was hiring. Knowing me, I found it on a search for “game” or something similar.
I was tempted to try it out, but I already had a good job, and when I scouted out the job, everybody who was doing it looked bored out of their minds. YMMV.
Yeah, this really is the most discouraging part, isn’t it?
Well, like I said, they all did look like they had been euthanized. (OTOH, you also get free food!)
Go check out any(?) of the casinos in SoCal and check 'em out - they’re the ones at the BJ tables with all the chips in front of them. (Note: They’re not the dealers, loopholes in CA gambling laws and all.)
I should probably mention that you’re playing strictly by textbook. No “I feel like doubling down this 9” here. (Possibly, I never really bothered learning CA blackjack, no doubling down at all.)
I’ve been looking for work for 15 months. (My ex-employer pulled a bait and switch on me… telling me when the job was offered that I was being hired to do design work and writing, two months later revealed I’d been hired “primarily to do administrative work.”)
Was finally canned Feb. 15. Ex-employer (naturally) contested my unemployment claim through two appeals. Thank the gods she was unorganized and rude to the mediator.
In the past 6 1/2 months I’ve gotten exactly two interviews, both in the last month. Just found out the first went to someone else. I have a feeling the second was just going through the motions because I have a friend in a high position in the organization who encouraged the interviewer to see me. He told me (and I wish to god he hadn’t) that she employed selective hearing during our phone interview and somehow came away with the impression that I’d told her I couldn’t do most of the duties required. (Like I would SAY that to her even if I thought that, which I don’t.)
I’ve signed up with 6 temp agencies, and in the past 6 1/2 months have gotten a grand total of 12 days of work. Freelance work is also almost non-existant. Most of the people who want me to do work for them can’t afford to pay me. Those who can only need minimal work done, an hour or two at most. Say $100 since I got laid off.
I will probably have to drop my medical insurance at the end of September because I can’t afford it anymore. This will necessarily mean I have to go off my meds and stop seeing my doctor.
I may lose my apartment at the end of the month too, though same friend got me a sh-tty PT McJob at a law firm for $8 an hour. Just enough to supplement my unemployment without reducing it. Still not enough to live on. Work is absolutely demeaning – I get to be bossed around by a kid fresh out of school with zero work experience. It may give me til the end of October, if I’m lucky, assuming unemployment still holds out. By then my savings will be down to absolutely nothing.
I have a place to crash but no place to put my cats or my stuff. I could sell my furniture, but won’t be able to afford new stuff whenever I might get my own apartment again. I have no clue what I’m going to do with my cats. Everyone I know either has (highly territorial) cats or is allergic.
I’m to the point where I’d seriously consider the idiot tax… ehr, the lotto, if only I could afford the $1 per ticket. snort
So do I get some sort of prize for the worst tale of woe?
That’s pretty bad, Kaio. But you can know that we’re hear to sympathize, right people?
My tales don’t seem so bad. Like I said I’ve been steadily interviewing over the last few months. Some better than others.
I had a great one with a VP at a big association about 3 or 4 weeks ago. Went back to meet with a bunch of others and was pretty much told I was their only candidate and they just had some notes to compare. A week later I get an email saying that:
And today the ad for the position is in the paper again. Same ad, exact same wording, exact same everything.
Christ, at least have the balls to tell me to my face that for whatever reason I’m not the one. That really cheeses me off.
And speaking of the paper…did everyone go through the classifieds today? It was thin, I only found three to apply to. But the three I did find were absolutely dynamite. First one was a ‘Director of Circulation and Internet Services’, the second was a 'Director of Publishing and Communications", and the third was ‘Operations Director’ for an association. They couldn’t be better targetted if they’d been written for me. The letters being written…they’re in the mailstream. Wish me luck.
And I’ve always been of the opinion that searching and responding to ads over holiday weekends increases my chances of getting noticed. They’ll get fewer responses this week than normal. And mine should be there as soon as any of them.
So, where do you all look? I do my shopping exclusively on the web. I check:
www.washingtonjobs.com (the online classifieds of the Washington Post) www.monster.com www.asae.org (The American Society for Association Professionals…it’s a little known source of good jobs. Especially here in the DC area.) www.circjobs.com (Just for Circulation jobs. Mostly NYC and thereabouts but the ones that pop up for DC always give me a call.) www.mediabistro.com (It’s a publishing site. Largely for editors and writers (even some freelance stuff) but occasionally with the business side.)
As I mentioned above, I have been looking for about 2 [sup]1[/sup]/[sub]2[/sub] months. Well, all the letters, e-mails and phone calls have paid off and I finally have a job. I had an interview a few weeks ago (which I posted about above) and they finally called and offered me the position. It is working on a help desk for a stockbrokerage, dealing with all the brokers computers problems. I start on Monday.
I’m a bit nervous, but I’m looking forward to it. It feels kind of weird because I am going to start work at a new place, but also in a new country. I don’t really know if anything will be different from places I have worked before or what. It is going to be interesting to find out.
It feels good to be back in work and earning money.
The other important thing I have to do now is figure out what I am going to spend my first pay check on
I guess this means that I am the first to drop out of the pool though.
Good luck to everyone else, I hope you all find something soon.
I was just about to search for this thread. I haven’t gotten confirmation on the LI company yet, but I have a local job offer. They’re coming up with a compensation package and I’ll be presented with it Tuesday. Yet I’m depressed. I need the job, but I’m not that wild about staying in the industry (which this job is). I’ll update you on Tuesday night.
I’ve got a job. It is a good job and it pays for my night law school classes here in DC.
But my mother…
She got canned on Friday in the most disgusting, disrespectful way possible. She was a very high executive with a high salary but she refused to let the people around her to go on spending sprees with the company’s money. So they fired her and her assistant and some of her managers. She is very upset right now and were I in Florida right now and not stuck in DC, I would drive my car into the house of the guy who fired her and then set it on fire. You can mess with anyone else in the world but once you start messing with my mother, that ain’t kosher and I will be kicking ass and taking names.
Her and my dad just bought a new house. They were helping my brother begin his fourth freshman year at his fifth college. I don’t know what they are going to do. This is all very upsetting to me.
Well, I was going to resurrect this thread myself, but here it is…
First of all, congrats Rick and Stuffy on getting jobs (even crappy ones)!
Secondly, I was wondering about something. I’ve read on a few job hunting sites that one should call the HR department for the company you’re applying at to say that you’re still interested. In this employer friendly job market, is that still a good idea, or would it just piss people off?
I was looking for a job for quite a while, before I decided to go back to school.
Employers are INSANE! They want 10 years of experience and a willingness to work for no pay for an entry-level position. I’m stretching, but not by much.
DC area unemployment victim checking in… I’m a planner/scheduler/program management person. I’ve been looking for two months. I’ve had a couple of interviews, but no offers yet. Salaries went into the shitter right when the tech bubble burst. It’s getting dire. Having to try to explain to your four year old that we can’t go play mini golf because we have no money is not something I would wish on anyone.
I don’t know how many of them were laid off, or are being laid-off, but it’s a lot more then there is a market for around here. And a lot of them look better than I do, (I don’t have a college degree). And to be fair, quite a few of them could program rings around me, and I’m pretty darn good.
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