[Hencredible Casanova]

Just saw this feature story slide show on Business Insider. Truly wild circumstances. Sad these kind of stories don't get brought up in all of the election cycle coverage.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-truth...ber-2008-1

[Aliblahba]

The Greatest Generation came home and was able transition into 30 year caeer jobs. Those days are long gone. Our generation has to adopt a nomadic mindset if we want to stay gainfully employed, while staying in the same salary range.

From what I've seen, people long-term unemployed refuse to move from their geographic location, take a paycut, or consider another career path. It pays now to become a jack of all trades.

I dont paticularly like what I do, but it diversified my resume, giving me better mobility in the job market. I learned the hard way back when the economy dipped back in '02.

[UrbanNerd]

Not trying to 1-up Aliblahba but I learned back 1991.

I was at a big company in Pittsburgh and they had massive layoffs. I walked in the day of the layoffs, went to my immediate supervisor's office and it was damn-near empty. I then walked to HIS boss' office, our director and asked about my supervisor and was told he was no longer with the company. I then asked about my current project and my director told me that "I" would be leading the project. Fast-forward to around lunchtime and once we did a headcount, the rest of us decided to ask when were our graduation years. All you heard was 1989, 1990, 1991...and this was in 1991.

I knew then, it was all about keeping your skills up to par. In my 20+ year I.T. career, I rode the PowerBuilder phase, the Sybase phase, the Data Warehousing phase, the Healthcare I.T. phase and the Oracle phase...and now doing Cloud Computing. Yeah, I have technical books that I buy and throw away every 3-4 years but that is better than being unemployed. Also, yeah I put up with junk to keep a security clearance but hell, in the DC area...that's JOB SECURITY.

[tenderman100]

I am in my late 50s and have had the following careers.

Teacher
Journalist
Marketing Exec
Start Up Entrepreneur (one failed, the other succeeded, modestly)
Teacher/Consultant

Key principles (and much of this is for so-called "knowledge workers.")
--Save every month; fund tax free accounts, even if it's only a little
--Get your education as debt free as possible
--Get two credit cards. One you use to charge one small thing every month, and then pay off completely. One for which you run a balance. This will help your credit rating.
--Buy the cheapest house in the best neighborhood you can afford (it will decline in value less if the market tanks, but appreciate higher in % terms if the market goes up).
--Buy a quality used car (though leasing new is OK if you use the car for business and deduct).
--Always expect to lose your job, but work to keep it;every day you should ask and answer "What value did I add today?" If the answer is none, you are heading down the path of doom.
--Expect not to hold your job for more than 5 years.
--Be prepared to move for new work, but concentrate on major urban areas.
--After two years on a job, start looking for a new one -- internally AND externally. Network with recruiters.
--Learn to write well and speak well. Communication skills are more critical that subject matter knowledge.
--Get new subject matter skills CONSTANLY. Read the key books. Know the key players. Suck up knowledge.

If you decide that "knowledge work" is not your thing, and you want to do more hands on stuff, then get proficient in what I would call "hands on skilled" work for which there will ALWAYS be a need -- plumbing, electrician, machine tooling, welding, auto mechanics, heavy machine operation. Your ultimate objective? Own your own company doing that work.

But if it's a job anybody can do with about a week's worth of training -- sales clerk, assembly line factory work -- then you are simply an interchangeable -- and discardable -- part.

I haven't really touched on the entrepreneurial option, but it is VERY hard to do. Stars have to align -- right product, right service, right resources. Be prepared to fail: trust me, I know.

Finally, you have to ask yourself this. How much does money and security REALLY mean to you? You don't have to be incredibly rich to fuck beautiful women. How much do you REALLY want to work and how much do you really want to fuck around? I love what I do, and I am going to keep on doing it, thought at times my schedule is crazy intense. These are personal decisions, not business decisions, though they effect how you do business.

[WestIndianArchie]

(02-20-2012 10:10 AM)tenderman100 Wrote:  

I haven't really touched on the entrepreneurial option, but it is VERY hard to do. Stars have to align -- right product, right service, right resources. Be prepared to fail: trust me, I know.

Great principles.

Please do tell us about the entrepreneurial options.

[Samseau]

I don't care how much money I make, I'm going to live like a pauper for the rest of my life. People who live like a baller are foolish and shortsighted.

[tenderman100]

(02-20-2012 01:40 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

I don't care how much money I make, I'm going to live like a pauper for the rest of my life. People who live like a baller are foolish and shortsighted.

Here's THE principle to keep in mind

You can live well if you're rich...you can live well if you're poor.
But if you're poor, it's much cheaper.

[Aliblahba]

People now are lazy. They are accustomed to getting handouts from parents, the guvmint, ect. Men in America have lost their tenacity to go forth in the world and conquer. It's easier to wait for a free handout. Some never even join the ranks of the bold, but rather sit on their parents couch and complain about how the system is holding them down.

For the rest of us, we rather take the risks and fail, than to have never tried at all. Even in failure, we stand to command those those never take the steps torward success. I call them cowards, but feel free to put another adjective on it if you wish.

Walt Whitman said it best:

http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/logr/log_094.html

[Parlay44]

--After two years on a job, start looking for a new one -- internally AND externally. Network with recruiters.

This has been my philosophy. I tend to stay 2-3 years at a job. Each jump makes me at least 10-15k a year more in salary.

Funny thing is ...it takes a while for companies to get you up to speed. Once you're there and fully functional at your job, management starts to put the squeeze on you. They want to get the most work out of you that they can for the same pay. You'll know when that hits cause you job becomes a grind. If you're not learning something new or gaining experience then it's time to move on.

I'll never understand the lifers I encounter that settle for the grind and measly cost of living raise every year.

[Aliblahba]

This is why I prefer contracting. You can gain a lot of knowledge in a short time frame, without committing to a full time job. It is easier to explain on a resume why you left.

[Chad Daring]

Anyone have advice on diversifying your resume, as Ali put it.

I've worked in the culinary and service industries all my life and for about a year now I've tried to break out of that field, if only for the sake of change, but also specifically to diversify my resume so that I have more experience, but I'm finding it near impossible.

Most entry level jobs anymore demand you have experience in that field already just because they can. The surplus of workers in almost all fields, especially positions that dont require special education, means that employers dont have to settle for a guy who's never done it before.

So that being said, how does one break ground in a completely new field of work? Lie?

[babelfish669]

Think about what you'd do if you were lived in Russia in 1993, China in 2001, or some civil war torn African country right now. You can always bust ass and make things happen. Thinking of making money in the context of the USA, right now, is very limiting. Read up on guys who got thrown in jail for big fraud cases. (edit: also lawsuits against successful companies, such as Girls Gone Wild) Often, they have some business which is completely legit but they just made multiple really stupid mistakes and broke the wrong laws just to make a little extra money. But, because they are court cases you can read in great detail exactly how their business worked -- something that you generally don't find from even publicly traded company's SEC filings.

Working for someone else, in an unstable job that doesn't pay mid six figures, is like jerking off in a cup and drinking it.