Post #314,767
9/29/09 11:31:10 AM
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Deinstalled
Yesterday I saw a meeting added to my Outlook schedule with several people I didn't know and have never worked with before. Called my manager who said he had no idea what the meeting was about. Called his boss, a director, and was told the same thing. First thing this morning I saw that the HR director was included in the meeting, so I saw what was coming. Copied all my Outlook emails into archive folders and copied the .PST file to a flash stick, then erased everything I've installed (like Firefox) from the machine. Copied all work projects that I thought were relevant to the USB stick.
Went into the meeting, saw a bunch of 40+ white guys there, and we were all kicked to the curb. As I was leaving they asked if I had any questions. I replied that I wanted to say goodbye to one guy that had been helpful to me while I've worked there - and was told "No".
Pathetic fuckers.
At least I hadn't purchased next month's train ticket yet; they're not refundable.
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from."
-- E.L. Doctorow
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Post #314,768
9/29/09 11:37:58 AM
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:-( Hang in there. Best of luck with the search.
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Post #314,769
9/29/09 11:45:54 AM
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Bummer. Sorry to hear about it.
You have my sympathy. Last Thursday was my last day. They were a lot nicer about it though. After 2 rounds of layoffs, they moved my project that we just finished into maintenance mode and offered me a early retirement package with the suggestion that the next offer would not be nearly as nice. At least I got a going away lunch, a card, and better than average separation terms.
Good luck. I hope something turns up for you soon.
Hugh
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Post #314,772
9/29/09 11:57:07 AM
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What truly sucks
is that I was brought in to convert classic ASP web pages and their supporting legacy VBScript code into .NET and C#. 3 weeks after being hired last summer they fired the director who hired me. 2 months later I was assigned to a manager out of the Toronto office, a team that was maintaining old code - the stuff that WASN'T going to be converted. All attempts to prove some of this stuff should have been kept and converted failed, as did all attempts to get onto a team working with more marketable IT skills. Numerous recruiters that I've talked to this year have told me how screwed I was because of my age and lack of "being current"; they all sympathized that I was being held responsible for the decisions of previous employers not being "current" in languages and software packages. Unfortunately, there's very little I can do about it - learning something on your own is nice, but ask anyone who has been to an interview in the past several years how much weight being self-taught is compared to having used a language at a former employer.
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from."
-- E.L. Doctorow
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Post #314,774
9/29/09 1:47:10 PM
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Oh man, hope you can get going again soon
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Post #314,780
9/29/09 2:36:23 PM
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haven't seen a job ad I can apply for
in months; haven't had a recruiter return my phone calls or emails in over 3 months.
Don't know how long I'll be able to keep my head above water on unemployment. And of course, to make matters worse, the kids bought a dog last month. So now I have another mouth to feed and its associated doctor bills which aren't covered under COBRA.
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from."
-- E.L. Doctorow
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Post #314,807
9/29/09 11:14:34 PM
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Claim it as experience
Sorry to hear that, and that it happened in such a miserable way.
As for the programming and experience thing, don't specify that you only got 2 months experience before stuck with the legacy crud. Just list the entire time you worked for the company and all the skills you used while you where there.
Jay
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Post #314,810
9/29/09 11:35:12 PM
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agreed, they will happily lie to you, return the favor
my resume
have been assidiously argueing with nother for (how long has it been anyway?) and twiddled in between with work stuff :-)
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Post #314,919
10/1/09 11:41:19 AM
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Let's see...
It looks like we started using z.iwethey.org on 6/29/2001 - http://web.archive.o...rd/show?boardid=1
Before that, we were on EZBoard for a while - http://web.archive.o...oard.com/biwethey (it looks like it lived until October 2006??!).
Before that, we were on InfoWorld Electric. The Internet Archive has a page from December 1996, but I can't seem to find an actual forum archive - http://web.archive.o...ww.infoworld.com/
I read the InfoWorld forums regularly, but only rarely posted shortly before it went kerplunk.
So, it's been a long while. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #314,785
9/29/09 3:57:41 PM
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And here's what I'm up against
6 unemployed people for every job opening:
ÂJob seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor DepartmentÂs latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.
And even though the pace of layoffs is slowing, many companies remain anxious about growth prospects in the months ahead, making them reluctant to add to their payrolls.
The dearth of jobs reflects the caution of many American businesses when no one knows what will emerge to propel the economy. With unemployment at 9.7 percent nationwide, the shortage of paychecks is both a cause and an effect of weak hiring.Â
source: http://www.nytimes.c.../27jobs.html?_r=1
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from."
-- E.L. Doctorow
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Post #314,786
9/29/09 4:17:32 PM
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Condolences, on many scales ...
Damn.. it's an epidemic all right.
While everyone here, grokking to fullness the many similar tales over the years:
fully realizes that MBAs have neither Class (nor the capacity, any longer to feel..) shame, each new incident always comes like a slap-in-face, to one's sensibilities.
Bizness Itself has devolved to something much worse than Winner-Take-All; the corollary now appears standard: the Loser must be humiliated, herded into a paneled-cage and escorted-Out, lest the slightest ripple of sub-rosa Discontent interfere with the daily dose of Soma in the water-cooler, by which the inmates are kept reasonably docile.
While awaiting similar Escort Services processing, after the next coin-flip turns into a blackball.
I would hope that you can apply obv. analytical talents next, towards one of the (uncountable) New Fields which this depression shall necessarily spawn as it approaches Official Full-race Depression magnitude (~~when, worldwide, people notice that Muricans no longer Know How to 'make' anything but specious unparseable paperwork?
They spin-not, neither do they sew (except in sewing-up the Art of the spurious Deal.)
IT appears to be the perfect whipping boy, alas -- the Suits can't even balance their checkbooks, need calculators to do anything beyond simple arithmetic, thus have no idea how onerous to complete -- are their grandiose coding 'plans'. (I gather this is often the case; it's been reported in so many metaphorical ways all-along.)
May this unplanned nastiness catalyze a few Hmmms, an escape from the hamster wheel of Boolean expectations (I know that I am, in retrospect exceeding-grateful that for me/then: The Fortran Course managed silently to kill-off any remaining youthful exuberance about such prestidigitations.) Always there was physics, and no MBA-Suit can fuck with That, even in PowerPunt. ymmv.
Simply, there just Has To Be a renaissance for those with the imagination to do the creative stuff which formerly characterized Americans, before they surrendered to the thrall of MBAs (those who looked at the Hard=Real courses in the catalog and picked, unerringly the fluff-filled specious fantasy of bizness-Econ and its perpetually failed Formulas-for-Excess.)
We, collectively either begin to use that once-brainpower, For Real ... or ... (pick your favorite doom: whimper or Bang.)
Luck in transition,
Ashton
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Post #314,789
9/29/09 4:59:45 PM
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Really?
Always there was physics, and no MBA-Suit can fuck with That, even in PowerPunt. ymmv.
Tell that to the Challenger crew. http://www.edwardtuf...msg?msg_id=0001yB--
Drew
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Post #314,813
9/30/09 4:46:58 AM
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Yes, that *was* the perfect(-ly awful) exception
Usually only a Repo would debate F=MA, right after evolution; apparently NASA was infiltrated with a few failed-MBAs from that free-marketing thing.
Dick Feynman + a glass of (ice-water and O-ring) cut through the bafflegab about launch temps in about 15 seconds. Wonder if that clip is on YouTube.
And yes too, PowerPunt (burying the ISSUE about 7 levels down) worked again.. as only a Redmond product can 'work'.
Is 'synergy' really the right word ... when two Awfuls compound into a Horror?
Next week the USSC shall discuss, Is Murica Ready for Self-government?
... right after they dispose of a case involving some sort of plywood memorial cross, stuck out in the desert on US property.
(Are they planning to neutralize the little grey cells of the new Justice via terminal boredom through trivia?)
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Post #314,814
9/30/09 7:02:45 AM
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the rican from newyork finds law boring?
if so why did she take the yob?
Anglos dancing upon the head of a pin may be boring for a lot of folks but it is strong meat and drink for people like our new Justice, she will be fine.
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Post #314,971
10/2/09 6:23:11 AM
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re the video - check that memory stick I sent, perhaps?
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Post #314,825
9/30/09 12:14:05 PM
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Cast yer net wide
Says the massage therapist who got tired of looking for technical writing work.
There is work out there for you, work that will bring you joy and income. You will have to look beyond where you are used to looking.
This is the time for dreams, for big changes. When you are employed or have good prospects to continue what you have been doing, you have to be responsible and that means keep going pretty much in the same direction. But now, you are out there. In the dessert, you can't remember your name.* The hardness of these times means that the responsible thing now is to spread out, to dream, to really search for your joy.
--------------------
* Does that make any sense at all to the rest of you? It suddenly means something to me, and it never did before.
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Post #314,826
9/30/09 12:17:57 PM
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Wow, Mike's a hippie now
--
Drew
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Post #314,827
9/30/09 12:22:38 PM
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La laa la lalalala lalala la la... :-)
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Post #314,893
10/1/09 6:29:29 AM
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Uncle Knobby's Steam Boat?
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Post #314,895
10/1/09 6:36:38 AM
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Don't know that one.
I thought it was a clear allusion to "A Horse with No Name" - http://www.lyricsfre...ame_20007105.html
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #314,927
10/1/09 2:24:58 PM
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Yep, horse with no name
It never made sense to me before. Now it does, but I suspect the sense it makes has nothing to do with what it was originally.
My sense of it is that the dessert is, well, the current job market is an example. And you can't remember your name, because you need to pay attention to who you really are and forget who you think you are, who other people think you are.
Yeah, maybe I am a hippie. But there are conventionalities to being a hippie, and I tend to avoid those. My grandpa used to call my jeans and t-shirt my non-conformist's uniform, cured my of a certain mindset.
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Post #314,892
10/1/09 6:28:43 AM
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I made that decision a year ago
No regrets
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