“I chose a bad industry at a bad time and repeatedly chose bad firms to work for.”

Every industry is a bad industry, and every firm is a bad firm.

That’s because the only good that can come out of working for any of them is to become independent from them all.

Many of the beta provider types that occupy middle levels of management are inherently easy to dislike if you have anything resembling an ambition to never become like them.

TechieDude: “The only failure is to not see it coming, or not scramble off the ship before it sinks beneath the waves.”

There was a game some of us would play at university that applies here.

We’d sneak up on people and do this to them …

BOOM YOU’RE DEAD
AHAHAHAHAHAHA
NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?

And then the person who just got boom-shotted would have to come up with some completely new plan for life.

Playing this game got several people to stop being whingers about their shitty degree programmes and to realise that earlier vision of their future life was born dead anyway.

Oh, look at the glorious catastrophe that has resulted from the armada sinking in a sea of wishful thinking … but now we get to take control of events. 🙂

BigRainbowCorp swallowed up the company I work for. For the most part, the DIE program appears to be ornamentation. It conflicts with their passion for profit. We’ll see. And as my group is assimilated, I’m not so sure I’ll be employed long term. We’ll see. The gift I have is few, if any, do what I do. Which is astonishing.

One thing looming though, is I’ll probably be moved down, from answering to an EVP to a director. A woman. There are three on my level, and with two I’d be out the door. The one I’m hearing seems to be OK, which will buy me time to flee, if I need, and if I can.

Last time I was in a similar boat, only one with more holes in the hull, I worked for Lucent. My dilemma there was that although I knew full well the ship was sinking, and sinking fast, by taking a package (rather than fleeing), I’d bank some dough. Turns out, they whacked so many that in my state they had to pay my pay for two months before severance kicked in. So I didn’t even bother to look until the new year. It took me five months to score a gig at 1/2 what I was making before. So in retrospect, fleeing would’ve been the prudent move.

FWIW, the price looked way to high for what is essentially a self help course. Maybe at about 1/3 the price, I’d throw a few shekels in to see what it’s about. But that’s a maybe.

That’s a fair point. It was certainly marketed as a self-help course, when in fact it’s quite a bit more than that.

Kyle’s jaded view is that we were charging too high a price to “cheapskates” who kind of want everything just sort of done for them. I see where he’s coming from, but I also see that if the course isn’t marketed to the right segment at the right price, then of course it’s going to fail.

But you’ve never been fired for being an idiot, or doing something stupid?

Nope. Thankfully, my long list of personal failings does not include total incompetence or stupidity.

The only failure is to not see it coming, or not scramble off the ship before it sinks beneath the waves.

Well, that’s where we run into problems.

First layoff, i saw coming from miles off. I could see that my group was due for the chopping block and I had started making moves toward the exits months earlier, but I struggled to find anything because this was the year right after the 2008 Crash. I had a good line on a role, but got laid off before I could jump. I got the gig eventually, though.

I subsequently lost that gig in 2011, and that one I did NOT see coming. I definitely made my own life harder than it should have been because I was definitely not one to keep my mouth shut, and I did get a touch political in some of the emails that I sent around internally within my group at the time. But I got shot in a round of cost-cutting.

I took about three months to find my next job, and I stayed in that company for 6.5 years. But I lost my job there because I wasn’t stealthy enough in making my moves for the exits. I was looking around at a pretty good role internally that required my manager at the time to sign off on a resoure-sharing agreement. He and his boss chose to interpret that as disloyalty. That, combined with the fact that my manager and I couldn’t stand each other, made the separation pretty inevitable.

So I played a role in my own downfall in all of these cases. I chose a bad industry at a bad time and repeatedly chose bad firms to work for.

“I’ve lost every single job I ever held to layoffs or project cancellations”

But you’ve never been fired for being an idiot, or doing something stupid?

That’s hardly failure. Layoffs and cancellations are out of your control. The only failure is to not see it coming, or not scramble off the ship before it sinks beneath the waves. I’m in that boat now, for the second time in my career.

[to the tune of “Under Pressure” by Queen & David Bowie]

(intro)
Mumbles all day
Fumbles all day
Who understands but babies?

(verse 1)
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE!
It’s confounding me
It’s confounding you
What’s Joe Biden mean?
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE!
A debate with a clown
A moderator with no clue
Activists wearing sheets

(bridge)
But what about today?
He still mumbles all day
Oh yeaaaah
He’s faking — it’s not OK

(chorus)
It’s the terror of knowing what Joe Biden’s about
Wondering how he’ll torture everyone who’s figured him out
Pray tomorrow gets him tired
So he’ll mumble to his people
And keep them off the streets

(verse 2)
Crazy’s not dumb
But his daughter’s a son
OK?
A chip off the block, shit for brains but family adores
Gives his dad a percentage suitable for whores
What’s Burisma, baybay?
Where’s your laptop, baybay?
Who knows
Except Joe
Activists in sheets
A distraction
Activists in sheets
Doped up sheep sing baa-baa

(chorus)
It’s the terror of knowing what Joe Biden’s about
Wondering how he’ll torture everyone who’s figured him out
Pray tomorrow gets him tired
So he’ll mumble to his people
And keep them off the streets

(bridge)
Earned it all like a bought man
Built a fake empire but’s really a jerk
Kept coming up with lies, but they’re so clichéd and worn
Lie, lie, lie!
Lying, lying, lying, lying, lying!
Joe says TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE … while lying

(verse 3)
And few dare to say this hasn’t happened by chance
Why can’t we accept this isn’t happenstance?
Why can’t we stop lying, stop lying, stop lying
Stop lying, stop lying, stop lying, stop lying, stop lying??

(outro)
Because fraud’s such a sordid way to get caught
They want you to believe what you should not
People in darkness (activists in sheets) doing violence at night
And lies (activists in sheets) scare you to surrender your way
Of defending yourselves
This has not happened by chance
This has not happened by chance
These are sheep repeating TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE!
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE!
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE!
… UMAPRZURE!

🙂