Thought of being jobless?

Davey_Pitch said:
I was made redundant at the end of last year and it was fairly scary wondering how the wife and I would cope. Thankfully, she is in a really well paid job and we managed to survive fairly easily on her wage by cutting back sensibly where required.
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Not really a worry if both of you have good jobs, surely? Unless you really overcommit on your outgoings.
 
I tend to not worry about it, however whenever the next round of redundancies come along it definitely worries me - I have a wife, a mortgage and bills. Thankfully no debt though.
I am mainly concerned due to having no degree and this day and age it seems every decent job expects you to have one. I just hope with a decade of experience it won't matter so much
 
dowie said:
'too experienced' is nonsense for roles that require some reasonable level of technical skill

if you really want stability then joining a profession still seems to offer it - 40 yr old accountants, GPs and solicitors don't tend to have an issue

failing that having up to date IT skills is reasonable

or even old some old skill set - my previous firm still employed some VB developers, couple of 'new' employees for that team were over 40 years old before they started recruiting in India - still no UK people were made redundant and one of the older guys now supervises a bunch of the Indians.

I'm sure there are still people out there employing COBOL developers - I'd wager the vast majority of them (at least in the UK) are over 40.

General programming skills are a good thing to have and there is no such thing as being 'too experienced' in that domain.
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I'm quite happy doing technical product management - and - product management in creating the business case for the product out of thin air (or market/business analysis, qualifying it etc). The last position was to make something to target a new market (no sales in the market)... developed the proposition, did the go-to-market, developed the product with team, integrated product as a service into main enterprise.

So when people ask for 'technical product management' they ask about product backlogs etc.. then get scared when they discover the other bits.

Tech product management, for software, covers a wide range:
At one end.. acting as a tracking tool for product backlog.
At the other end - being the product owner (mini CEO/CTO/COO) with ownership of the business case and doing all that is required with legal, finance, PR, marketing, BI, operations, development, PMO, customer services, billing, security stakeholders that your service/build uses..

It's because I have 'the other end' that I get the comments when applying because to me TPM is a mini CEO/COO/CTO (i.e. what is expected in large organisations) but to others it's not (i.e. in the smaller startups here in London).
 
LordSplodge said:
Not really a worry if both of you have good jobs, surely? Unless you really overcommit on your outgoings.
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We knew we could manage with our outgoings being what they were, but there was always the worry about something unexpected, something that could have easily coped with had I been working, but that might prove to be really difficult to manage on one wage. It's also one of those things that looks easy on paper when we looked at our outgoings, but actually managing on one wage is certainly a nervy time.
 
I was made redundant in 2007, just had my 2nd child. It gave me a kick up the bum to do something, I got my HGV licence and started working at Heathrow 3 months later earned double what I did at my previous job.

I'd hate to be in that situation now, but if it happened I would find any form of paid work to tide me over.
 
Looking forward to it. My university contract finishes next month and it will be nice to take off a few months. Lots planned in terms of things to learn and do :D.
 
LordSplodge said:
I think people don't save enough / overcommit expenditure nowadays. I know the stupid price of property doesn't help though.
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Stupid London property prices absolutely contributes to this, I've been lucky and I'm fairly careful with money and so have a good 6 months of comfortable leeway with meeting my commitments if I lose my job but it is difficult for many.
It's easy to say don't overcommit but there does come a point where you have to make the decision on taking the plunge and buying, or renting for the rest of your life.

If you only ever get a mortgage where any level of job can cover mortgage payments, you're not going to be buying a property in London.
 
LordSplodge said:
I think people don't save enough / overcommit expenditure nowadays. I know the stupid price of property doesn't help though.
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That is very true I think. My sister-in-law is about to do just that, by stretching to her absolute financial limit to buy a house with her husband. If either of them lose their job, they'll be completely stuffed. When we mention this we just get told to stop "being negative". This is despite the fact that he works in the car industry which is notorious for its high turnover of staff. I swear she is the dumbest smart person I know.
 
I was on Job Seekers and Housing Benfit for a while when I was 20, for about 8 months. It was hard living, was eating either pancakes or bread for dinner most days with water.
 
JOSH86 said:
I was made redundant in 2007, just had my 2nd child. It gave me a kick up the bum to do something, I got my HGV licence and started working at Heathrow 3 months later earned double what I did at my previous job.

I'd hate to be in that situation now, but if it happened I would find any form of paid work to tide me over.
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Do you feel you have made the right career choice now you have a few years experience ?

I've been trucking for 30 years this August !!
 
NickK said:
Tech product management, for software, covers a wide range:
At one end.. acting as a tracking tool for product backlog.
At the other end - being the product owner (mini CEO/CTO/COO) with ownership of the business case and doing all that is required with legal, finance, PR, marketing, BI, operations, development, PMO, customer services, billing, security stakeholders that your service/build uses..

It's because I have 'the other end' that I get the comments when applying because to me TPM is a mini CEO/COO/CTO (i.e. what is expected in large organisations) but to others it's not (i.e. in the smaller startups here in London).
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well it is a BS excuse from the perspective employer - you can't really be 'too experienced' to be a product owner, certainly at my last place product owners typically had a significant amount of experience - previous one that left moved to a CTO position at a mid size firm with a few thousand employees. Sounds more like a way of fobbing people off if the fit wasn't right for whatever reason - if a candidate is happy with the pay for the role then lots of experience isn't a negative.
 
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Not really. I have a great job for a great company with people who I get along with, however a job is a job at the end of the day.

I am a lot better trained now than when I was a few years ago and lost my job twice in 7 months and managed to find jobs within 2 weeks each time

Then again, I dont have a family of my own or mortgage so less to worry about
 
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