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Subject:Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question From:<Robert -dot- Campbell -at- arm -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 29 Oct 2001 15:51:49 +0000
In your career as a technical writer, how many
times have you been laid off?
* I have never been laid off
* One time
* Two times
* Three times
* Four times
* Five times
* Six times
* Seven times
* Eight or more times
* Other/none of the above
...in the early 90s, it happened to me three times in two years - the first
two times, I jumped before I was pushed (and found a better position each
time, or so I thought...) - the third time, I waited until the end - there
was a good redundancy package, so it was worthwhile - and then I went back
for four months as a tax-free contractor, until the department's budget
fizzled out. A couple of years later, I saw the signs at the next company I
was at, and volunteered for redundancy (I had an excellent position lined
up), but it was (unofficially) a deadwood-clearing exercise, so they said
no - I ended up resigning anyway (which didn't help the
10-years-from-retirement-age guys who were laid off) - the South African
job market in the late 90s wasn't exactly thriving, so I left the country -
my experience is that there's no such thing as a permanent job these days,
regardless of the size of the company - the safest seems to be a mid-size
company (big enough to have some cash reserves behind it, but small enough
to avoid the top-heavy bureaucracy that tends to destroy large
organisations...)
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