Laid Off? It's Good for You and Good for the Tech Industry

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/17-08/st_essay

by dlnovell • 17 years ago

31 29 17 years ago

And there are still plenty of opportunities out there for Valley types: Facebook widgets, iPhone apps, Twitter tools, and cloud services are exploding.

That's where they lost me. Laid off? No money? Kids starving? Make a new Twitter app!

ardit332• 17 years ago

Hey, that's what I am doing right now.

My previous company shut down. I got 4 job offers withing 2 weeks, and right now I am transfering my H-1B papers.

Since that takes few weeks, I am working on something fun. A sms backup system, that automatically backs up all your sms, and makes them search-able from a small portal.

Using Python for the backend, and java/objective-c on the client side. I choose python b/c I would like to learn it better, as in all my jobs it has been all java.

So, I probably won't make any money out of it, but I will come with some solid server side Python experience that I can put it on my resume.

Meanwhile I still have to tell recruiters "sorry I already accepted an offer". Got a call from google, and fb.

Bottom line, if you are good, there is really no recession for you. And getting laid off is not that bad. (this is my first time). My previous company was going no-where, and my skills would have been better used somewhere else, where I can produce real economic value.

MicahWedemeyer3• 17 years ago

No argument that playing with new stuff is always a good idea, and doing it when laid off to keep your skills honed is a great idea.

However, 2 points here:

1) You're making an SMS backup / searching app, not a Twitter app (AFAIK). I don't know how you're getting the SMS in the first place, but that sounds incredibly useful to me. Dunno if it's commercially viable, but it sure sounds useful. As opposed to wefollow or twibes or whatever the flavor-of-the-minute twitter app is currently making the rounds.

2) The OP is invoking the popular myth that just making an app makes you rich. The vast majority of twitter, iphone, and facebook apps go nowhere. If your goal is to stay afloat financially, polishing your resume and hitting the bricks is a much better way to spend your time than firing up the text editor and making a new piece of Twitter trash.

bmelton2• 17 years ago

For what it's worth, that sounds nice, and disruptive, but possibly short-lived. Someone recently asked me how I enjoyed using Google Voice, and while I didn't immediately have an answer, after thinking about it, I decided that I liked it mostly because it allowed me to keep my SMS messages in the cloud.

Many people use SMS to get actual work done, as I do, and it surprises me that nobody seems to care to back them up (or at least, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of allowing that) -- but Google Voice gets rid of the problem altogether, in that they're only transiently on my phone, and always stored in the Googleplex (deletions are 'archived', similar to Gmail).

eugenejen• 17 years ago

Great. I have been thinking of sms backup for years. the problem is how to make money from the services. I am glad you made it. Is it public now?

potatolicious2• 17 years ago

My thoughts exactly. How many Facebook widgets are actually profitable? Even just ramen profitable? iPhone apps? Twitter tools?

Seriously guys, just because it's hip and cool doesn't mean there's a boatload of money waiting for everyone who jumps on the wagon.

I like the general concept: go into business for yourself, but honestly, the un-sexiest fields are generally the best for profit. In any case, I would have serious reservations about monetizing off a platform that the platform owners can't even monetize off of themselves.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

It's like with musicians, for the longest time every wannabe rock star that could hold a guitar was going to make it big, and some of them actually did. But for every success story there are at least a hundred, if not a thousand failures. In twitter, facebook and iphone apps that is just as true.

So now that a few people have struck it rich let's give everybody and their brother out there the message that if they got laid off they should go and bet the farm on some wild hunch.

It's like advising all those that can hold guitars without breaking them and maybe play a cool riff or two that their kids tuition is in the bag, just practice a bit harder and that contract is just around the corner.

But don't despair, because the author of the piece has made it.

Not that I would want anybody to despair, a bit of positive thinking goes a long way to get you out of a hole, but instead of writing the next facebook app (do it, but do it in your sparetime) go find that job, any job to replace your lost income and cover the hole doing freelancing if you have the opportunity to do so.

That's not a guaranteed success either but it stands a chance.

ph0rque• 17 years ago

Paul Boutin (paul.boutin@nytimes.com) was a Wired senior editor until we fired him in 2001

JBiserkov• 17 years ago

the ladder, the ladder is on FIRE!

I wonder what will come after it? http://paulgraham.com/ladder.html

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

The disconnection between the writer and reality is really striking.

If you're laid off it is never 'good for you', and it certainly isn't good for the industry.

Plenty of talent that was thrown out at some point in this crisis due to no fault of theirs is not going to try their hand again at a job that left them with 0 security when times were hard, that talent will be lost forever.

And if you have a mortgage, kids to put through school or college and the usual family expenses then being laid off is a crisis, not 'good for you' in any way because making a facebook or a twitter application is not going to put bread on your table in time for your house not to be repossessed.

It's ok to suggest that for some individuals there are opportunities in being laid off but for the most part any forced leave from a job that you may have liked and performed well in and that kept you alive is a tragedy.

It could easily ruin someones life for years to come.

ardit332• 17 years ago

I have to say that usually it is marginal talent that has hard time finding a job.

Crisis like this is when the chaff is separated from the wheat. They filter out people that shouldn't be in he bussiness.

I remember my car mechanic was a DBA back in 2000. He read a SQL book, and a 3 months class, and bam, he was DBA for some company, which eventually went under. He admited me he didn't know what he was doing, but at the time you will get hired right away if you new something.

He owns a car repair garage now, and is pulling up to 500k of profit a year. Who knows, maybe he would have been a great DBA with enough experience, but in this case he clearly profited more by doing what he was good at.

Kinda like CS 121, which was the hardest class in college, and a lot of people failed. They usually switched majors, to bussiness, or information systems, or something else they could do.

I thought it was good, as those people were evidently there b/c they had heard all those stories about startups and being rich, while had no passion or abilities for programming whatsover.

tptacek• 17 years ago

The skills required to quickly find a new job aren't even related to the skills required to execute on a software team.

HeyLaughingBoy• 17 years ago

I have to say that usually it is marginal talent that has hard time finding a job

Even if you're correct, and I'm not saying that you are, so what? Most of the "talent" out there is marginal. Meaning most people laid off will have trouble finding a job. You see this as a good thing?

c0nsilience• 17 years ago

I completely agree that the author may be slightly out of touch with reality. The target audience are hackers and Silicon Valley types, but even then that group doesn't get so lucky. Widgets and apps certainly don't rake in a ton of money unless you get noticed - and in a market that is saturated, applications and widgets are pretty much a developer's lottery.

But the point of the article is to lift spirits where spirits need lifting. Even if the message isn't entirely true, it might prompt some people to be more proactive and do something if a lay off has them feeling depressed or reclusive.

patio112• 17 years ago

If you're laid off it is never 'good for you'

I don't know, I'd sort of welcome it if it happened. Between savings, severance pay, and my small business I'd be in an excellent position to go full-time, and being laid off would alleviate any social reservations I have about quitting. (Both in the "I promised my bosses I would stay a while to justify their investment in me" and "Salarymen who quit are not likely to be salarymen again" senses.)

azanar3• 17 years ago

Salarymen who quit are not likely to be salarymen again

This I don't think is true anyway. It has always seemed to me like a socially manufactured platitude to keep people erring as much on the side of safety as they can possibly reach. For the average person, it might be a very reasonable default, which is why the platitude tends to stick.

Otherwise, I don't know if the social reservations are worth worrying so much about. It's hard to tell how much of this is people legitimately looking out for you, and how much is them preemptive prevention from having to envy you and what you did that they couldn't bring themselves to do.

azanar3• 17 years ago

The difference between one perspective of reality and another is quite striking as well. That is all any of us have to offer: perspective. Past that, reality is largely how you handle the situations presented before you, and a person will react and determine their outcome in some part based on how they interpret their situation.

You believe that a layoff could ruin someone's life for years to come. This sounds severely melodramatic even if my hearing it is quite common. If this is your perspective on what would happen if you were laid off at some point, you are probably right. If you believe that you will lose your house, force your kids into a lifestyle of poverty and guarantee no post-secondary education for them, you are probably right again. You are probably right because you will probably make yourself right; either that, or you will count yourself one of the lucky few to survive.

On the other hand, you might find an even better job than the one you had; you may have not even been looking before you were laid-off, and didn't know -- or didn't care that -- you had any other options. A company might find an even better use for your's talents, thus guaranteeing that said talent is not lost forever.

Self-fulfilling prophecies are quite powerful things; they fundamentally change a person's behavior. I don't think a layoff has to be the end of the road. Even if one has a mortgage and kids, it is how you handle these challenges that determines whether or not it was good for you or the industry. You can either grow and learn, or lament and wallow in self-desperation and resignation.

And I have to take on this point about it being no fault of their own in particular, because it has always seemed false to me. If they are put in the position you describe, of being unable to feed their family or keep their home, it is most certainly their responsibility in part. They were not owed that job, and that they lost it is not tragedy. They were not owed anything; they already had little security, as much as they may have convinced themselves of the contrary. That they were in a position to get completely screwed as soon as that job vanished and before they could find another one, that is a tragedy. But it is a tragedy of their own making. They were relying far too much on the security they had supposedly accrued, and too little on keeping themselves in a position to survive misfortune. And I have yet to know someone who is talented being unable to find a job for so long that even with financial preparation they end up broke. Maybe I just know the wrong people, and reality, in an absolute sense, does suck as bad as you go on about.

But I think this is way too sensationalist and melodramatic, and I suspect for that reason my grip on the real reality will be called into question.

As a random aside, I've heard tales on here a few times of people with mortgages and/or children starting companies of their own, taking on a similar amount of potential pain as someone who is laid off (probably more, because there's no UI payments in the mean time). I'm interested in the perspective of these people on this, because if being laid off is the reading of one's eulogy, it sounds like that doing a startup under similar circumstances is like running oneself through with a knife.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

hehe, I think you have your parties muddled up. I am quite well off but I think that to 'project' from what worked for me in the past to some arbitrary rule that everybody that is out of a job should follow is arrogant in the extreme.

djb_hackernews• 17 years ago

I laugh. I'm not exactly laid off, but I quit a pretty decent dev job in January to do some traveling. Since then I built a gmaps mashup for a library, a wordpress twitter widget, a custom wordpress widget, and $80 worth of elance work. I'm in the process of learning python/django in the hopes of releasing a pretty fun twitter app with no revenue potential. I can say of all of the technologies I used to build these things, I had zero previous experience, and still don't have enough to list it on my resume in good conscience. So where does that leave me? My travels are coming to an end and I'm scared to death I'll never find a job.

Laid Off? It's Good for You and Good for the Tech Industry

Related Stories