Posted on 06/24/2006 11:14:12 AM PDT by Incorrigible
Still, those with the most useful skills will do better than without them. What would you have people do? A couple of years ago, when the downsizings really got going here, we had a manager who gave us some really gvood advice. He said, "change is coming." You can either take some positive steps and know that you have done the best you could under the circumstances. Or you can do nothing - and someone else will make all the decisions. and I guarantee you won't like the results. It is kind of like the residents of NOLA who spent all their energy whining about what FEMA didn't do, compared to the industrious Vietnamese neighborhood who got out with chain saws and worked together to clear the streets and stack the wood. Both groups went through some tough times. The Vietnamese group fared much better.
>Tell me something. How much less than you are spending now could your family live on? I'm talking just the basics. Food, shelter, simple clothing, medical attention only for serious matters, etc. <
Not much less. I live on ramen noodles and tunafish sandwiches. My clothes are all several years old. I do without dental. My prescriptions are what I can get free from my doctor as samples. The house is paid for. I owe $3200 on a car & have no other debts. This is not high living.
>Jobs are leaving because there is economic advantage to moving them. When that advantage disappears then the jobs will stop moving. <
It's nowhere near that simple. People are not little plastic parts, instantly interchangeable no matter where they are used if the molds are the same. If you do not have the kind of educational system in place to produce highly skilled workers, if you do not have industries in place to hire those workers and further hone those skills, the talent pool won't be there.
If you could hire a chemical engineer for $5k a year, would you do it if the only computer experience he had was with punch card mainframes and he never held a calculator in his life? He wouldn't be much of a bargain; you'd spend years bringing the guy up to speed no matter how intelligent, dedicated, and flexible he was-or how cheaply he would work.
What possible motivation would the remaining companies have for moving engineering jobs to Singapore or Japan if the cost here is the same as there?
Actually, some manufacturing of items that are costly to ship is moving back. I think we could compete if we set our mind to it.
The key would be to cut needless regulation and bureacracy. Nobody wants to live in a cesspool. We need some safety and environmental regulation to prevent another "Love Canal." Yet I have to keep a syringe & needle inventory in the lab when any addict can go to a free clinic and get a free one. Why hasn't the legislature removed this waste? In NY we have school boards, towns, cities, counties, and the state - all with bureacracy and taxing ability. We need no more than state and county government. When growing up I lived through "consolidation" of the Duval County and city of Jacksonville Fla governments. The savings were substantial and there was no loss in quality of essential services. We need to eliminate waste and stop subsidizing able-bodied, unproductive people. The "wolf at the door" is a powerful motivator.
To summarize, the solution is to cut the waste and get competitive.
If you could hire a chemical engineer for $5k a year, would you do it if the only computer experience he had was with punch card mainframes and he never held a calculator in his life? He wouldn't be much of a bargain; you'd spend years bringing the guy up to speed no matter how intelligent, dedicated, and flexible he was-or how cheaply he would work.
Many state governments have programs for displaced workers that will fund retraining, including multiple year degree programs. There is free internet access at most libraries. There are excellent free tutorials available. I taught myself Python and Java that way. Many journals have issues older than two years available free. It all depends on how badly the person wants to succeed.
>Still, those with the most useful skills will do better than without them.<
I've been watching the rock roll down the mountain our way for years. I am not sure my job skills, the effort I have put into keeping them current, and my willingness to take some miserable jobs has been exactly a wonderful thing.
The Soft-Handed Desk Sitters toss glib answers out, but the truth us, re-tooling yourself for a completely different field is expensive--and risky. Look at the people who re-invented themselves as IT specialists, only to see their work go overseas. I don't think they displayed a lack of gumption or smarts, I just don't think we can continue to go through convulsions of that kind indefinitely at all levels.
I am considering re-training in a medical area, but by the time I complete training the pay might be equivalent to that for delivering pizza. Life has no guarantees, but gambles of this magnitude, to be taken over and over in life, is more than most individuals, marriages, families-can weather.
Life has no guarantees, but gambles of this magnitude, to be taken over and over in life, is more than most individuals, marriages, families-can weather.
Well people have two choices - keep trying no matter what life throws at them or lie down and quit. The second choice leads to discouragement, depression, and death. I may end up eating cat food - but I'm gonna keep trying.
>It all depends on how badly the person wants to succeed.<
Baloney.
There is a lot of human wreckage out there. Until you've wrecked on the shores of layoffs and vanishing industries, please don't bill and coo about how it is all a matter of showing up at a government office or going to a library.
>I may end up eating cat food - but I'm gonna keep trying.<
Easy for you to say. You've had 25 protected years. Most good jobs in this country last far fewer years; the typical pattern is less than 5. Go through multiple job losses, multiple spend-downs of savings, multiple lousy paying,lousy environment jobs, and let's see how chirpy you are then.
Look at the people who re-invented themselves as IT specialists, only to see their work go overseas.
I have a couple of friends who have weathered this. One went and learned new skills and got a good job managing the IT for a law firm. Another went and got trained as a financial planner. I met a couple of 50-ish support specialists who got jobs working for the company with the local Dell contract. They worked on my lab computers. They were the best I've ever worked with. Put our local IT support (very Dilbert like) to shame.
Businesses like older workers who show up reliably and have a work ethic. Yes, the pay may be lower. It is still better than the alternative.
No way! We know that you are not slackers!! My wife and I will be 60 in a few months. Like Dubya', we will be the first Boomers to retire (born in 1946). All we want is for you to keep paying into S/S, so we can add that to our pretty fat 401k $$. We just want to retire comfortably. And longevity runs in our families. So we are shooting for age 90, minimum. That means we could be getting S/S income for 25+ years. Maybe your generation should be working second jobs?? Thanks!
Easy for you to say. You've had 25 protected years.
Pardon me, but excrement! I worked my butt off, including nights and weekends to take lemons and make lemonade. I've been reading journal articles at night and teaching myself new skills while most spend their time on anything but their career. I'm employed because I staid relevant!
staid = stayed
Gosh, tough breaks. But no, my wife and I didn't have any of those things happen to us. We never stopped working, though. So now we have our pensions, 401k's, plus S/S! But to be thrifty, we only take three cruises a year (we are trying to give back some..).
>To summarize, the solution is to cut the waste and get competitive.<
No.
If you look at the actual costs of manufactured goods as priced when they were made here 10 or fewer years ago compared to what they are sold for now, the price difference is minute. [& not infrequently, the quality has suffered]
Part of the solution is something nobody wants to think about: tariffs.
Slave and semi-slave labor will always be cheaper. Look at the goods made in our own prisons. However, we don't have to put up with slave-labor advantages...or turning much of the far east into a vast toxic dump.
>Gosh, tough breaks. But no, my wife and I didn't have any of those things happen to us. We never stopped working, though.<
Well, look around. These "tough breaks" are not unusual. I know a lot of technical people who have been through the employment meat grinder.
Anyone who smugly tells himself it will never happen to him is delusional.
I talked to a guy once whose job was to go about chucking high-level older guys out the door. He honestly said that he had no idea what would become of them, what they would do next.
And to this day, I am sure he believes the company will never do it to him.
>Businesses like older workers who show up reliably and have a work ethic.<
Fast food places like them. Nobody else wants them.
>I've been reading journal articles at night and teaching myself new skills while most spend their time on anything but their career.<
Now, tell me how you could have managed that if you had to work two full-time jobs paying $8/hour to keep the heat on while you searched for another job...you just don't know how good you've had it.
We Baby Boomers are going to need a lot of care. And we will have to pay.
Not long ago I took an early retirement bribe from a company after working there 31 years. My last five years I was working as a software engineer customizing engineering software. The prior ten years I had been an engineering manager. I was really not cut out for that work.
At the time I left, my job had not even been targetted. It was essential to customize and support this software. But I was personally worn out by watching the company downsize by 50%. It is a very draining, demoralizing process. By taking the early retirement that I very much wanted, I was able to protect the jobs of two other people. I still feel good about that.
The one story I found most encouraging of all those concerning people being downsized, was that of a fellow manager. He had evidently had enough himself and had decided to re-train as an engineer for MRI systems. Now that several years have passed, I would not be surprised to find him in a management position in a company selling, installing, and/or operating such systems.
Another person I know was one of just a few who literally fled the scene in a panic when notified of their severance. He is now working at an equivalent level at another company and I am confident he is making as much as before.
I see no reason to expect a sudden, jarring upheaval economically. Unless the government tries to help. Instead, I anticipate a slow, grinding, water-torture spiral with plenty of time for most people to adjust.
I know another guy who had a terrible commute to a job he detested. He resented the wealth of his employer's customers and he was truly a miserable person. Several years ago, he bought a local business. I remember hearing many horror stories involving unpaid Social Security payments and vindictive employees.
I can't believe how much has changed since then though. The business employs three family members. The commute is fifteen minutes. He probably can't figure out what took him so long to take the leap.
If you are thinking of re-training, I encourage you to find something that you really enjoy doing. I would also encourage you to consider relocating in the US. This is a big place and it doesn't make sense to stay where the living is hard.
You might consider looking for somebody who is running their own business and wants to retire. The gentleman who has repaired my vehicles for years, (that is, the repairs that I can't do) recently retired. He is more interested in pursuing his successful efforts at running in triathlons. His business is closed and for sale. There are probably hundreds of his customers like me who wish that there was somebody there to take up the slack.
Welcome to Earth. May I suggest that you start your visit with a quick overview of our historical archives?
>I see no reason to expect a sudden, jarring upheaval economically.<
I see too much going wrong now.
People owe too much, the price of oil is unstable, we appear to be on the threshhold of admitting millions of unassimilatable people who cost us billions while running down the calibre of schools, medical care, etc., the housing market is a mirage...and one well-placed terrorist act could cripple the economy.
[I'm not expecting a major terrorist hit until after January 2009, assuming a democrat is elected. If that happens, it's open season, because the bad guys know the democrats will roll over and play dead exactly as Carter and Clinton did.]
[I played the what-if game with other people interested in history and military strategy years and years ago, and if you look around at your own local infrastructure, you don't need to look far to see the vulnerabilities that would take years to fix locally. I won't post specifics for obvious reasons.]
Matter of fact, I live in an area with a good economic outlook. I have no intention of relocating to a one-industry town and being suddenly jobless in a place where my home is now worth nothing.
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