Suckage!

[Jcranmer]

Well I haven't been posting much, and I think this is my second post in this area, but things have taken a turn for the worse with me, so what the heck!

This last Tuesday, while returning to work after a 4 day weekend, but director comes to me and asks if I have a second for a quick meeting. (This by itself isn't that uncommon) Of course after walking into his office and seeing the director of HR, I know something is up.

Come to find out since we were bought out by a new parent corperation a few years ago, said parent corporation has decided that my job needed to be eliminated. So here I am after nearly 7 years (The longest I have ever spent with a single company) being one of the newly unemployeed. No notice, only a small severance package, the option to cash out my 401k and nada else.

At this point I may have enough to live on for a month or so, but that is it. I don't see me easily getting a new job that pays anywhere near what I used to make, just since I don't have any certifications or anything.

Life really sucks sometimes. :(

[Jenny]

:( That sucks! Good luck and I hope you find something else quick!

[wung]

what kind of work do you do? (if you don't mind me asking ...)

[Hiro]

Good luck with a new job man. Any experience you gained should help you find a new job. Most places will ask for a Bachelor's or equivilant experience, which you should be good for. Most equivilant experience is only a max of five years. So I am sure you will find something.

[Mommypooh]

That so totally sucks, I hope things work out for you.

[DarkFury]

Dayuuuum... that's just harsh.

They didn't even try to place you somewhere else? Talk about a "sucky" company...


Well, hopefully things will work out for you... maybe there is a better job just waiting for you. Good luck and keep ya head up.

[Jcranmer]

Thanks guys. I am sure I will find something, I just need to get motivated to start looking. As usual I just needed to vent a bit

I was working in the IT field. My last job with the company was Network and Security Administrator. Which is a fancy term for fix anything that breaks in IT, that normal helpdesk can't handle.

So I worked with:
Windows Servers
Apple Servers
Cisco Gear (high end switches, routers, and pix firewalls)
and Sun Solaris which I guess you could say was what I knew the best.


Before that I did Software QA for in house written Cobol apps. (Y2K time really sucked!)

And before that I was working helpdesk. Working on Macs and PC's doing all the backups and restores on all the servers and doing the normal End of Day reports and crap.

So in 7 years I moved up pretty rapidly, and so did my pay, which I assume is what finally did me in. They converted most of the dept a few months back to exempt, but for some reason left me as hourly. I think that more then likely made me the highest paid hourly in the dept if not the company.

[Thesifer]

You should look into sueing :) .. thats always fun. .and it can bring in a good profit hehe.. that is of course.. as long as they cant find a reason to fire you.. Cause it wasn't like it was a new company that JUST took over.. you were there for three years.. after they took over.. sounds to me like something was up.

[cheapie]

they can fire you for any reason they want as long as it's not discrimination.

[AlpineJay]

I'm sorry about the job. Vent away as you wish. Given how you say you know Sun systems well, that can get you a lot of positions with IT companies for systems engineering positions that pay pretty well. I know for one my company (Fidelity) is hiring for guys like you. Of course it's in the Boston area so that's probably a no-go for you, but it just goes noto show that large companies are in constant need of positions that require systems work. Given how systems dept. is running short on people here in Fidelity I'd assume that you'd be able to find something very soon. Good luck.

[nickel]

sorry to hear that J. hope you can find another job soon.

[mcs328]

Oh that royally sucks. Well look into monster and dice.com ASAP. I founnd a job on dice.com that matched my exact position. Then I saw it was my exact company. And then I though oh fudge. Then I saw it was in a different location. Phew. But it was for 20K more for a junior position and I've been at this position for 6 years.

Anyways my point is maybe they have a position open in your company they're not telling you about or didn't think about hiring internally first.

[Jeffbx]

Oh man that sucks - IT is still a difficult industry to be in, with all of the downsizing & outsourcing.

Good luck with your search - in addition to the on-line resources like Monster, DICE, etc, you might contact a recruiter or two. Not too many though, since if a company gets your resume twice from different recruiters they will usually throw them both away, as both recruiters will want to be paid for finding you.

Also, now is a good time to dig up all of your contacts from days past - you are much much much more likely to find a position through an inside tip rather than coming in blind. Many IT positions are filled even before they're posted, by referrals from co-workers.

Good luck!

[Jcranmer]

Thanks again everyone. Some really good sugestions in here.

Jeff, the only issue I have is that I lost almost all of my contacts as they were on my company laptop, that promptly was removed from my office as soon as I was led into my director's office for the axe. The one thing good I do have going for me is both my Supervisor and Manager both emailed me at home and told me that I could use them as personal references, event though the parent company forbids them giving business references. I figure I will eventually be ok, I am still just trying to get over the shock of it. I always thought I was mostly secure (as well as anyone can be in IT) in my spot, guess I was pretty far off the mark though.

James


Oh man that sucks - IT is still a difficult industry to be in, with all of the downsizing & outsourcing.

Good luck with your search - in addition to the on-line resources like Monster, DICE, etc, you might contact a recruiter or two. Not too many though, since if a company gets your resume twice from different recruiters they will usually throw them both away, as both recruiters will want to be paid for finding you.

Also, now is a good time to dig up all of your contacts from days past - you are much much much more likely to find a position through an inside tip rather than coming in blind. Many IT positions are filled even before they're posted, by referrals from co-workers.

Good luck!