my pap's been laid off for a year and half now from VISA. they laid off his whole team and outsourced to India where they could hire 10 engineers for the price of one here... many other teams had same thing happen, not just his.

quarter million have been laid off in just October of 2008.

 

man, its just getting rough out there. I was reading the paper the other day ( you know that thing that comes on paper and its printed with black ink)

anyway, it said somethign that 10,000,000 americans are unemployed right now, the most in 25 years. i just thought to myself...s**t, what the hell is going on, what the hell are we gonna do?

 

The company I work for has let go of one inside sales person, one sales rep, one engineer, and about 8 factory workers in the midwest.

I work for a pneumatics manufacture that sells to all types of industries mostly semiconductor around here but also bio and food and packging.
The one market that is growing is solar.
I think that anybody with out a job should look at solar companies like Solyndra, Daystar etc

 

I think its gonna be a long time until things actually get better.. from US history, it takes several years to bounce back from a recession. I think its time for us to be street pharmacists..

 

I got laid off at the begining of the year just a week before I got married to the love of my life. Worst possible timing ever, but I kept an optimistic outlook to get through the uber expensive wedding and found a job about a month later (thank god!).

It sucked royal d***... I was planning the most important day of my life for months and months and didn't want a single thing to go wrong, then my whole team at work gets laid off literally 6 days before my big day! I was devastated and didn't know how to break the news to my wife... As you all know, weddings are very expensive and since we're traditional Croats, people who are known for throwing insane parties, we went all out to plan a wedding that our guests wouldn't ever forget... Losing my job at such late notice was probably one of the worst things that could have happened with the exception of someone dying.

I wouldn't have made it through that ordeal if I didn't have a good lookout on life and things to come... If you start looking at everything negatively it's going to bring you down... I stayed positive, focused on my wedding and did some intense job searching... Lucky for me I was hired a month or so later, and found a job that was much better then my last one, so all in all it worked out for the better... I got a month+ off of work, and in the end found a much better job.

Whenever I lose a job (laid off mostly due to the economy or companies going under) it's almost ALWAYS a stepping stone to something better. Just keep looking and bloat your resume as much as you can, you will find a job!

 

You should wear a lab coat and everything!

 

Field: Technology

On Friday we went from 70+ to 19, me having heard Thursday night I was one of the lucky 19. It's a lot like the last tech recession, except this one hits everyone. Not good, and especially rough on the folk who haven't been through this before.

 

Field: Automotive, i.e. Dealership

Yeah, I mad the decision (mistake?) to quit before the ish hit the fan, even though I was not likely to be laid off, whereas some of the technicians and sales people were. Now I am regretting it, as I have not been able to find full time work yet, and I'm looking on Craigslist, Careerbuilder, Job.com, Monster, tapping friends and family, expanding my horizons, etc. And I just graduated to boot. Gotta keep one's head up and mind open.

 

time for baic to open up a business together. whos down for dunkin doughnuts or sonics haha.

 

Oh man sorry to hear about your pap's. I work in the same industry and I know a good amount of people who work at Visa. (SF Location on Mission). Yeah they are actually going through now and restructuring the company AGAIN and I heard they will be laying even more people off! It's funny because a lot of coworkers jumped ship to Visa, thinking it was going to be solid since they had just went public. Those same are now stressing about losing their jobs. As everyone knows, the banking/credit sector has really been hurt, to say the lease. However being the in the trenches myself. I can't begin to tell you how insane it is. All I can do is hold on to this crazy coaster ride until I find a stop to jump off on or it crashes.

 

mine is hiring but im in so cal

 

Gagan, those feelings are often pretty accurate. For some time I had noticed a feeling of being less involved and cut out of meetings, decisions etc. I had planned to get my wedding out of the way and then start looking for a new job. As it turned out, the layoff happened a month before the wedding. Luckily, I started contracting straight away after the layoff.

If I were you, I'd start putting feelers out just in case.

 

daaaaaaaaaaaamn... glad you've still got a job wagon buddy

industry : financial services
i work for an investment management firm. we run 2 mutual funds and 7 hedge funds. we had 49 employees last quarter, 51 this quarter, no planned cuts and that comes straight from the CEOs mouth to everyone during an "emergency" staff meeting. we are the exception to the rule. my other finance friends are getting laid off left and right. my girlfriend is an avp at a huge financial conglomerate. went from working 70 hour weeks to getting in at 10a, taking 2 hour lunch breaks and leaving at 4 since she has no deal flow... good for us as we have more time... but bad for business.

 

indeed, the best time to look for a job is when you still have one.

 

I know one thing, I'm not about to sit on my *** to become some damn stat... I'm not above working at a supermarket, bank... anywhere. I hate looking at my cousins thumb their noses at a decent job while they are in school. I understand that income is income, and working somewhere is better than nowhere. To me any job I get after layoff would probably be temp until I start a better job later on. I don't want to collect unemployment, I'd be working anywhere, 2 jobs if I had to, cause I understand that making ends meet is important and living off savings is not.