What Happened....

[LizzieMaine]

If it wasn't for my father and, probably, some sense of responsibility, my mother would have served me only food that need to be heated up - which is the most that I got other than when my father was eating with us. The thing is, I didn't care because it was basically all I knew. A slice of bread with butter and a piece of American cheese - a bag of Wise chips on the side - was a great lunch to this kid (made by this kid by the time he was, my guess, seven or eight).

My standard after-school snack for years was an entire six-count tray of Nissen's Creme Horns -- a pastry thing with a filling made of sweetened Crisco -- and a quart of Coca-Cola. I weighed 115 pounds when I graduated from high school, testimony to the power of the adolescent metabolism.

 

[Fading Fast]

My standard after-school snack for years was an entire six-count tray of Nissen's Creme Horns -- a pastry thing with a filling made of sweetened Crisco -- and a quart of Coca-Cola. I weighed 115 pounds when I graduated from high school, testimony to the power of the adolescent metabolism.

Please check out my last post (last one in the thread) in "The Dessert Menu" thread: http://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/the-dessert-menu.85522/page-3#post-2111886

I finally found them again and have since consumed four packages.

 

[Fading Fast]

My standard after-school snack for years was an entire six-count tray of Nissen's Creme Horns -- a pastry thing with a filling made of sweetened Crisco -- and a quart of Coca-Cola. I weighed 115 pounds when I graduated from high school, testimony to the power of the adolescent metabolism.

Also, while the creme horns I got aren't Nissans, there were only four to a package - I wonder if that is another example of a back-door price increase - "same great price, same great product, just less of it."

 

[LizzieMaine]

I haven't had a creme horn in probably twenty years, but they were still six to the tray when I last bought them. I'll take a look next time I'm in the store, if I can resist buying them.

 

[Paisley]

It may be worth mentioning that the teaching of engineering has had a revolutionary change in the last decade or so. The things that you (and others) have mentioned that engineers supposedly don't have - design/creativity/problem-solving-skills/imagination are now stressed from Day One of their first year and *must* continue throughout the four years.

I never felt engineering school didn't emphasize problem solving; my education was nothing BUT problem solving. In the mechanical design courses (which were required), my classmates and I came up with some interesting stuff. Some of us female students even came up with a new unit of measure: the Fabio.

I've been out of the industry for 15 years; at the time, some companies did offer training programs, but they were a small minority. The places where I worked--and they included some very large companies--either wanted half their workers as contractors or hired people simply to bill hours. My sense was that companies didn't want to spend five cents on anything that wouldn't show a profit in the next quarter and that experienced engineers didn't want to train younger ones because the company might keep the younger one and lay off the older, more expensive one. It was pretty common for engineers to be laid off from long-term employment in their fifties.

That said, what I mostly wish is for government, industry and school to quit bleating about the so-called shortage of engineers. There isn't one. There never was. Wages have fallen in real terms--for example, the company I mentioned earlier that wondered whether I was applying for an engineering job offered the same wage I was making at Raytheon in 1999. In a real shortage, you see what happened with petroleum engineers a few years ago. If you look at the comments for the stem crisis myth story at IEEE.com, you find a lot of engineers have been looking for work for several months or years. Some of them may lack career skills. Personally, I never had any trouble finding and keeping a job outside of engineering; half the people I've met with engineering degrees are working at something else.

As for ads, in some cases, the company already knows who they want to hire. The ad is there for EEOC purposes or to justify hiring a cheaper H1B worker.

 

[Fading Fast]

...It was pretty common for engineers to be laid off from long-term employment in their fifties....

This is also the financial world's sotto voce business model. While the public's perception of Wall Street is a lot of middle aged and older men making a lot of money, if you look around a financial company, you'll find a lot of young eager people in their twenties and a decent amount of thirty year olds - already in pretty senior positions and, then, the numbers drop off for those in their forties and by the time you look for the fifty year olds you're picking through the ranks very carefully to spot one.

It was very clear - after several years on Wall Street - that this is the unspoken model: hire a lot of kids out of college and pay them pretty well for their first years, vet those down to the talented 10-20% who can move up, pay those guys more than they are used to but way less than the 40 and 50 year olds you just got rid of in a "reduction in force" or some other euphemism so that you can cut costs.

There is nothing wrong with this as a business model as long as the younger cheaper talent can do what the older more expensive talent was doing, but it does make for an unpleasant life experience for most of the employees who even manage to survive long enough to be let go in their 40s or 50s. I was fortunate to survive so long - and am still at it in my 50s. Part of why I work for myself now is that I don't want to feel that pressure everyday as - no kidding - not since just since 2008, but since I started in 1985, Wall Street has been constantly firing its middle aged workers - I'd rather feel the pressure to keep my business alive then worry about a random decision coming out of nowhere.

To make this a little bit less about me maybe we should be upfront with ourselves and others and just acknowledge that you should look at your career as something that will have to be re-invented several times and will not have a straight upward trajectory in growth and compensation. I realized that early on and always planned on having to adjust a lot. If we told everyone - in fields where this is true - that this is the model so plan your life accordingly, it would be better as people would understand more what they are facing. That said, so many people I worked with didn't want to hear it, just buried their head in the sand and hoped they'd be one of the few survivors.

 

[vitanola]

At the risk of starting a firestorm, I'm going to disagree. Whether you like Ayn Rand or Karl Marx is not the point, but if someone posted "that vile and immoral hypocrite Karl Marx -" I'd say it's a political comment. But I'll be honest, I'm not 100% sure I understood vitanola's post (as with many of his posts, their erudite references confuse me). Please let me repeat, I have no interest in arguing or starting an argument about Rand vs. Marx, but I did feel that my friend - ChiTownScion, whose posts and insights I greatly enjoy - made a political comment.

Well, Miss Rand herself does not propose to be strictly political. She erects an entire ethical system, one which is quite antithetical to most traditional interpretations of the Abrahamic religions. Objectivism seems to me to be profoundly disruptive and is the antithesis of conservatism.

That said, we can, I hope, both respectfully disagree about Miss Rand's position in the philosophical firmament. I for one always look forward to your interesting posts and find them to be well reasoned, generally agreeable, and thought provoking.

 

[Fading Fast]

Well, Miss Rand herself does not propose to be strictly political. She erects an entire ethical system, one which is quite antithetical to most traditional interpretations of the Abrahamic religions. Objectivism seems to me to be profoundly disruptive and is the antithesis of conservatism.

I agree - Objectivism and the somewhat overlapping Libertarianism share a few, but not the over-arching core, elements of conservatism. I've always thought that the "individual should do what every he/she wants that doesn't hurt others" tenant of Libertarianism should appeal to liberals, but the big-state stuff seems to keep the two ideologies opposing each other.

 

[Harp]

... She erects an entire ethical system, one which is quite antithetical to most traditional interpretations of the Abrahamic religions.
Objectivism seems to me to be profoundly disruptive and is the antithesis of conservatism.

And she lacked the endearing qualities of Spinoza with none of his Ethic.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I agree - Objectivism and the somewhat overlapping Libertarianism share a few, but not the over-arching core, elements of conservatism. I've always thought that the "individual should do what every he/she wants that doesn't hurt others" tenant of Libertarianism should appeal to liberals, but the big-state stuff seems to keep the two ideologies opposing each other.

I think it's the question of exactly how you define hurting others where most of the differences arises.

 

[BlueTrain]

My impression of some of those who call themselves conservatives is that they're actually pretty radical and not in a good way. But reactionary is probably a better word.

 

[Paisley]

This is also the financial world's sotto voce business model. While the public's perception of Wall Street is a lot of middle aged and older men making a lot of money, if you look around a financial company, you'll find a lot of young eager people in their twenties and a decent amount of thirty year olds - already in pretty senior positions and, then, the numbers drop off for those in their forties and by the time you look for the fifty year olds you're picking through the ranks very carefully to spot one.

Interesting--at the engineering firms where I worked, it was mostly middle-aged men. There were very few people in their 20s.

I've noticed that admins of a certain age do find work, though. In fact, admins in their 20s are the exception, maybe because it's perceived as dull, low-status work. I think it's a good gig if you have an aptitude for it and get with the right employer; smaller places and certain industries pay peanuts, but you can make a decent living working at higher-end places. You can train yourself, too--no student loans required.

One of the bloggers I read often mentions people who end up in poverty after being successful and thinking the good times would last forever. He likes to travel and sometimes meets people at campsites living in rundown motorhomes that cost $200,000 new (on credit, of course), rapidly depreciated, and then the owner (or the owner's widow) ended up upside down on the thing. And then there's the issue of underfunded pensions. A friend of a friend who's a retired pilot will likely have to sell his house because his pension went kaput. The fact that he has a mortgage in retirement suggests a good-times-lasting-forever assumption.

So, maybe it ends up being a good thing if people have to struggle when they're young. A lot of us here are proud members of the I Did It On My Own Club. For me, bouncing back from a lot of layoffs gave me the confidence to move across the country even though I didn't have a permanent job waiting for me. And if my new job doesn't work out, I won't suffer with it--I'll do something else.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My impression of some of those who call themselves conservatives is that they're actually pretty radical and not in a good way. But reactionary is probably a better word.

"Close your eyes, to where you're bound,
And you'll be found,
Doin' the Reactionary!

All the best dictators do it
Millionaires keep steppin' to it
The four hundred love to sing it
Ford and Morgan swing it

Hand up high and shake your head
You'll soon see red
Doin' the Reactionary!"

-- popular song, 1937.

 

[BlueTrain]

Some layoffs and downturns have nothing to do with your age. Sometimes, in some businesses and industries, there are occasional waves of acquisitions and buyouts. Typically there will be significant changes in organizations and relocations of work centers, meaning where the employees actually work. And in mergers and buyouts, one of the things that invariably happens is some centralization and consolidation of some kinds of work. That means some people get laid off. You become surplus to requirements. It even happens to higher level types in banking. Sometimes they go out and start their own bank, too.

Sometimes, however, a corporation is a conglomerate, which means it owns various unrelated businesses. Typically they would continue to be operated as distinct entities without eliminating any of their administrative people. That way, they can be sold off in a few years when someone changes their mind.

I guess from a personal standpoint, as a worker, what you do if you got laid off depends on where you live and what you can do. And sometimes you'd just like to see new territory. It may be as much getting away from where you are as it is going to someplace new. There is a running joke in the family that a certain person wound up in Hawaii because he couldn't move any further away from home.

 

[Fading Fast]

Interesting--at the engineering firms where I worked, it was mostly middle-aged men. There were very few people in their 20s.

I've noticed that admins of a certain age do find work, though. In fact, admins in their 20s are the exception, maybe because it's perceived as dull, low-status work. I think it's a good gig if you have an aptitude for it and get with the right employer; smaller places and certain industries pay peanuts, but you can make a decent living working at higher-end places. You can train yourself, too--no student loans required.

One of the bloggers I read often mentions people who end up in poverty after being successful and thinking the good times would last forever. He likes to travel and sometimes meets people at campsites living in rundown motorhomes that cost $200,000 new (on credit, of course), rapidly depreciated, and then the owner (or the owner's widow) ended up upside down on the thing. And then there's the issue of underfunded pensions. A friend of a friend who's a retired pilot will likely have to sell his house because his pension went kaput. The fact that he has a mortgage in retirement suggests a good-times-lasting-forever assumption.

So, maybe it ends up being a good thing if people have to struggle when they're young. A lot of us here are proud members of the I Did It On My Own Club. For me, bouncing back from a lot of layoffs gave me the confidence to move across the country even though I didn't have a permanent job waiting for me. And if my new job doesn't work out, I won't suffer with it--I'll do something else.

I have often thought that for the right person, being an admin to a big wig on Wall Street or a high-powered law firm can be a very good job. Like any job, you have to find the right fit - and it is very personal - but if you align well personality and style-wise with your boss, it can be a well-compensated position, with many perks, respect and some interesting exposure.

As to the "it's going to last forever" issue, on Wall Street, those with their eyes open, for at least my thirty years on the Street, have had example after example of careers that have crashed and burned midstream for a variety of reasons - skills atrophy, technology destroyed your value, your firm goes belly up, and on and on. I realized that very early on and - with not one single ounce of exaggeration - approached everyday as if it would be my last.

I always lived well below my means (as soon as I could), never burned a bridge and always tried to grow my skills and knowledge. I lost my job through merger / firm going bankrupt / layoffs / re-org /etc. six times (I kid you not and never once did I not have an outstanding review at the time it happened - it didn't matter) and each time I just breathed out, dug in and found a way to get a job again. But it helped a lot that I wasn't a paycheck away from eviction (and I fully understand and am absolutely not judging - and grew up in that world - that many who are have had no option to avoid that / it isn't their fault and I am grateful everyday that I was able to be in a less insecure position).

That's why I posted earlier that I think we need to develop a different public narrative overall: a narrative that reflects the vicissitudes of work and careers where the default mindset for most is that they will lose their job several times, will take pay cuts to start again, will need to reinvent themselves, should have more savings for these events, etc. Yes, it's a less fun upfront narrative, but a more practical one for a lifetime.

 

[Harp]

I lost my job through merger / firm going bankrupt / layoffs / re-org /etc. six times (I kid you not and never once did I not have an outstanding review at the time it happened -
it didn't matter) and each time I just breathed out, dug in and found a way to get a job again.

A commodity firm I was with was bought out from under everyone-save the China desk and I don't speak Mandarin-a delayed fuse bombshell, the writing was on the wall for weeks
but when it detonated the impact was catastrophic. I had declined a blue chip law firm years earlier; preferring a vagabond existence, a carefree bachelor and confident.
However, the resume was skewered and I was told that I was over educated for easy hire. Some places thought I would move on for something better if/when the chance offered.
Flexibility is the key and being single helped.

 

[Fading Fast]

A commodity firm I was with was bought out from under everyone-save the China desk and I don't speak Mandarin-a delayed fuse bombshell, the writing was on the wall for weeks
but when it detonated the impact was catastrophic. I had declined a blue chip law firm years earlier; preferring a vagabond existence, a carefree bachelor and confident.
However, the resume was skewered and I was told that I was over educated for easy hire. Some places thought I would move on for something better if/when the chance offered.
Flexibility is the key and being single helped.

As you imply, in a job search, you almost have to make a decision very early on: am I going for the best (however you define it - highest pay / most challenging position / etc.) or the one I'm most likely to get (maybe less pay / less challenge / etc.) and write your resume and direct your career search that way (possibly tweaking it "down" so that people aren't afraid you are over qualified).

It's frustrating, as you never want to limit yourself and hate underplaying your achievements. I always had several versions of my resume ready that highlighted different skills and experience I had and gave an overall different presentation depending on the opening, but you do have to be somewhat limiting so as to drive a reasonably consistent story in your network. Otherwise, you can frustrate those trying to help you and turn off those trying to hire you.

Like everything in life, it's a gamble: you weigh your odds, make your decision and go forward hoping for the best and preparing for the not best.

 

[BlueTrain]

One thing I've never been told was that I was over-educated.

 

[Paisley]

I always lived well below my means (as soon as I could), never burned a bridge and always tried to grow my skills and knowledge. I lost my job through merger / firm going bankrupt / layoffs / re-org /etc. six times (I kid you not and never once did I not have an outstanding review at the time it happened - it didn't matter) and each time I just breathed out, dug in and found a way to get a job again. But it helped a lot that I wasn't a paycheck away from eviction (and I fully understand and am absolutely not judging - and grew up in that world - that many who are have had no option to avoid that / it isn't their fault and I am grateful everyday that I was able to be in a less insecure position).

That's why I posted earlier that I think we need to develop a different public narrative overall: a narrative that reflects the vicissitudes of work and careers where the default mindset for most is that they will lose their job several times, will take pay cuts to start again, will need to reinvent themselves, should have more savings for these events, etc. Yes, it's a less fun upfront narrative, but a more practical one for a lifetime.

I almost could have written this. I was laid off six times in eight years when I was in engineering & construction. People said I was overqualified for admin work, but my feeling was that I was overqualified to work in a crappy industry. I read The Millionaire Next Door and decided to work in law, real estate or accounting. Accounting worked out well.

I second the practices of living below your means, not burning your bridges and being flexible. It's good to look for signs of doom, too. If your employer starts cutting benefits or work slows down, it's time to update your resume. Make a short list of things you can't put up with, see what's out there and be flexible.

People think I'm nuts to have moved from Denver to Indianapolis. I moved for the money--it would have taken me 20 years of working and saving to accumulate what I made by selling my house there and buying one here. (And Indianapolis is a swell place--I got an upgrade in quality of life that I wasn't expecting.) I'm well aware of the vicissitudes of working--the kind of work I do could go away because of technology, or I might not see well enough in my 60s to proofread. The money's invested--it ain't gonna be used for travel or a fancy new car or other crap I don't need. It's there to see me through emergencies and let me retire early if I need to.

I was thinking that TV shows and movies ought to reflect more of this reality of careers, then remembered that Better Call Saul did that pretty well. I've bounced around quite a bit since I got here (I'm starting job #5 on Monday). Thinking of myself as the hero of a story helped me deal with it.

 

[Paisley]

Re: low-brow foods. I love grass-fed beef & butter and pasture-raised pork and think they have real benefits for health and the environment, but I love Atkins bars, American cheese, diet soda, and bunless burgers from McDonald's and Hardees, too. I'm limited in what I can eat and for me, these are harmless pleasures that keep me on track. I'll keep my Splenda, too, thanks.