good luck with the non-work thing and don’t worry too much about how things will work out. they will. just enjoy your honeymoon.

In CA there are funny rules about unemployment. The labor laws there are generally strict and trying, so be really clear in understanding what your former company will and will not do about the unemployment payments.

I wish you a lot of luck. If you’re looking for work in SiliValley, and you’re not on LinkedIn, you might try that. I find the quality of the contacts to be high there, at least from my tech friends and former co-workers.

I am so sorry to hear about your recent job loss.

I work with people who have recently been “re-organized.” I know how incredibly difficult this time can be for even the most talented professionals.

Take this time to find the right “fit.” It is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your future employeer. Good luck.

Here’s to you going and doing exactly what you have been put on earth to do – regardless of the income potential!!! The income always seems to follow those who are most passionate about what they do!

I’m a software engineer myself so I can relate to what you say about “Lazy”. The best engineers do indeed automate everything!

FYI when you start looking for a job the first place to check is http://www.indeed.com – it aggregates jobs from a number of sites e.g. Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice.com
and it’s much faster and more quickly usable than those sites to boot!

Best of luck,

-F

They said they wouldn’t fight unemployment case, but I need to look into what the rules for unemployment are. Right now, I do make money with this website, so in a sense I’m employed. I have been unemployed in the past and collected, but it was a very clear cut layoff, not this murky situation and in a different state, with likely slightly different rules.

There’s a chance that something written in the blog could have contributed to the situation, but then they are a fairly uninformed company. The best software engineers are lazy and program things so that they don’t need to maintain them. It’s a very well known thing in the software engineering circles. This is what the “Lazy” refers to in my name, not the negative connotation that most people have.

It’s spelled “Champagne” not “Champaign” (as in Illinois).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_(wine)

Also it’s not “Tittering” it’s “Teetering”
See http://www.allwords.com/word-teetering.html

OK now that’s out of the way I have one quick question – because you resigned I assume you didn’t get unemployment benefits? The reason I ask is that if you were truly fired without warning I’m guessing you could fight the dismissal perhaps – or at least threaten to so they would make yours a “layoff” thus getting you a bit more income.

Also is there any chance something you wrote on this blog contributed to your situation? Having an employee who blogs as “Lazy Man” seems like asking for trouble IMHO.

Best,

-F

- We are already married, just having a delayed honeymoon.
- I’ve had this frank discussion with my wife. This is just a trial and I will be working to catch up in that bread-winning department. She doesn’t have to do anything differently and it takes an Act of Congress (literally) to fire her, so it’s not like she has to live on edge.

Sorry to hear about the job loss. Sound like you’re prepared with alternative income, and your future spouse’s income being able to cover expenses. Good luck on your next position, whether that be with a company or on your own.

On a more serious note, I have been reading bloggers even quitting their job and I believe that with a big response from your readers that you are having right now, you can do it.

If you’re going to stay in the tech industry, you probably should send out some applications pretty soon, ’cause those skills get stale very fast when you’re not on the job. Since you’re in a position where you don’t have to earn a ton of dough, consider government jobs: pay can be low but. . .well. . .so is the workload. >;-) Benefits are good to excellent (esp. with the feds and with some states), and government entities abide by rules that force bosses to treat you fairly. And then some: my secretary is a dangerous moron, but I can’t fire her without going through the tortures of the damned, so she just sits there ticking her way toward retirement.

On the other hand, if you found you were less than enthusiastic about the job because tech work itself (as opposed to that specific employer) is unsatisfying, this is a great opportunity to explore some other ways to make a living.

I’ve now been at that “next job” for over 9 years. The soul searching that I did during that time really paid off. Taking my current job required me to take a pay cut of 50 percent from my previous job. But now, I make twice as much as I did at the last job.

Having been in your shoes to some degree, here’s my $0.02: one, I wouldn’t bother spending the time before your honeymoon looking for a new job. You probably could use the mental break from the trauma that comes from losing a job. Two, when you’re ready, do some soul searching relative to what went wrong. It seems like you’ve done some of that already. I was in denial about getting fired for a long time, and believed that nothing that I did contributed to my termination. The truth was that I had a massive sense of entitlement and did stupid things that caused me to get canned. Realizing this was humbling and helped me a lot going forward.

On the financial side, it is possible to stay afloat when you’re unemployed. I didn’t have any credit card debt when I lost my job, and I didn’t go into debt during my bout of unemployment. I kept myself in the black through a combination of consulting for an old boss, working as a friend’s secretary for a few trying months, participating in market research studies, and collecting unemployment checks (adjusted, of course, for the periods in which I worked). I also took advantage of every free source of entertainment here in Boston, and there’s a lot of those. I did lose a year of saving for retirement, but I’ve made up for that since then.

Best of luck to you, L.M. You *will* work again.

I’ve been there, let me tell you to just stop worrying. Whatever the reasons for this are, they are past. Take a long walk and focus on the beauty of nature. Put worries aside. Things will work out. As they always have, haven’t they? Smile.

I’m subscribing to your RSS feed now just to see how thing are going to work out. :-)