Tag Archives: job loss

Career, Depression

Should I change my career at 40? I need a do over.

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If you’ve been following this blog for the last — nearly 20 — years, you know I never exactly loved my career. While I struggle with depression and ADHD, I’ve managed to continue getting jobs after being let go over and over again… but the jobs I was able to get were the ONLY jobs I was offered at the time and I took what I could get. Am I lucky I got anything? Yes. Am I lucky those jobs sometimes paid a lot especially with a few solid years of stock being worth more than I ever imagined? 100% yes. But…

But.

I’m 40 and I have no employable skills. I’ve gotten by with a mix of getting lucky and having hiring mangers who had strong ideas of what they wanted and couldn’t find anyone else willing to execute on them. I have been a “yes” woman but never have built my own value in knowledge and abilities I can take from one organization to the next.

As I joined a “obviously going to be fired” zoom call last February, I no longer deluded myself into thinking the early morning meeting with my boss was going to be something else. I had flights booked for a series of conferences I was managing and my boss, over the weekend, told me to cancel my trip and meet him first thing Monday morning. I knew I deserved what was coming. I was lost, yet again, in a job that I couldn’t do. I didn’t know what to do. There were a bunch of things he wanted me to do but nothing came naturally to me and I spent too many hours spiraling over how I couldn’t do a good job. His constant berating me for the work I did do didn’t help.

If it was just that one job I’d say it’s a fluke — a bad boss — a bad environment — bad luck. But this is the story from day one of my career. And at 40 it’s no longer a little bit of imposter syndrome mixed with something I can learn. It’s obvious to me this isn’t going to improve in this field. I can maybe find the right combo of meds to help minimize my anxiety and help me focus — but even then — I’m not able to do this job at any company. Reading and applying to job postings just makes me sick to my stomach.

I’m hopeful I can find a career where I don’t feel that way about work. Maybe I’ll never LOVE working, but I want a career that doesn’t make me borderline suicidal.

Part of me is excited about starting over. Going into this with a big enough cushion that I can give myself two years to redirect and will probably be ok. It’s scary to drain my savings down, but scarier to think about 25 more years living like this (if I can even manage to find another job in my field, which is looking less and less like by the day.)

I do carry shame that I’ve failed to get where I should be at this age. If I had only focused and built my career in my field I could daily b making $250k+ a year. I could be providing for my family consistently. I could be good at my job. I’m sure shit would happen sometimes and there’d be new things to learn, but I’d be one of those people who just knew what they’re doing and acted like it. I could/should be a VP at my age. Instead, I’m applying to junior level job and not even getting calls for interviews because my experience makes no sense.

It really, really sucks.

And it’s an opportunity. To start over. Clean slate. Is that possible at 40? How am I 40? 40 with a newborn and two other kids under 5. I’m tired. And want to be a good mom too. Struggling to do a little work and also the mom thing. So how could I go back to school? I feel pretty lost right now. There are options — so many options — but which path to take? I’m scared to invest in myself. Scared to throw money at a problem when that problem is me.

I don’t know what choice I have, though. At some point the money will run out. My husband refuses to get a full time job until the kids are all in school full time, and even his full time income would not cover our expenses. I need to get it together. I have health insurance covered through the end of August and then need to either pay for COBRA or get insurance on the marketplace. It’s so expensive. Life is crazy expensive. I refuse to lose everything I’ve built over the last 20 years. The only question is — how?

ADHD, Adulting, Career

Never Gonna Get Laid Off, Never Gonna Turn Around and Desert You…

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Weellllllllllllp. Layoffs have hit my sector bigly and I’ve had an axe hanging over my head by a thread for a long while now with my boss salivating at the chance to slice the string. I know, though I don’t know, but I know, and everyone at the company knows, because it’s pretty obvious when such things are going down, that I have a job for mayyyybe two to three more weeks. Then — (f)unemployment? Ugh, if only I could take a chill pill and lean into the “fun” part of that, you know?

Here’s the deal… I never was a fit for this job, or any job I’ve had. I’ve gotten by on producing shiny objects — tricking people into thinking I can actually do a job. I’m not a one-trick pony, mind you — I have a whole host of magic up my sleeves. Problem is, I got short arms, and I run out of tricks soon enough. Then everyone realizes I’m a total fraud.

Oh, before you start throwing “imposter syndrome” at me let me tell you that I am convinced most everyone is a fraud, their brains are just not trying to solve every single problem in the universe at once so they can slow down and focus on whatever it is they are doing at the moment and get it done and move on to the next thing. My anxious-as-fuck brain freezes up all while jolting around seeing ALL OF THE POSSIBILITY. And then, when I’m working on creative projects — which is most of my work — I don’t know how to give useful feedback as I nit pick to sculpt the project until I’m happy with it. I don’t actually know what the end result is until I see it, and that’s not the way one can work in the corp world. Everything is all frameworks this and Simon Sinek that. Yea, I came up with a blog business idea earlier that while on unemployment this winter I’m going to read every single “top” business book that my colleagues quote to quote-zoo to sound smart and I’m going to summarize them for people like me who have no attention span and create quizzes so we can all remember the important bits to sound like we know our shit.

After I get through my little project, I’ll be seeing stars and going to interviews quoting all of the visionary visionaries, nodding along as yet another CEO references yet another book that everyone in business obviously has read, duh, even though I haven’t, oops. Even if my name isn’t as alliterative or sepia-toned colorful as as 

I’m glad I’m getting let go. Really. Not really. Kind of. I should have left this job a long time ago. Let me say I am glad I didn’t. I’m so fucking lucky. Soooooo lucky. The amount of income I made the last two years is abso-fucking-lootely ridiculous. It’s unlikely I’ll ever see that kind of AGI on my annual tax return again, ever. Unless this blog blows up bigly and I get a book contract that goes top 10 NY Times bestseller list and my face magically appears in all of the airport bookstands next to all those other books someone must buy waiting for their flight because why else would they put them there?

So if you haven’t noticed I’m flipping out a wee little lot bit and terrified of what happens next. I’ve managed to land a series of interviews for a series of companies and they’ve all gone nowhere. I fucking HATE feeling like I have to fake it in interviews to get a job — both because I don’t like faking anything (TMI never faked it, that it, thank you much, yes I know you were wondering and wonderers cannot be left hanging in these parts) and also because that is just a recipe for disaster if I get hired under some pretense and then have to actually do the job. I just want to be able to be myself (well at least 80% of myself, I can leave  20% of myself  in the  NFT car in the virtual parking lot) and get hired for who I am and what I bring to the table. Ah, such wishful thinking. Who would hire that? Who would hire ME? I wouldn’t. That’s a problem.

I’ve got a whole host of ideas on what to do next. Because I need a job. One that pays well. I haven’t made less than $165k in over 7 years. And I’m looking at jobs that pay $100k-$125k. And I can’t even get those. I’m considering a year or two of a low-paid job to build up some specialist experience but still I have to get the job and do a good job at it and that all leads me to that I need an MBA and to get an MBA I need to learn math and take the GMAT and I’m going to be 40 in a year and it’s too late for all of this, I’m just fucked beyond fucked. I do figure that there are certain things I can improve — skills I can learn — and other things that are harder to get better at. Creativity seems hard to optimize. I can beg borrow and steal ideas but I’m never going to be some sort of creative genius. I can, however, perhaps, learn data science. So I’m shifting to trying to find a path that’s learnable. Real. Hard. Skills. Ones that pay well, ideally. Or I just start this business book blog and start interviewing business people and make a podcast and make myself a person that people quote. Yea, my dream job is being paid $250k to speak at a conference for an hour. Who’s hiring?

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Mental Illness

Can’t Sleep Tonight

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It’s been about two weeks since I’ve lost my job, which may be why I’m starting to slip into a state of freaked out / depression over the entire situation. It’s not that I’m depressed over losing the position, more so I’m terrified of how long it will take me to find something new. My experience is just so all over the map, with tasks completed that offer no means of quantifying the results.

So I’ve been spending the last 3 hours sending out cover letters and resumes to positions that seem remotely interesting. I’m not at the point yet where I’ll just apply for anything, though soon that point will come. And even then there’s plenty reason to believe I won’t get interviews or hired.
Worst case scenerio, I guess, is I have 6 months unemployment then live cheaply and use my emergency fund to last the rest of 2010 / 2011, all while applying for grad school and hopefully getting in with loans to support me through the coming two years. After that, maybe the job market will look up, or maybe I’ll actually be qualified for a job I want to do.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to freak out about this lacking a job situation.
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The Joys of Working for a Startup

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There are plenty plusses and minuses that come with working for a startup. The biggest plus, in my opinion, is knowing when your money will run out. This gives you ample time to prepare for what’s next if needed. While layoffs still hit smaller startups, it’s not like at a big company where one day you have a great job and the next day you’re in the unemployment line. With the risk of being in a startup, you get a little more security in the short term.

I’ve never worked for a big “stable” company. One day I’d like to, even though I’m fairly sure I won’t be able to stand big corporate politics. Even though my job isn’t perfect, I love that I sit in the same room as the CEO and that for the most part, there are no secrets about the business. Not everything is out in the open, but I can ask questions and get answers to most of my questions, and I try not to pry beyond my welcome.

The cons are largely in not being in charge and having little control over the direction the startup will take. If you are in control and you have VC backing, that’s a lot of pressure on you. I’m not sure I could take that kind of pressure, so a part of me is glad that I get to sit on the sidelines and watch the game plays, even if I don’t always agree with them.

Still, it’s tough to know the date your job may end. I’m lucky that I’m young and single with an emergency savings account so being unemployed for a little while won’t kill me. The question is, though, when is the appropriate time to jump ship? Do you wait and go down with the ship, and receive the honor that comes with that, or do you wage a full on job search?

So far I’ve sent out a few applications here and there, but the economy is limiting options and I haven’t even landed an interview yet. My whole life I’ve been a roll-with-the-punches type gal, and I’ll probably ride this little adventure out the same way. After all, my professional life has been a series of ups and downs leading from one job to the next, bringing me closer to whatever my dream job might be. When I got laid off from my part time admin job one morning and three hours later got a call from the company that would, within a week, offer me my first full-time job I knew to just trust the way the world works. I don’t believe in God or karma, but I think things work out in the long run. In the meanwhile, you have to be smart, especially when it comes to finances. I’m no Einstein of dough, but having all my savings makes me a lot less nervous about the day, likely in the next year, when I will be out of a job.

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Layoffs Hit High Tech; Professional Dominatrixs on the Rise?

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Even though the tech sector is still doing better than some other industries in the U.S., it’s not immune to the current economic mess. As more companies report layoffs, demand for high-tech professionals is beginning to slide downward, according to statistics released this week.

Global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas Wednesday released job cut totals for January, which prove the year-end trend to slash positions as a cost-cutting measure will continue into 2009. According to the firm, the number of planned job losses announced in January reached 241,749, which represents a 45% increase over December 2008 totals and 222% higher than the 74,986 cuts announced at the beginning of 2008, writes Network World.

Apparently with the layoffs comes an interesting career change for some women in high tech. The Daily Beast writer Tracy Quan reports on what becomes of Silicon Valley’s finest post job loss. That is, women in tech, sans jobs, freelance in the – legal – sex industry to get by. As they say, when the going gets tough, the tough bring out whips and chains and scream “who’s your mommy?”

Ok, they don’t say that… but they might as well. “With staff jobs evaporating and former nine-to-fivers cobbling together incomes through scattered side projects, freelancing as a dominatrix — or “pro-domme,” as industry types prefer to call it — has become a plausible gig option.”

The pay is pretty good, and it beats being unemployed. The article refers to Jessica, a pro-domme in her late twenties, who apprenticed at a dungeon before striking out on her own. In Manhattan dungeons, she said, the typical cut on a $200 session is 60-40 in the dungeon’s favor. So that’s $80 an hour. Four times what I’m making working a legit marketing job in high tech.

Still, I can’t quite bring myself to freelance in a dungeon. It’s not that I couldn’t yell at men and tell them worship me… it’s just, I’d be terrified of someone I know, professionally or personally, finding out – or worse – meeting me with their testicles tied in a knot in my dungeon. Yea, that would be weird.

Would you ever consider legal sex work if you needed the cash, or have you ever done any of this kind of work? I’ve always been interested in working as a phone sex operator… seems like a pretty easy job. But I doubt the money is all that good, especially these days where everyone has the Internet.