Seven Years of Hell
(and Heaven)
One man’s perspective on the Great Recession and the career ups and downs that came with it
The rich world is at long last clawing its way from the economic ditch of the Great Recession. This year may be the first since 2007 in which all big advanced economies manage to grow. In May employment in America finally surpassed its pre-crisis peak. Later this year British output should regain the level it reached in early 2008.
—Free Exchange, The Economist Newspaper, June 21, 2014
Seven years. Seven bloody years. Where have they gone ?
I remember when the trouble started in 2007. Three hedge funds sponsored by BNP Paribas Bank of France stopped allowing withdrawals. A year later, a major money market fund broke the buck, meaning that what was largely perceived as a risk-free investment no longer was. And then all hell broke loose in the stock markets and then the overall world economy.
What did I do for those seven years ? I managed to survive, if it can be described as such. Survive is sometimes a generous word. Maybe “muddle” through is more appropriate.
2008
The first year of the recession saw me finish a second graduate degree on a part-time basis. With that out of the way—I had studied part-time for seven years to collect two graduate degrees—I found myself with a lot of free time.
The stock market-listed company that I worked for decided to go into the recession with a tight ship and so in December 2008, a few weeks before Christmas, I found myself out of work. This was the first time that I had ever worked for a company that offered a pension plan, some structure, and the certitude that a lack of sales would/could not (only) be ascribed to me. And it had dumped me. Just before Christmas.
Through the miracle of networking, I was able to find another job less than 2 weeks later, with a start date early in the new year. So I spent my Christmas holidays in a relatively serene fashion. (I have the distinction of having been let go on a December 26th a decade before that, so the holidays are always a little bit more tense for me than they are for others.)
2009
This was New Job #1. I found myself doing the type of work I had previously performed — product marketing, some product management, and some partner management in a technology context — but in a completely different market (telecommunications hardware) with a brand new set of acronyms —technical standards combining letters and numbers—and so it was an extremely difficult learning curve.
In some ways, I actually landed in a good place. I had the opportunity to achieve the dream of visiting Japan, doing so twice in 2 years, as I tacked on an extra week or so to the end of some business trips to Singapore. I also got an opportunity to visit Hong Kong and South Korea to take my trips to Asia to 3 in all.
Unfortunately, the chap who hired me left the company within a year and then my immediate colleague had a baby and I found myself covering for a 12-month maternity leave. I learned a hard lesson about hiring based on attitudes (instead of abilities) when I tried to find a temporary replacement for her. And then I dropped the ball while juggling her job and mine.
2010
In November of 2010, one week after my colleague returned from maternity leave, I was laid off, along with 1/3 of the company in a single day. And so it was time to find work again, just before the Christmas holidays. Nothing like heading into a festive holiday period not knowing if you will be able to afford the Christmas gifts you would like to offer. Are you starting to see a pattern here?
2011
In January I started New Job #2.
I started the interview process in early December and received an offer letter on December 22nd, 2 days before Christmas. In addition to meeting a half-dozen people and completing a variety of psychometric tests, I was asked to complete a questionnaire. It asked me the following questions, leading me to believe that I was dealing with a company that had its act together:
- When you are at your best (professionally and personally), how do you feel (describe behaviours, patterns, actions, planning, relationships with others, results), and what stops you from being in that state most of the time?
- What got you to where you are now may not be what is going to take you to the next level… what are the qualities and strengths that have served you very well until today in your work, but that you need to adapt or change to take you to the next level?
- Where do you add the most value to your organization (role, function, activity) and how can you focus more of your energy in that area?
- What have been your biggest setbacks in the past 5 years and what have you learned about yourself from these events?
- Which weaknesses could cause you the greatest hardships in the pursuit of your professional activities, and how do you compensate for these?
Funny thing, it’s usually the most dysfunctional companies that put the most effort in to hiring. My employer and I would part ways soon after my one-year anniversary. The company had already lost almost half of its employees a few months before when one founder struck out on his own and, with the connivance of the leadership team, took a good chunk of the software engineering team with him. Within a few weeks of my departure, many of the remaining employees would be laid off as well.
2012
Unable to find work for 6 months, I took the step of looking for work outside of my home city and country. The same week that I applied for 10 jobs in the USA, I received 3 call-backs.
One of them eventually led to New Job #3 (technically a contract) and relocation. Yes, like many generations of Canadians before me, I moved to find work, leaving my spouse, family, and friends behind.
2013
This job allowed me to travel to Russia and Ukraine, so I can’t complain. Other than that, it was one of the most dysfunctional workplaces I have ever been a part of, with the usual “Steve Jobs wannabe” as CEO. I probably sealed my fate the time I made a remark, in referring to a CEO that had seen his company crash, to the effect that that CEO spent too much time managing his image and not enough on the needs of the business. Oh well.
With only days to spare before moving back home at the end of the summer, I managed to secure New Job #4 (my 4th in 5 years), again on the power of networking. Another contract but with the expectations of an employee. The learning curve in this industry proved too steep, an internal employee was freed up, and 6–7 months later that was that.
2014
And here we are in the summer of 2014. Looking for work again. Trying to stay busy and to not go crazy. Trying to get to New Job #5 and hopefully the last job search for a long time. (How does at least 12 months sound ?)
“It never gets easier, you just go faster.”
– Greg Lemond, 3-time winner of the Tour de France
The quote above refers to the sport of road cycling and in the past 5 years, I have had ridden over 28,000km and run 17 marathons. Two life activities over which I have had a modicum of control. One can ride quite a lot in this age of web-based job search agents while waiting to hear back. I also lost 30 pounds in the process.
I have managed to stay employed for a majority of the past 5 years, but not without gaps in my CV. I have been unemployed enough that my CV is always updated but one never gets used to the emotional roller coaster that comes with being unemployed, the stress that comes from not knowing what comes next.
Unemployment causes one to go back to the bare essentials. To ask such basic questions as:
- Who am I ?
- What am I good at ?
- Of those things, what is my core competency ?
- What is my value-added? What do I do different than anyone else ?
- Am I too old ? Am I perceived as being too old ?
And then there are the rejections. The ones you never hear about as your job application dissolves into the ether. And then there are the ones where you actually receive a rejection letter and you feel some comfort from the fact that you were worth notifying directly, even if it was automated.
These past 7 years could have been much worse for me I guess. (They were catastrophic for many.) We are at the inflection point of a new distribution of work and wages in the developed world.
When the tide went out in 2008, we saw whose boats were leaking and whose were not. If you happened to fall off the boat, your ability to get back on was very possibly compromised forever. I know some who have met that fate.
In some ways, I have navigated it well, finding the occasional flotsam to keep me afloat between jobs, but the fear of not being able to get back on the boat is ever present and the emotional toil is not easily forgotten.
Post-script: Life got pretty ugly 6 months after publishing this article. In January 2015, I documented my experience here:
Life got pretty interesting 18 months after that. In October of 2016, I wrote the following:
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