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I got laid off in '08 when the market crashed. I looked everywhere in SV for jobs and had a solid resume, experience and education but hiring was frozen. To pay
by everdev 8y ago
I got laid off in '08 when the market crashed. I looked everywhere in SV for jobs and had a solid resume, experience and education but hiring was frozen. To pay the bills I was forced to start my own business which ended up being very successful.
I know my experience was a vast outlier from the norm and how seriously the downturn affected mass amounts of people. But the downturn left me no choice but the option I had been too scared to pick before: being an entrepreneur.
In a successful economy I would have happily sat in my 5-figure job for years. The downturn helped motivate me like I never had been before. When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
- jschwartzi 8y agoYeah, and I was willing to take jobs that I would never have considered in the past. I labored for a production framing contractor, lumped boxes in a receiving warehouse on swing shift, and all kinds of other stuff to make ends meet. If I had been at all inflexible about that stuff I would have been totally screwed. I didn't have much of a resume to speak of, and I had no real professional network except in the education field. I'm right there with you even with different experiences. When you have nothing to lose you can do anything at all.