6 ms·

Laid Off? It's Good for You and Good for the Tech Industry

31 points by dlnovell 17y ago

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
And there are still plenty of opportunities out there for Valley types: Facebook widgets, iPhone apps, Twitter tools, and cloud services are exploding. That's where they lost me. Laid off? No money? Kids starving? Make a new Twitter app!
- ardit33 17y ago
  Hey, that's what I am doing right now. My previous company shut down. I got 4 job offers withing 2 weeks, and right now I am transfering my H-1B papers. Since that takes few weeks, I am working on something fun. A sms backup system, that automatically backs up all your sms, and makes them search-able from a small portal. Using Python for the backend, and java/objective-c on the client side. I choose python b/c I would like to learn it better, as in all my jobs it has been all java. So, I probably won't make any money out of it, but I will come with some solid server side Python experience that I can put it on my resume. Meanwhile I still have to tell recruiters "sorry I already accepted an offer". Got a call from google, and fb. Bottom line, if you are good, there is really no recession for you. And getting laid off is not that bad. (this is my first time). My previous company was going no-where, and my skills would have been better used somewhere else, where I can produce real economic value.
  - MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
    No argument that playing with new stuff is always a good idea, and doing it when laid off to keep your skills honed is a great idea. However, 2 points here: 1) You're making an SMS backup / searching app, not a Twitter app (AFAIK). I don't know how you're getting the SMS in the first place, but that sounds incredibly useful to me. Dunno if it's commercially viable, but it sure sounds useful. As opposed to wefollow or twibes or whatever the flavor-of-the-minute twitter app is currently making the rounds. 2) The OP is invoking the popular myth that just making an app makes you rich. The vast majority of twitter, iphone, and facebook apps go nowhere. If your goal is to stay afloat financially, polishing your resume and hitting the bricks is a much better way to spend your time than firing up the text editor and making a new piece of Twitter trash.
  - bmelton 17y ago
    For what it's worth, that sounds nice, and disruptive, but possibly short-lived. Someone recently asked me how I enjoyed using Google Voice, and while I didn't immediately have an answer, after thinking about it, I decided that I liked it mostly because it allowed me to keep my SMS messages in the cloud. Many people use SMS to get actual work done, as I do, and it surprises me that nobody seems to care to back them up (or at least, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of allowing that) -- but Google Voice gets rid of the problem altogether, in that they're only transiently on my phone, and always stored in the Googleplex (deletions are 'archived', similar to Gmail).
    - MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
      Just because Google's doing it with Google Voice doesn't mean someone else's solution will automatically be "short lived". Most of the world has still never heard of Google Voice (let alone "the cloud"). If he makes an SMS backup product, and sells it as that, I'm sure there will be plenty of people who would be interested, regardless of what Google is doing.
      - bmelton 17y ago
        I didn't mean to imply that google was going to put him out of business, so much as I meant that I think carriers will likely follow Google's lead eventually -- They already have your SMS messages, call logs and voice mail data -- exposing them to the web effectively competes with a large portion of Google's Voice offering, and doesn't require significant overhaul of anything for carriers to implement. Of course, I could be wrong, but my point wasn't that he was sure to fail because he was competing with google as much as I feel things are trending that way already. Besides, it's not like competing with Google is unwinnable either, it's just very, very hard to do.
  - eugenejen 17y ago
    Great. I have been thinking of sms backup for years. the problem is how to make money from the services. I am glad you made it. Is it public now?
- potatolicious 17y ago
  My thoughts exactly. How many Facebook widgets are actually profitable? Even just ramen profitable? iPhone apps? Twitter tools? Seriously guys, just because it's hip and cool doesn't mean there's a boatload of money waiting for everyone who jumps on the wagon. I like the general concept: go into business for yourself, but honestly, the un-sexiest fields are generally the best for profit. In any case, I would have serious reservations about monetizing off a platform that the platform owners can't even monetize off of themselves.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    It's like with musicians, for the longest time every wannabe rock star that could hold a guitar was going to make it big, and some of them actually did. But for every success story there are at least a hundred, if not a thousand failures. In twitter, facebook and iphone apps that is just as true. So now that a few people have struck it rich let's give everybody and their brother out there the message that if they got laid off they should go and bet the farm on some wild hunch. It's like advising all those that can hold guitars without breaking them and maybe play a cool riff or two that their kids tuition is in the bag, just practice a bit harder and that contract is just around the corner. But don't despair, because the author of the piece has made it. Not that I would want anybody to despair, a bit of positive thinking goes a long way to get you out of a hole, but instead of writing the next facebook app (do it, but do it in your sparetime) go find that job, any job to replace your lost income and cover the hole doing freelancing if you have the opportunity to do so. That's not a guaranteed success either but it stands a chance.
    - potatolicious 17y ago
      In the tech world there's another force: everyone wants to do something glamorous and cool, and get rich doing it. But if anything, the glamorous and cool things are the hardest to strike gold in, if only for the fact that everyone else is also there digging for gold. I know several people who have gotten extremely wealthy by going into their own software businesses, but none of them are doing "cool" things like video games or society-transforming websites. They are all doing much more mundane things like logistics and IT automation. But in these "boring" fields you're not competing with every 15 year-old high school kid in the universe.
ph0rque 17y ago
Paul Boutin (paul.boutin@nytimes.com) was a Wired senior editor until we fired him in 2001
- JBiserkov 17y ago
  the ladder, the ladder is on FIRE! I wonder what will come after it? http://paulgraham.com/ladder.html http://paulgraham.com/ladder.html
jacquesm 17y ago
The disconnection between the writer and reality is really striking. If you're laid off it is never 'good for you', and it certainly isn't good for the industry. Plenty of talent that was thrown out at some point in this crisis due to no fault of theirs is not going to try their hand again at a job that left them with 0 security when times were hard, that talent will be lost forever. And if you have a mortgage, kids to put through school or college and the usual family expenses then being laid off is a crisis, not 'good for you' in any way because making a facebook or a twitter application is not going to put bread on your table in time for your house not to be repossessed. It's ok to suggest that for some individuals there are opportunities in being laid off but for the most part any forced leave from a job that you may have liked and performed well in and that kept you alive is a tragedy. It could easily ruin someones life for years to come.
- ardit33 17y ago
  I have to say that usually it is marginal talent that has hard time finding a job. Crisis like this is when the chaff is separated from the wheat. They filter out people that shouldn't be in he bussiness. I remember my car mechanic was a DBA back in 2000. He read a SQL book, and a 3 months class, and bam, he was DBA for some company, which eventually went under. He admited me he didn't know what he was doing, but at the time you will get hired right away if you new something. He owns a car repair garage now, and is pulling up to 500k of profit a year. Who knows, maybe he would have been a great DBA with enough experience, but in this case he clearly profited more by doing what he was good at. Kinda like CS 121, which was the hardest class in college, and a lot of people failed. They usually switched majors, to bussiness, or information systems, or something else they could do. I thought it was good, as those people were evidently there b/c they had heard all those stories about startups and being rich, while had no passion or abilities for programming whatsover.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    The skills required to quickly find a new job aren't even related to the skills required to execute on a software team.
djb_hackernews 17y ago
I laugh. I'm not exactly laid off, but I quit a pretty decent dev job in January to do some traveling. Since then I built a gmaps mashup for a library, a wordpress twitter widget, a custom wordpress widget, and $80 worth of elance work. I'm in the process of learning python/django in the hopes of releasing a pretty fun twitter app with no revenue potential. I can say of all of the technologies I used to build these things, I had zero previous experience, and still don't have enough to list it on my resume in good conscience. So where does that leave me? My travels are coming to an end and I'm scared to death I'll never find a job.

31 points by dlnovell 17y ago

And there are still plenty of opportunities out there for Valley types: Facebook widgets, iPhone apps, Twitter tools, and cloud services are exploding. That's where they lost me. Laid off? No money? Kids starving? Make a new Twitter app!

ardit33 17y ago
Hey, that's what I am doing right now. My previous company shut down. I got 4 job offers withing 2 weeks, and right now I am transfering my H-1B papers. Since that takes few weeks, I am working on something fun. A sms backup system, that automatically backs up all your sms, and makes them search-able from a small portal. Using Python for the backend, and java/objective-c on the client side. I choose python b/c I would like to learn it better, as in all my jobs it has been all java. So, I probably won't make any money out of it, but I will come with some solid server side Python experience that I can put it on my resume. Meanwhile I still have to tell recruiters "sorry I already accepted an offer". Got a call from google, and fb. Bottom line, if you are good, there is really no recession for you. And getting laid off is not that bad. (this is my first time). My previous company was going no-where, and my skills would have been better used somewhere else, where I can produce real economic value.
- MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
  No argument that playing with new stuff is always a good idea, and doing it when laid off to keep your skills honed is a great idea. However, 2 points here: 1) You're making an SMS backup / searching app, not a Twitter app (AFAIK). I don't know how you're getting the SMS in the first place, but that sounds incredibly useful to me. Dunno if it's commercially viable, but it sure sounds useful. As opposed to wefollow or twibes or whatever the flavor-of-the-minute twitter app is currently making the rounds. 2) The OP is invoking the popular myth that just making an app makes you rich. The vast majority of twitter, iphone, and facebook apps go nowhere. If your goal is to stay afloat financially, polishing your resume and hitting the bricks is a much better way to spend your time than firing up the text editor and making a new piece of Twitter trash.
- bmelton 17y ago
  For what it's worth, that sounds nice, and disruptive, but possibly short-lived. Someone recently asked me how I enjoyed using Google Voice, and while I didn't immediately have an answer, after thinking about it, I decided that I liked it mostly because it allowed me to keep my SMS messages in the cloud. Many people use SMS to get actual work done, as I do, and it surprises me that nobody seems to care to back them up (or at least, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of allowing that) -- but Google Voice gets rid of the problem altogether, in that they're only transiently on my phone, and always stored in the Googleplex (deletions are 'archived', similar to Gmail).
  - MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
    Just because Google's doing it with Google Voice doesn't mean someone else's solution will automatically be "short lived". Most of the world has still never heard of Google Voice (let alone "the cloud"). If he makes an SMS backup product, and sells it as that, I'm sure there will be plenty of people who would be interested, regardless of what Google is doing.
    - bmelton 17y ago
      I didn't mean to imply that google was going to put him out of business, so much as I meant that I think carriers will likely follow Google's lead eventually -- They already have your SMS messages, call logs and voice mail data -- exposing them to the web effectively competes with a large portion of Google's Voice offering, and doesn't require significant overhaul of anything for carriers to implement. Of course, I could be wrong, but my point wasn't that he was sure to fail because he was competing with google as much as I feel things are trending that way already. Besides, it's not like competing with Google is unwinnable either, it's just very, very hard to do.
- eugenejen 17y ago
  Great. I have been thinking of sms backup for years. the problem is how to make money from the services. I am glad you made it. Is it public now?
potatolicious 17y ago
My thoughts exactly. How many Facebook widgets are actually profitable? Even just ramen profitable? iPhone apps? Twitter tools? Seriously guys, just because it's hip and cool doesn't mean there's a boatload of money waiting for everyone who jumps on the wagon. I like the general concept: go into business for yourself, but honestly, the un-sexiest fields are generally the best for profit. In any case, I would have serious reservations about monetizing off a platform that the platform owners can't even monetize off of themselves.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  It's like with musicians, for the longest time every wannabe rock star that could hold a guitar was going to make it big, and some of them actually did. But for every success story there are at least a hundred, if not a thousand failures. In twitter, facebook and iphone apps that is just as true. So now that a few people have struck it rich let's give everybody and their brother out there the message that if they got laid off they should go and bet the farm on some wild hunch. It's like advising all those that can hold guitars without breaking them and maybe play a cool riff or two that their kids tuition is in the bag, just practice a bit harder and that contract is just around the corner. But don't despair, because the author of the piece has made it. Not that I would want anybody to despair, a bit of positive thinking goes a long way to get you out of a hole, but instead of writing the next facebook app (do it, but do it in your sparetime) go find that job, any job to replace your lost income and cover the hole doing freelancing if you have the opportunity to do so. That's not a guaranteed success either but it stands a chance.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    In the tech world there's another force: everyone wants to do something glamorous and cool, and get rich doing it. But if anything, the glamorous and cool things are the hardest to strike gold in, if only for the fact that everyone else is also there digging for gold. I know several people who have gotten extremely wealthy by going into their own software businesses, but none of them are doing "cool" things like video games or society-transforming websites. They are all doing much more mundane things like logistics and IT automation. But in these "boring" fields you're not competing with every 15 year-old high school kid in the universe.

ph0rque 17y ago

Paul Boutin (paul.boutin@nytimes.com) was a Wired senior editor until we fired him in 2001

JBiserkov 17y ago
the ladder, the ladder is on FIRE! I wonder what will come after it? http://paulgraham.com/ladder.html http://paulgraham.com/ladder.html

jacquesm 17y ago

The disconnection between the writer and reality is really striking. If you're laid off it is never 'good for you', and it certainly isn't good for the industry. Plenty of talent that was thrown out at some point in this crisis due to no fault of theirs is not going to try their hand again at a job that left them with 0 security when times were hard, that talent will be lost forever. And if you have a mortgage, kids to put through school or college and the usual family expenses then being laid off is a crisis, not 'good for you' in any way because making a facebook or a twitter application is not going to put bread on your table in time for your house not to be repossessed. It's ok to suggest that for some individuals there are opportunities in being laid off but for the most part any forced leave from a job that you may have liked and performed well in and that kept you alive is a tragedy. It could easily ruin someones life for years to come.

ardit33 17y ago
I have to say that usually it is marginal talent that has hard time finding a job. Crisis like this is when the chaff is separated from the wheat. They filter out people that shouldn't be in he bussiness. I remember my car mechanic was a DBA back in 2000. He read a SQL book, and a 3 months class, and bam, he was DBA for some company, which eventually went under. He admited me he didn't know what he was doing, but at the time you will get hired right away if you new something. He owns a car repair garage now, and is pulling up to 500k of profit a year. Who knows, maybe he would have been a great DBA with enough experience, but in this case he clearly profited more by doing what he was good at. Kinda like CS 121, which was the hardest class in college, and a lot of people failed. They usually switched majors, to bussiness, or information systems, or something else they could do. I thought it was good, as those people were evidently there b/c they had heard all those stories about startups and being rich, while had no passion or abilities for programming whatsover.
- tptacek 17y ago
  The skills required to quickly find a new job aren't even related to the skills required to execute on a software team.

djb_hackernews 17y ago

I laugh. I'm not exactly laid off, but I quit a pretty decent dev job in January to do some traveling. Since then I built a gmaps mashup for a library, a wordpress twitter widget, a custom wordpress widget, and $80 worth of elance work. I'm in the process of learning python/django in the hopes of releasing a pretty fun twitter app with no revenue potential. I can say of all of the technologies I used to build these things, I had zero previous experience, and still don't have enough to list it on my resume in good conscience. So where does that leave me? My travels are coming to an end and I'm scared to death I'll never find a job.