Back in 2008 when I was one of nearly 500 software developers working in a large investment bank's Houston office, the bank was on lock-down meaning no internal

Back in 2008 when I was one of nearly 500 software developers working in a large investment bank's Houston office, the bank was on lock-down meaning no internal moves to other teams were allowed for about a year. Since I was already bored with the credit risk project I had been on for a long time, I secretly had preliminary talks with the energy trading group and they were interested in bringing me on board as soon as the lock-down lifted, but that could be another half a year or more. In the summer I even got a job offer from an ETRM consulting company but decided not to jump ship since the old-school data-loading scripts they'd have me writing sounded boring. When the financial world went really berserk in late 2008 the lay-offs at the Houston office were very slow and sporadic, so I think they kept those under control to keep people from getting spooked. Then in the first week of January 2009 my manager called me into my office and said they had to let me go: "But we'd like for you to work till the end of the month, and we'll count you as an employee till the end of February, and we'll give you 3 months of severance after that." Such a different experience from my software developer friend at Schlumberger who had been escorted to the door within 20 minutes on the same day I received my notice (although at the bank the dev team never saw production data or got even close to the production servers, so we couldn't be dangerous). I was sooooo glad I hadn't quit in 2008 because I already wanted to leave but being sent away with all that cash was a great bonus to a young single guy like me! Then I felt empowered to join a crazy fun Boston startup that eventually crashed and burned, but that's another story. :)