by Das Brain
In my last post, about why I seriously decided to be an entrepreneur I listed “I don’t want to be laid off” as one of my reasons.
In this post, I would like to elaborate or expand on that. In the past seven days alone there were two announcements of large lay offs. Today it was Lucent Technologies, which will lay off 9000 employees over the next 3 years and then there was Motorola last week that announced they will lay off 3500 employees over the next 3 years to cut cost. In either case, I would not want to be an employee for Lucent or Motorola right now going to work with the feeling of an axe hanging over your head that can come down any day.
In addition to the above examples, I have one example of my own about lay offs. At my last job I worked at an enterprise software company and the company went through two rounds of lay offs. Let me tell, you if you haven’t experience your co-workers around you getting laid off, you are not missing much. After it happens, you go to work and you are constantly worrying if you are going to be chopped, and thoughts about your mortgage, car payments, house bills, mortgage, other living expenses and family starts running through your head. It’s enough to drive you bonkers until you accept that if it happens, it happens. But still, if it happens it will hurt financially for a while and this has other ripple affects in your life.
I left that company after four and a half years and I was able to avoid being laid off twice. In hindsight, it was a good thing that I left and joined the current company I am working for because recently I my old enterprise software employer was taken over by another company.
This time there was a lot of people that I knew that were let go. My Sales Manager who moved to Asia for the company e-mailed me and was very distraught. He worked for the company for 10 years and is very afraid that they might lay him off soon. It’s sad because I know his wife and daughter as well.
I’m telling you this story not to illicit simpathy from you, but to illustrate the uncertainty of being employed by a corporation. Just look at all the corporate cost cutting and restructuring that goes on every month like recently with Lucent and Motorola.
I not sure what most readers of this blog would do, but for me, I decided that I would no longer be a hostage to the whim of a corporation. This essentially meant that I would build up a business in my spare time to eventually make revenue equal to my salary at which time I would leave the job and no longer be an employee. I would be my own boss, master of my domain and whether I fail or succeed would solely be dependent on me.
Bookmark at:
StumbleUpon | Digg | Del.icio.us | Dzone | Newsvine | Spurl | Simpy | Furl | Reddit | Yahoo! MyWeb
