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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2953 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 8, 2023

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I need some career advice. My priority right now is finding some job security, and I'm not sure which of these options is best in the current environment.

  1. Stay where I am for now. I'm at a digital agency, but I lost my last client project in November and have been sitting on the bench since then. We don't seem to have a whole lot coming in the pipeline anytime soon. I still have a job and am getting paid, but who knows how long that will last (plus, I'm bored as hell)

  2. Join a large-ish company that is in the loan space. Their stock price has dropped a lot lately and it doesn't seem like a great space to be in while interest rates are so high. But they are hiring, so...

  3. Join my former boss's two start-ups/projects. He says he has funding for now but I have no idea what that actually means. I've asked for more details before seriously considering.

I have health insurance through my husband, so that's not a concern. I just really hate the idea of having some period of unemployment. I'm a relentless optimist, so my gut instinct is to think that any of these will turn out great, and I could use some more hardheaded opinions on this.

You know your own situation better than I do, especially given the sparse details you've given here, but are you sure that a short period of unemployment is as bad as you're making it out to be? If you don't have a lifestyle that requires two incomes 100% of the time (which ideally you should not), having a spouse with a steady job gives you the opportunity to take some risks.

For me, it's more of an issue that being idle is bad for my mental health. I start spinning onto other problems to solve if I don't have something meaty to work on. I don't think being unemployed would be terrible (I'm sure I'd find something to do), but I'd just rather not.

If #2 is Better Mortgage I can say personally to stay away. I've known a lot of the folks that work there and I'm pretty sure they have no idea how to sustainably hire. There's a lot of kool-aid too if I had to guess - they won "Best Place to Work" in my metro a year ago just a couple days before their massive layoffs.

I work in a services firm (A bit more diverse in offerings than just product/ux) but we have the biggest bench we've had since Covid. Truthfully I'm not super worried about it because we do have a ton of leads out there, so we're shedding B- and below players and keeping everyone else topped up on certs and side projects. If you're in the top half of the company in terms of competency and think getting work again will remediate the boredom problem, I'd stick around.

Not Better Mortgage. They work on smaller loans and provide a service to loan providers.

I did survive the first round of layoffs at my agency, which kind of surprised me because I was newish and I think I am one of the higher paid people. I do think I'd be a happy camper if I had a project! I'm just discouraged by our pipeline prospects.

In my experience, the job you already have is generally the most "secure," modulo crazy executives or a financial crisis in the company. Finding people to hire, who you will not be forced to fire in relatively short order, is not just difficult--it is expensive. I've seen many companies shuffle employees into different roles based on a desire to not outright fire anyone, if at all possible. Company culture matters a lot, here, but boredom is often a clear symptom of stability. If you've been on the bench since November, it's not impossible that a layoff is coming your way, but in that case you should get some decent warning and perhaps severance to ease that "period of unemployment" you mentioned.

It seems to me that "I'm bored as hell" suggests that your priority might not be "job security" after all. Again, the specifics matter, but if you have a chance to join a company that is hiring, and the opportunity sounds interesting to you, I wouldn't necessarily be deterred by their stock price. High rates suck in a lot of ways, but there was no shortage of loan companies back when mortgages were over 10%. We're a loooong way from interest rates seriously deterring borrowing.

Startups are horrible for job security, so unless you have some special reason to think your former boss is going to succeed, then #3 is definitely not going to meet your stated priority. However, startups are rarely boring (referencing your other apparent priority), and if you do get in on the ground floor, they can be surprisingly lucrative even for employees.

The ability to take employment risks is one of the underappreciated benefits of marriage. So long as you structure your joint finances wisely, it can be incredibly beneficial to the marriage to take turns "sticking your neck out," so to speak, with one spouse addressing stability while the other pursues high risk/high reward opportunities. Really, stay-at-home-parenting is the ultimate example of this, as filial piety has colossal end-of-life payouts...

I can't tell what is it you actually do or want do. Marketing?

I’m a UX/Product Designer. Pretty well established in my career, so mostly just looking for a stable work environment.

I work in the somewhat related field of software engineering (me and half the user base :) ). I can't offer advice but I do know my company has weathered the recent storm in tech, the stock price is holding on and it feels pretty stable and mature. There are openings for UX designers in Santa Clara (California), Dublin (Ireland) and Kraków (Poland). The product you'd be working on is a web interface for monitoring computer networks.

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