I worked in IT for nearly 20 years. I came into the industry in the late 90's when things were still booming and had several job offers straight out of uni. First job was with QR on big projects. QR was a weird place to work, with lots of staff and redundancies an everyday occurrence. We were due to get made redundant after a the big project we were on finished up, but the payout would have been bugger all so we left and went overseas for a working holiday. We went to America on work visas as they couldn't find enough skilled workers over there. Lost my job twice in America! First time due to a lengthy strike (in another part of the business) that almost broke the company, resulting in all the consultants being kicked off. As a consultant I got no redundancy payout. Second time was after Sept 11 and the tech downturn and our whole team was let go. Very much "macro" decisions, but you can't take them personally. I was actually on a customer site and fully billable! I got 4 weeks severance, which didn't come close to covering my moving costs back to Australia. Came back to Oz in 2002 and found it hard to find work in Brisbane, so took the first job I could find in Sydney as an entry-level programmer. Shit job, shift work and not enough money to live in Sydney due to house prices. That job had already outsourced a part of it's workforce to India and was planning to do more redundancies so I jumped ship before I got the tap on the shoulder. Found a reasonable job back in Brisbane working on mining and defence software. In my 7th year there, they offered me redundancy as they were outsourcing all the development and support roles to Malaysia. I had a wife on maternity leave and a mortgage, so couldn't risk leaving, so I took another role to stay in the company. Survived a few more years, but the mining boom died off and the company was taken over by an American mob. Lots more redundancies over a few years and I finally got the tap on the shoulder in my 12th year. Got nearly 6 months pay in total, which I've been living on for a while now while I go back to uni and reinvent myself.
I'm doing teaching now, which will hopefully be a job that can't be outsourced to 3rd world countries. My wife is working again, so we're ok, albeit living pay to pay. We saved a fair bit of money while overseas (nearly $200k) which we stupidly (in hindsight) put into our dream house. Turns out that we built near the top of the market and when we had to sell recently, we lost half our nest egg. On the upside, I've got 25-30 more years of work ahead of me in which to build up some assets. It seems like everyone else we meet seems to have made easy money in property. We tried to do the right things and saved heaps and bought into the dream, but our timing has just been a bit off. Living in Townsville now, and it looks like we picked a winner here again! Bloody house market has tanked here too. Might buy a caravan and move to the bush I reckon!
I guess the moral of the story is that for every boom there is a bust. And there's no point second guessing your decisions, you just gotta work with the cards you're dealt.
