And Now For Something Completely Different

Back when I used to be in the IT industry, I spent a large percentage of my career as a contractor. Since, as a contractor, your lifespan at a company is limited, I spent a lot of time getting "laid off" from jobs. It was sort of a joke anyway, as in the mid and late nineties, there was no shortage of IT jobs and there was a huge shortage of IT people. It was, as they say, a buyers market for us IT pros. I was rarely worried about having to look for a job, but layoffs were still frequent.

Immediately after the Y2K and the sudden realization by a bunch of companies that they don't need IT people, they can just call India, I was laid off. This leads to another story I'll get into as I become motivated, but suffice to say timing sucked. I was, however, after a few months picked up my Motorola. What a great place to work. It was, in a word, awesome. It also had almost nothing to do with my previous IT experience, and as anyone in the industry knows, if you spend 6 months away from the field, you're as outdated as an Edsel.

I was doomed. Motorola, as they are apt to do every once in a while, decided that they had too many people on the payroll and broke out the pink slips. The first round of 4000 missed me, barely. A month later, just a few days short of a year, I got caught up in the second round, along with 9,999 of my fellow co-workers. I was released into the world and found that the IT world had not only passed me by, but also was chock full of thousands of IT workers who were well and truly overqualified for the jobs they were getting. I remember seeing level 1 helpdesk positions requiring a Bachelors Degree in Engineering and a Master MCSE certificate, with 10 years experience. Yikes.

Anyway, my friend a former co-worker when I started this whole IT thing was still contracting when I was at Motorola, and turned me on to This website. It was sort of the IT contractors version of dark humor, especially since we were right in the thick of it.

I thought I was having a bad time of it.. It's unbelievable what companies will pull.

Read. Laugh. Weep. Remember.