The Countdown to Unemployment Thread

Rooting for you, dude. 🤞🏻

Had an interview myself this morning for a supervisor position in the civil service. It went well I think, so hopefully I'll get on the panel and a job will come up by the time the panel closes (in my county in Ireland, not a lot of jobs come up.)

Thanks bro /fistbump

Nice! Congrats.

As tempting as it is, just keep it professional for the rest of your time there and just forget about them as soon as you leave.

Although in fairness I can't really talk... I made sure that they were fully aware that I quit because of one specific cunt who made my life hell and pushed me to burnout.

Congrats, well done Danno!

Dropping down to 4 days and still getting a 20% payhike (assuming it's not pro rata) is a 40% payrise. Excellent work!

Congratulations mate.

Keep it civil for sure, but if you have to do an exit interview, go nuts there.

Don't call your new bosses cunts

Excellent, well done dude.

Congratulations Danno! You the man

I passed it, which has gotten me into a panel. Given the small area it's for and the few positions I'm not hopeful they'll reach mu position as the panel closes in June.

Still, it's experience etc

After 18 years working for the only company I've worked with after leaving university, I handed in my notice last week and I feel... so weird.

About half a year before Covid kicked us all into homeworking, the company went through a number of big acquisitions, buying up a few of their competitors and suddenly tripling in size to become the biggest player in their industry. This was a start of a chain of bad experiences for me; I managed a small team doing technical work and suddenly we were in a much larger pond; one which had no interest in how we had been doing things. I had a new manager who would only listen upwards, and would never fight your corner.

Not long after Covid came along management decided to make my team redundant. Too expensive to justify, when we had other teams not in England who would do the same job for a quarter of the salary. I was retained, as someone needed to cover the workload, train the new staff in another country, find new homes for the work to go to. I continued to cover the bulk of that work for over a year and a half. I have never felt worse in my life than watching my close colleagues just disappear. No leaving parties, not even much in the way of public notice. Some of the people we worked with daily didn't know until some of them had already left. I was told by my manager that it wasn't my fault, there was nothing I could do to change things. He made sure to tell me he wasn't to blame either. The week they were made redundant there was another company announcement; a 1 billion acquisition. A good time for the shareholders, I'm sure. I was left wondering why a fraction of that money couldn't have been used to support people who had given 20+ years to making sure the work got done and that the company was in a position to make these big moves. I was told I was the silly one.

I get the business reasoning and Globalisation etc. etc. but I just can't get myself to accept that as a human being. I'd probably make a terrible businessman. I had nightmares for weeks. The stress of covering five people's work meant I couldn't really come to terms with it, and still haven't even though that is no longer an issue. I told myself I'd just work my hours and forget about it, but it wasn't possible, because in the end the people that suffer are your other innocent team-mates, not the folks making the decisions who probably don't know your name. Two years later things had finally started to settle down, at least in terms of work. So many people were gone. I came back to the office, on a floor built for 30-odd people. Most days I'm the only one in here.

In the end, I think leaving is for the best. I have good memories of the work, and the opportunities I was given in the past, but there is a three-year layer of bile piled on top which, rightly or wrongly, I can't make peace with. That I will never be okay with. I used to be afraid of leaving, because I hated the idea of those big leaving do's where hundreds of people suddenly turn up at your desk and expect you to orate platitudes at them. Now there are so few people from my history there left that I'd be surprised if anyone notices I've even gone. I'm okay with shuffling out the door. It's sadness, mostly, that fills me.

Yeah, hopefully! I was approached by another company in the same industry, and I'm hopeful things will be better there, if only because it's a smaller place, and has some opportunity for me to start a new team. Fingers crossed!

18 years is a long time, I'm at 12 years where I work and before then my average was 5 1/2 years so I feel I should have moved on years ago and then when Covid hit my type of work changed and I've pretty much detested it ever since but I'm a bit trapped with having to do kids school runs and needing to be close to home due to other family issues but hopefully in about 2 years I'll be fully free of school run crap so that should allow me to move on. I think the longer you work somewhere the harder it feels to leave. It's always good when you're head hunted so you're obviously doing something right so that sounds pretty positive.