Income Loss Persists Long After Layoffs

A small justification maybe for my tendency to always be switching companies, especially in the boom times. One, people are more likely to hire you when employed. Two, you force yourself to get a broader experience that makes you more valuable when times are tough.

Quit before you get fired

Ouch.

I mean, I realize that Pratt & Whitney is not exactly a high-growth company, but if after 20 years with one company you haven't managed to move up, either in position or salary, maybe it's not surprising if it takes you four years to find a new job.

About a year-and-a-half after being laid off, she found herself doing almost exactly what she had done before, only this time for a Pratt contractor. She now earns $80,000 a year.

Ms. Carron said she was not familiar with other programming languages that are more broadly used, so she was lucky to have found a job working on the same project.

This begs the question of what she was doing in those 18 months. Even after 18 months of not using Ada (I assume) she'd be pretty rusty. Surely of all the professions mentioned, programmers have it easiest to update their skills.

I've been layed off twice and both years are my two highest income years. Both lay offs occurred during a strong economy ('99 and '07) when tech jobs were not too hard to get.

Once the economy gets better again (which looks like it's happening), the tech market will come back and in my view, it should be stronger than ever. The big kick off will probably be the Facebook IPO.