'It takes a hell of a mental toll' – techies who lost work due to COVID share their stories Rick Bryant* cried when he was offered a new job. In late 2019, Rick was flying – often literally. The Australian's senior position at a global vendor saw him travel the world to exercise his expertise in so-hot-right-now hybrid cloud technology. Hotels and airlines rolled out the red carpet to pay deference to his elevated …
As far as Covid and the lockdowns go, I know I've been lucky. I'm one of the more senior web developers for a company that managed to take advantage of the pandemic early on; my position was pretty bullet-proof. On top of that, lots of companies suddenly wanted software developers, as they tried to pivot to remote working and e-commerce.
My other half runs her own business - which got cut in half when the first lockdown hit. Many of her clients (some of which are friends) saw their income dry up almost instantly. To start, all I could do was look on in quiet horror.
Then I got together with a friend and started trying to help some of the local businesses. A local restaurant was trying to switch to home-delivered meals, to keep the rent paid and as many of the staff employed as possible. Me and my friend built a basic e-com website for them. It ended up being one of the things that saved that business... they were one month from bankruptcy when they eventually re-opened. It was one of a number of businesses we spent our evenings building websites for.
It wasn't much, but it was the best we could do with the skills we had.
Isn't Australia a no go for tech workers anyway? It's been a playground for Chinese state on how to dismantle working democracy and turn it into a police state.
Seems like any products in that market must have backdoors and surveillance tools built in and not many engineers would like to put their minds to it, as it is simply unethical.
Those scheming Chinese give themselves western sounding names too. Ru Peng Mei Dong, aka "Rupert Murdoch". Spewing virus lies and vaccine hoaxes on his Fu Man Chu News channel, to undermine democracy and turn Australia into a dictatorship.
Subservient to a foreign power, whose future isn't its own to decide, their politicians dream of retiring to China with cushy consultancies. They undermine Aussies freedom knowing Ru Peng will help them get re-elected, if only they bow to China. Their personal retirement and career will be very profitable for them, but not for Aussies.
Yes, best avoided.
Given their new hacking law, just turn off their internet, nothing of value would be lost.
Was sacked from my (software developer) job the day before the first lockdown in the UK. Ironically, it was because I wanted to self-isolate and the owner didn't want to support that. I was one week away from completing my 6 month probation. It was really a blessing in disguise as the role wasn't panning out and I was looking to leave anyway.
Unfortunately, just about every company immediately froze recruitment, so there wasn't a lot happening. At least the sun was shining and I was able to spend time with my family. Even managed to learn some new skills in between applying for jobs.
After a month, I managed to get 3 offers and took a 100% remote job with a great company, working on an interesting product with some really nice people. Almost 18 months on and I still haven't been into the office. My wife is loving having me at home, I get to walk my daughter to/from school and my daily commute consists of walking into the spare room.
Every day we give thanks that we are in such a fortunate situation as there are so many people who have struggled to get by.
I still get calls from recruitment agents now the economy has picked up but I'm fairly settled for the moment.
Epilogue:
Looked up my previous company and they're still looking for my replacement as well as losing another developer
I feel folks pain although I did not lose my job but got put onto another project, with no dev work, as a stakeholder management lacky.....
Hi, can you fill this form in
Hi, have you had time to fill this form in
Pleeeeeeease, fill the form in
Soul destroying, but I have a mortgage to pay for.
Thankfully, i have been able to move roles, I never knew I would be sooooo thankful for VBA. As one person said 'a pat on the back for past me'.
It was only when the pandemic hit I realised that embedded software development for motorsport, was just part of the entertainment industry, and wasn't considered as essential as we'd lead to believe by management, who had been putting us under ridiculous pressure to meet unrealistic deadlines for the past few years.
In March 2020 we were furloughed, and made redundant in July, but luckily paid 3 months gardening leave. I absolutely detest searching for a new job at the best of times, and this certainly wasn't the best of times. With little progress by September I was starting to get worried the money was going to run out before I found a new job, but I was incredibly lucky find a role in the video communications industry (the success story of the pandemic), which started the day after my last pay cheque.
The company couldn't be more different, friendly, relaxed and focused on doing things right, rather than always being on the back foot with a deadline approaching. Whilst I loved being part of motorsport, it's made me realise that my work/life balance wasn't great and there are better ways of doing things. The only issue now is coping with the lack of stress!
And I would like you all to take a minute's pause and reflect that there are some people who have been driven to suicide because of the whole situation, and others who have lost everything they were trying to build (let's just say February 2020 was not the right time to start a restaurant).
I am part of the very lucky ones, and I am glad for all of you who managed to make it.
Let us not forget those that did not.
Many start ups were crushed because contractors didn't expect to be taxed on revenue, which disrupted business cash flow. Some prolonged their death with BBL. Now we are going to have the highest taxes in the world for small business.
World got turned upside down when so called conservative government is implementing socialist everyone is an employee / wage slave of big corporation doctrine.
They bank on the tired and ineffective proxy taxation - more workers join those corporations, the higher the tax yield.
I fully retired in February 2019, as a prearranged exit arranged in late 2018 The lockdown just meant I spent more time on FOSS development and less on outside events. My old employer was also lucky - immediately categorised as an essential service. I now drop in to see them occasionally - all a bunch of friends really.
Kudos, to those helping others - especially small businesses.
I thank the stars that my shop had been working on remote working kit for for the last few years, when the lockdown came flipping 1,000 employees to remote working was done in 2 days. Incredible feat with the networks team working solid for 3 days with very little sleep to ease the whole company into lockdown at the beginning of 2020.
My shop has ramped up the need for IT and automation, we've lost some bodies along the way as the fat needed trimming off but projects have just been ramping up and the work has been on the rise. I get up every day, thankful I was spared the horrendous state so many have had to go through. I don't think I could have coped and it staggers me to see so many making it through and still going.
Here's raising one to those who made it through and have got on with their lives despite the trials of the last 18 months!
Thanks for writing this article. It's been a real ride for me as a contractor in NYS since the pandemic too! I did receive calls, and got interviews but they appeared to be phishing in some cases.
I've been in IT since the 90s. I've got a wide range of experience as a Network Engineer, Security Specialist and I've even written a technical book. It has not gotten me very far in this pandemic. That being said, the offshoring and the importing of cheap labor has not helped. I'm sickened by what has happened to our security and organization because of it, and it's destroyed the quality and transparency of our labor market.
Large Foreign labor providers (we all know who they are) plant bodies cheaply in companies via H1B visa's in the USA, and fudge the job boards so the Department of Labor thinks there are more jobs than there are people, then lobby Congress for more labor. They've even placed people in HR to ensure their little plan continues. These guys are killing their golden goose.
According to recent reports its not you but the dumb software that HR departments use to manage job applications. Its actually an object lesson for all of us about what happens when sophisticated software -- or should I say "ostensibly sophisticated software" -- is put into the hands of dumb users. We've had ample warning about this because a simple search on 'resume hiring problems' will bring up numerous sites offering tips on how to make your resume stand out (many for a fee....). Put another way, the only way to get hired is to know how to game the system, know how these software packages work and how to game them.
The perfect storm is created by poor qualify filtering combined with ridiculous job specifications. One example quoted was for hiring nurses -- qualified applicants were being rejected because the job specification said the applicant needed to know "computer programming". Relatively few nurses are also computer programmers but I'd guess that practically all of them could enter patient information into a computer, the actual skill needed.
FWIW -- This has been brewing up for years. Back when I was a hiring manager I had some serious coups by gleaning the HR reject pile. I needed people with technical smarts, in fact one of the very best hires I ever did was someone who I will willingly describe as the "World's Worst Resume Writer".
One article on this subject is:- https://usanewswall.com/news/automated-hiring-software-is-mistakenly-rejecting-millions-of-viable-job-candidates/
(Search for "hiring problems resume filtering study")
PS -- As a final aside many years ago I was hired into a position where I was "absolutely essential" for the job in hand. As one of my hobbies is "industrial archaeology", i.e. going through abandoned filing cabinets to see the what, why and how of floundering projects, I went through the filing cabinet I had inherited only to find a copy of my resume I had sent in months before (and got no answer from). Apparently the company needed a paid recruited to soft talk them.
here's some snark to go with that
* you apply for a job requiring high intelligence and technical skills HR has no clue about
* your application/CV/resume is scanned and filtered by AVERAGE intelligence (I am being kind) individuals with NO knowledge of the job or its REAL requirements
* hiring manager gets list of resumes with irrelevant experience, recent graduation from college, and "bolloxed up with BS" buzzword lists at the top of the page
And you're not "on the list". So to get through you do what recruiters do, find the hiring manager's name and sneak your custom-written CV/resume in directly to that manager, by snail mail. Still far from 100% but it has a MUCH better chance of working than going through H.R.
December 2019 was my last day at my last tech job of 20 years (department was being shut down, and our jobs were being oved to Asia), and when I figured out what all I had in my various retirement accounts, combined with my wife's, and we're both mid 60s, I decided it was a good time to retire. She was made redundant not long after. who wants to hire a 63 year old burned out software engineer, anyways....
then covid hit. about the only major change in our lifestyle was getting curbside takeout instead of going out once or twice a week. My biggest regret has been not being able to go to music festivals and local shows.
This whole scenario reminds me too much of the infamous drowned rat experiments from the 1950s.
* rats were drowned in buckets of water. Wild rats did not live long, several tame/domesticated ones lasted for quite a while
* At the point of dying, in a subsequent experiment, several wild rats were rescued, allowed to rest, got dried off, etc. and were THEN put back.
* The rescued rats lasted WAY longer (a separate source suggested DAYS vs MINUTES)
(I'll leave any conclusions open-ended)
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