Laid-off executives struggle to find any kind of job

400.000 a year? and did not set money aside for time's where it wil be needed?
with 400.000 a year and i expect some years of it you can have a savings account filled with some intrest money to spend in time's where the income may fall.
but instead its all spend.. big cars big home's.. and maybe even some extra money from the bank..... o yes really smart person.

 

Briefly: Ha!

Or, to put it more accurately: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Or, to put it in (NSFW) song:

 

making money spends money. how much would you or anyone else put aside?? $200,000?? 300,000? i means its been a year and half. no one plans for that.

now, its hard to justify what i am saying especially when individual situations are pitched in the article to generate sympathy, but i have a hard time justifying someone making 100 times more money than the average worker while the company generates billions in earnings.

we are in the situation we are in because we could not understand that there is a top floor. up until last summer, the only thing anyone could see was the clear blue sky. now many are plunging back to Earth without a parachute.

 

I realize its difficult to have sympathy for someone who makes $400k but I can relate to the story on a smaller level. I have been looking for another job since the company I worked for closed in Oct 2008. The problem is that I am either underqualified (lack specific experience) or overqualified for any position. I am willing to take a position that pays less than what I was making, but it is a Catch 22 - they won't consider me, in fact most of them won't give any response at all.

We are able to survive on unemployment and our house is paid for, but we lost about 65% of our income when I lost my job.

I've been thinking about how to make up an alternate job history so I could apply for a job at Home Depot or something, but I'm not a very good liar so I'm not sure how I will make enough money to keep my car once unemployment runs out.

 

Success is a trap in and of its own. When I used to work for industry, I worked my way up the ladder to the point where there was no place else to go. I would look around and say to myself: "I really hate my job, but to find anything else at this level I will have to move to another city - again." Eventually I broke out of that trap by going on my own.

I know it's hard to feel sympathy for those at the top, but many (most) of them have the same problems as the rest of us. Much of the world would look at an American making $35,000 a year and think: "Wow, if I could make that much for one year, I'd be fixed for life." Most Americans making $35,000 a year wonder how they are going to survive.

Tom

 

well, i am not unemployed but because of a massive realignment on the pay structure, i will make 30% less this year and have more responsibilities. so how does that compute??

i guess i am lucky than most in that i have never done the credit card debt trap, have 3 relatively new vehicles and no other bills. but got this way because of the dot.com bust, built up debt to the point that i had to sell my house and now rent. tough decsion but most definitely a good one

now as far as my employment situation goes, i made the decision 3 years ago that i wanted to make less money, not have to commute, and have nearly 100% flexibility on my schedule and in the money i can make which i had at the time. this decision was made during a time when the 3 county (which is as far as i will go for a job) area had an unemployment rate of 4% and i had several other job options.

but the key thing was my ability to make my own schedule of work. i work 4 10 hour shifts sun, mon, wed fri...

ya ok... before you all think i am crazy, the schedule allows me to watch my son on tues, thurs. this keeps him out of daycare and allows me to bond with him which is something i completely missed with my older son when i was working more than 50 hours a week so this is also a decision i dont regret.

as far as the house thing goes? i simply plan on spending my profits when eestor announces their breakthru product... hehehe

 

I think the main guy in the article spent too much and saved too little. He's had 15 years of making between $100k and $400k+, but only had savings equal to 3 months' expenses reserve (in addition to his $200k retirement savings). But I know quite a few people like him (Ain't that America?), including some who make over $1 million a year.

One thing not mentioned in the article (unless I missed it) is the great amount of discrimination that exists against older people in employment. It is more difficult for people over 40 (and especially those over 50) to find employment. There's a reason why the protected class under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act consists of people 40 or over.

 

great that we have anti-discrim laws for age. but is it effective in a job market when there is 15 applicants for each available decent paying job??

i doubt it.

 

It's like the dot-com bust all over again. "Web-Tech-Developer-evangelist" hipsters with no real computer skills or productive output getting paid $90-120k a year to sit around and burn through VC and investor capital (often with lavish parties).

 

Yes, but it is very hard to prove that you are being discriminated against because of age. No one will tell you that they are going to hire someone younger for the position. They will give a vague reason - "We have decided to interview candidates with skills more inline with the position" or similar. I think that I may have been passed over for 2 or 3 positions that I was qualified for, but I am now 47 and there are lots of candidates in their 20's also interviewing. It isn't truly age discrimination - it is price discrimination - if you have made more money in the past, they (employers) don't believe you will be happy making 60% of the salary you used to make.

 

"It is more difficult for people over 40 (and especially those over 50) to find employment. There's a reason why the protected class under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act consists of people 40 or over. "

That's related to health care. Ever see the breakdown by age for health insurance?
It costs 3 times as much in insurance to the employer for someone who's turning 60 as it does for someone who's 24. Also, hiring an older person means you're likely to need to replace that worker much sooner than someone younger. It's impossible for an employer to simply ignore those facts despite the risk of age discrimination.

 

Seems callous and calculated that USA Today would even publish such a story, and it speaks volumes the family would expect sympathy by outing themselves. I feel for them, but they did it to themselves, and hopefully they have learned their lesson so they can be prepared for life's uncertainties in the future.

 

HEY!! i resemble that remark!!

 

Unemployment in the big picture is bad for everyone, and entire countries and economies. Specifically with individuals I think you have to judge each case by case. So yes, if I don't know the person or the situation I don't want to be harsh. We are always talking about individuals, and families. So I don't intend this to be a judgement on anyone specificly named in the article.

However it's also been my observation that often as you climb the ladder, higher and higher the actual "work" many executives actually do, or what they actually contribute becomes less and less. I witness a lot of management and upper management whose days seem filled with nothing more than showing up and BS'ing about this, until lunch time, and then BSing about that, until it's time to go home.

You want a hard day? Try orchestrating a drive through window when you have 10 cars waiting. Try being a teacher. Trying being a Police Man.

Yes, I know it's dangerous, I know maybe I'm wrong, but it's hard for me to garnish too much sympathy when I hear about $400,000 dollar a year executives who are now on the skids and upset...

How do you maintain value in a competitive enviroment in bad times? IMO it's by having a skill or skills that are valuable to your employer. Part of me thinks if you made $400,000 a year and then got laid off and can't get anything else, then perhaps you never deserved the $400,000 a year to start with.

Maybe it's just an adjustment? As executives used to like to tell workers when they were laid off in mass. Maybe it's just an adjustment and what some companies and corporations are discovering is they don't need the $400,000 dollar a year guy who does nothing.

 

I have a simple question: If your boss offered to raise your salary to $400,000 a year, would you take it?

 

well, EM; there is no doubt that we suffer from "white collar" bloat where 5% of the workers make 50% of the pay. with the top execs its more like ¼% of top paid employees making 20% of the total salary and in some cases, its justified, but in most it is not.

 

Simple answer Dogfriend is certainly I'd take it. I'd advise anyone to take it. But the difference is depending on what I was being asked to contribute, or what my actual contributions were, I'd never think I deserved it. Thus when I was laid off, which since I wasn't really producing $400,000 dollars a year value to the company, I most certainly would be, I wouldn't be shocked when I ended up doing a job that paid far less.

 

another thing you need to realize is that $400,000 is chump change for execs in many fields. last year with the market taking a crap, more than 10,000 wall street traders made BONUSES of more than one million....ya thats right, not salary... just a year end bonus, and most managed portfolios that lost billions

 

This one could make for a whole other post!

It's amazing, the bad portfolio's billions in bonuses!

There are some missing swift policy changes that should have been put in place, especially when a lot of these financial institutions took the Government TARP Monies....

But day late dollar short theory with that....How is Bernie Madoff?? Heard he got released from the hospital and had to go back to Prison....AWE!!!!!!!!