Yep...unfortunately, I think the timing of covid has happened right at the top of the business cycle where many people are naturally over-leveraged on mortgages, car payments, loans etc. I know loads of people on eye-wateringly large salaries who still can't afford to miss a pay check because their outgoings match their income. I was so surprised when these guys were immediately taking mortgage holidays.Originally Posted by P9CLY
Depresses me how smart, high earners get themselves into such a position. IF the works not setting you free what's the point, aren't you a serf no matter what car you drive. Isn't a fundamental point of capitalism to get enough capital and put IT to work so that you don't need to keep labouring, unless you want to of course.
Redundancy sucks, happened a couple of times to me in the past.
Good luck to all.
Pretty much impossible for most people which is why it ends up being spent on distractions - I mean we are on a site where we pay thousands of pounds for items that do the same as a £10 Casio.
Certainly don't think you would be alone in thinking that.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Aye fair point. It's not impossible, as you say what with all the distractions it's definitely the road less travelled, one which we're practically discouraged from exploring.
Last edited by Passenger; 24th July 2020 at 11:50.
Yes there is an old adage that if you are only making money whilst working then you are a serf. You need to have enough savings and investments to ensure that you are making enough money to support your lifestyle even whilst you are sleeping and doing absolutely nothing.
Whats wrong with not living the lifestyle that earning big money has given you,ill certainly cut back on the luxuries when I retire.
Lifes about a lot more than just bawbles......as nice as they are,its about family and doing family stuff.I can take all my family out for a meal and sit at the side of the richest person doing the same.
I guess some just want to show off right to the end!......"Have Family around you,youll be Happy".
Lost my job after 13 years with the biggest drilling company in the world, they got to big too quickly anyway.
Have got absolutely no debt apart from a mortgage and luckily if I wanted to I could pay it off by selling my holiday house, very fortunate I know.
My wife has an excellent job and salary so I don’t feel under pressure to get a job, yet I want one for my own sanity.
Have applied for 4 jobs in last couple of weeks, but no replies yet.....
My heart goes out to those facing uncertain times, seriously.
Some seem to think it's ok to use this as an opportunity to be critical and pour scorn.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I’m in the finance department of a housebuilder, with finance taking the smallest hit across the group, around 20% have gone. Only joined the business last August but thankfully someone moving onto pastures new has saved me for the time being.
First time I’ve worked through something like this...it’s gonna be a challenge, especially in our sector.
Thanks John,
I was furloughed and getting topped up to 80%, and they’ve said I’ll go back to 100% now I’m on gardening leave. Maybe they’re not going to use furlough cash, but I suspect they will.
Thanks again for the links.
Good luck to all facing tricky times.
I would disagree with this. I think the industry will change but there will continue to be opportunities where the break even BBL is <$30-40.
Companies go through cycles of major capex investment and for many majors they were lean on this prior to covid but this put paid to anything really planned.
O+G has never been in such a tough situation but like the late 90’s the industry will consolidate and the strong will make it through.
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I am very sorry to hear about your situation.
LIFO is unfair. A fair criteria should be set and people assessed.
This is a very astute observation about relocation of positions. Most office workers have no idea how skilled/educated the workforce is abroad... you can more than half your costs and keep the work in Europe or save 80% by moving to India etc.
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Agreed. The difference in language skills also is stark.
I can see a situation where exec leadership and sales teams are kept locally and the rest outsourced to other countries. I'm guessing the answer is a low corporation tax regime for UK based companies in return for employing x% local workers as a policy
What a true statement. I went out tonight still wearing a Casio I purchased off this forum for fifty quid, a watch that keeps far better time then my four watches worth thousands of pounds. Makes you think.
I see that having already happened in most big companies with the rise of shares service Centers in lower cost locations and now these people are progressing to high level of management in their own right now to their talent, not just cost.
There is a misconception it is purely cost, it isn’t. There is often bigger quantity of talent to grow the org and more availability of specialist skills.
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Almost 1,000 apply for receptionist job in Manchester
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53528653
That was tried a decade ago and didn't end well for a lot of companies, so many issues, from security of information to the language barrier and public perception.
I do think that this issue has shown a different way of working, pre-covid-19 skype meetings were clunky and limited, now they are using the technology to its full and peoples perception of the need for physical meetings are changing, same with site visits and so on, this will hopefully reduce costs and resource requirements for a lot of companies in the future due to this forced period of actually using the available technology to its limits!
LIFO is incredibly unfair, especially when said employee could’ve been bought in 3 months ago because they were the best person on the market and they left a previously stable job to better themselves.
Thankfully my employer was a bit more sensible and went for some positions which were created last year as a bit of a gamble, which clearly hasn’t paid off. Crap situation.
It certainly is a nightmare out there, isn't it? I've not worked this year, having finished my last project on 31/12/19 and then elected to take January off not knowing what lay ahead. By early March all discussions I was having just ground to a halt.
There are now pretty much no consultancy projects being advertised, and all salaried roles I've looked at have had at least 250 applicants in direct competition. I've never experienced anything like it.
Yes, very much so.
This situation will eventually normalise, but until it does I hope you all get through this period of uncertainty, and stay well too.
Dave
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I fear, Dave, that a second wave coupled with a hard Brexit will ensure that it doesn't normalise any time soon. I don't mean to be a doom-monger but I think the old "normality' will eventually be but a distant memory, as the COVID-adjusted world will look very different and will have a a lasting impact.
I'm not sure a love and passion for watches is just about telling the time.
From my medical perspective, we have gone from a period of no Covid cases to seeing them again. Not like April / May, but a worry for sure.
I’m sure we will have to live with the virus, pending a vaccine, but hopefully in a way that allows economic activity. It’s lockdown that stops the economy.
D
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I think the tone has definitely shifted recently. I'm starting to see a lot of articles that claim lockdown doesn't work and the government making statements like "the R- number dropped prior to lockdown". Whether or not these statements are true, I'm pretty sure we will never see a repeat of April's lockdown.
Of course not but the context was about why some people on decent salaries have no money.
Some people are just crap with money and some people are sensible with money.
For sure we won't and infections are inevitable and actually desirable as long as they are concentrated in the group best placed to have a more benign illness and in volumes that our health service can deal with.
A lot of hypothesis going round that because of pre existing part immunity conferred by other coronaviruses that herd immunity could be as low as 20% and that therefore New York, London, Stockholm etc won't see additional waves. Let's see - this is pure hypothesis at this stage but I feel that as long as people play ball, wear their masks, take their flu jabs and then the Covid jab when available (prob early next year for most people) that we will come out of this ok. The economy will always recover but big parts of it will look very different of course
Herd immunity only works if it is proven that you cannot get Covid-19 more than once, the reality is it was fought in such a way as to try not to overwhelm the hospitals, which worked in a way, not sure what the plan is now, without a proven vaccine it is pretty much survival of the fittest for the foreseeable i fear, there won't be a second lockdown, the western world can't sustain that, and the health and mental damage that this pandemic has caused is immeasurable as well.
Yep that is true re reinfections of course. Hopefully subsequent reinfections are milder (theoretically they should be but we will need to see).
A vaccine will certainly be the best way of getting back on track for sure
They'll be milder hopefully, most are already mild, it's the fact you'll still be spreading the virus if you get a second round of it.
I read that herd immunity needs something like 60% of the population to have had it. We are well off that. Also believe a recent study suggested those that had suffered from Covid may only have immunity for 3-6 months meaning an annual jab of vaccine may be required.
Some recent research indicates it may be 10-20% of the population due to pre existing protection from other coronaviruses. All conjecture and best kept to the covid threads.
Re immunity long term the 3 months is antibodies waning. Again it is proposed that T Cells recognise the virus upon secondary infection and mobilise the body to create antibodies therefore making it a mild illness like a cold. Nobody of course knows however whilst there have been anecdotal examples of reinfections with the millions already infected it would be likely more cases of reinfections would have been documented if reinfection was so prevalent.
I agree with this.
Having just avoided a 1 in 3 chance of redundancy I've just delivered an IT project using resources from eight companies across nine different countries in five continents (we used the sixth on an earlier upgrade) in seven different time zones and whilst under the new stresses of working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic!
Location was never an issue.
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I feel for people on here, I feel my job is fairly secure ( I manage a flooring company, the owners are semi-retired) we have covered our costs and are set to make a profit this year which is the main thing with everything going on.
I think the bigger issue is companies are realiseing they can function with a much smaller work force and without the need for offices etc. Companies will use COVID as a reason for redundancies but efficiencies are being looked at in every industry.
I’ve seen this on a few Tv programmes Company’s were a third of the staff are off with covid but the rest are doing extra shifts Working 22 hours a day etc to cover and getting near 100% productivity how long will it be after the management have thanked the staff for all their hard work That they will be sacking a third of the work force and expect the remaining ones to be working like slaves ?
The company I work for did 3 shifts, now they work 2 shifts and pay overtime it the jobs busy. They’re just having to adapt to the changing nature of the consumer, we are really busy which has surprised everyone but it’s the uncertainty of what’s happening next month or the months after that’s in the back of everyone’s mind.
That’s all very well at the moment but as I said what happens in the future when they find out how much extra money they can make by laying loads of the work force off and just getting people to work loads of overtime a lot of people especially as the get older don’t want to be doing loads of overtime,it’s fair enough if the company has to do it to survive but I can see lots of businesses using the currant situation to take the piss big time
The ones that weren’t asked to come back were the ones that took the piss and were work shy before the lockdown. They’ve only themselves to blame but they won’t see it like that.
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Consultation for my firm is now complete and scoring and selection is well underway. I’ll know if I’ve been selected in the next few weeks.
I reckon if you are unlucky enough to be out of a job, with the impact of Covid it’ll be unlikely there’ll be another for 18 months.
I empathise with those who lose their jobs, I had been made redundant twice in my career , found subsequent jobs but that was from contacts I knew not general applications, I retired in April this year i was luck to have final salary pensions, other than that crap timming :-)
I would suggest people who are unable to get employment retrain for manual jobs,:-) why
I have been trying to employ a roofer for past 4 weeks to replace a flat roof , out of 8 I have requested a quote from only 3 turned up to appointments to quote and one turned up without a ladder for a advised two story house,all too much work on, then when I managed to get a quote its months before they can start!
My son is a self employed electrician commercial/& home ,he is so busy there have been days I have had to help him as a laborer, and he is turning work away, my other son is a commercial catering engineer and again his firm are working 6-7 days a week,
my point being none of the above can be done from home behind a computer!
I was made redundant at the end of August but lucky enough to find employment due to previous qualifications. Many of my colleagues were not so lucky and have gone from ~£80k salaries to trying to find minimum wage manual work. It seems the big recruiters are places like Tesco and Amazon. These are hard times and I totally sympathise with anyone going through the redundancy process. Having now experienced both in my life, I'd say the stress and turmoil of going through redundancy was far worse than divorce.
There were a few guys on the radio yesterday gone from flying 777 and A380 for Emirates to driving HGVs or delivery vans! Some industries are being hammered.
Having been a "new starter" in the world of commercial flying this year, I personally know a few who last month were flying commercial airliners and this month are driving for tesco, working in an amazon facility or as odd job people. Whats worse is many of these guys have only just come out of flight school which is normally funded by bank loan schemes to the tune of about £90,000 at ~6% interest rate. This is why commercial pilot starting salaries in major airlines are generally pretty good because the individual is usually servicing a huge debt for the first few years. Now these guys are on minimum wage with this debt that still needing to be paid. The worst hit are the guys and girls who chose to go down the flying route straight out of school as they don't really have any other qualifications to fall back on. I can't blame them for that life choice either, last year it seemed a relatively safe gamble...for the past 30 years, we've seen GW1, September 11th and the 2007 recession and not seen mass redundancies like this. It's pretty brutal on them, some who have just started families etc.
Mmm come over to us. There's a big problem finding people for schools. All levels, all ages (kids). Lots of higher education classes are in English as well. A native speaker is an advantage as well.
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