...on being an expendable idiot

So it's been nearly three weeks since I was laid-off from my high-tech, software industry job in downtown Seattle. I was on a hand-picked team working for a senior VP. Didn't matter, he was laid-off too.

When I came to Seattle and started looking for jobs, I rang-up three offers in as many weeks. Not so in today's job market. In three weeks of searching, I've had one real interview and nothing close to an offer. The economic downturn/recession has everybody from Microsoft on down hedging their bets and freezing their hiring. I'm working with recruiters and open to contract work, but even then the pickins are slim to none.

Since coming to Seattle, I'm $20k upside down in a house that I won't be able to get out of for years (thus ending our family at two kids due to lack of space) and I've lost a my job at the front end of what promises to be the worst recession since the 1930s. As a bonus, my retirement accounts are nigh unto worthless and I'll probably end up in a cheap nursing home on the outskirts of a town I've never heard of. But at least I've got my health. Good thing, cuz I no longer have health insurance.

I've honestly thought a about going back to Idaho and seeing if I could get a line job at the local potato processing plant in Blackfoot. I won't, but I've thought about it. Potato chips and computer chips have given Idaho the fastest growing economy in the U.S. Maybe I could get in on that action.

If I did, I'd probably be working along side some of my less studious classmates from high school. Like them, I'd make about $25-30K a year. But in Blackfoot, Idaho you can buy more with that than I can buy with my near-six-figure product manager salary in Seattle.

Those mullet-wearing underachievers may actually be the smart ones. It's entirely possible that I'm an idiot who's wasted thousands of dollars and many years of my life getting a college education and scaling the precarious corporate ladder. In fact, it's looking more probable by the day.

Had I dropped out of high school and taken a line job at the potato factory, I would by now have a house on a piece of land. It wouldn't be a big house, but it would almost certainly (even if it were a double-wide trailer) be larger than my current townhouse on no land. And I'd have a job to support my family. Not bad. Instead, I'm unemployed, living in a shoe box and drowning in negative equity with no insurance or retirement money. The guys at the potato factory would have a good laugh.