What do you do?

Yeah I don't know about GM... I don't want to derail this thread but it's crazy to think that in the first 6 months of 2014 they've already recalled more cars than the previous 6 years combined. I understand that a lot of them are non-safety recalls and non-ignition switch stuff, but still, that's an insane amount.

If we're speaking in terms of "not going anywhere", you'd be much better off with Ford. All that negative publicity isn't gonna help a whole lot in the long term.

Realized today that with the sale of my home, we will have 0 debt, and therefore when finding a new job in the Portland area I can go for something that may not pay as well, but I enjoy more. Will be interesting being in that position where money isn't the only thing that matters.

Really looking forward to it.

Crone_sl said:

Realized today that with the sale of my home, we will have 0 debt, and therefore when finding a new job in the Portland area I can go for something that may not pay as well, but I enjoy more. Will be interesting being in that position where money isn't the only thing that matters.

Really looking forward to it.

Click to expand...

Hah, yeah Portland has crazy high cost of living. But good luck!

Deathwing_sl said:

Going homeless in Portland?

Click to expand...

Staying with family for free until we find a job. I'll be looking for a job starting very shortly, so that time with family may not be very long at all.

It is pretty high, even on the WA side in Vancouver, where I'll actually be staying. Rents are pretty outrageous, making a good case to buy again, but not sure I want to go through that again.

Contract work, Self Employed.

Database Migrations and network deployment/upgrades

Contracts run 3 months for me, gives me time to setup resources and further investigate there current database for migration to there new system. base contract starts at 30k/job.

Bonus's are in the contracts. + Travel the world doing this bonus enough for me really.

Full benefits.

Phone interview tomorrow. I hate these, they always want to talk money over everything else. I guess I'm in the super minority. I have debt, no bills etc...I would take a job I enjoy or wanted to do for 20% of what I would charge someone for a job I really don't care for. Working environment means everything to me.

Eh maybe. There's a job opening near here that would be very rural and I would take half the money to relocate to there and be very happy about it and that is no indication of the cost of living.

I have bills, I just try and not let it dictate my lifestyle choices. My bills include utilties, food, and whatever fun stuff I decide to buy each month. My best friend is hating life now because of it. He was/is a trauma/ER nurse and loved it. He wound up making some bad decisions money wise along with his wife and he moved into a desk job and now manages people. He hates it, he hates it bad. Every time I mention it might be time to simplify and downsize to make life at least a little enjoyable he reminds me I'm not married and have massive bills.

Guess it doesn't matter, she didn't call at the appointed time and instead got my voice mail a few hours later.

Borzak_sl said:

I have bills, I just try and not let it dictate my lifestyle choices. My bills include utilties, food, and whatever fun stuff I decide to buy each month. My best friend is hating life now because of it. He was/is a trauma/ER nurse and loved it. He wound up making some bad decisions money wise along with his wife and he moved into a desk job and now manages people. He hates it, he hates it bad. Every time I mention it might be time to simplify and downsize to make life at least a little enjoyable he reminds me I'm not married and have massive bills.

Guess it doesn't matter, she didn't call at the appointed time and instead got my voice mail a few hours later.

Click to expand...

Shit like this makes me happy I enjoy my job and get paid north of 200,000/year when stock grants are taken into account (They are ~60-70/year)

Just wish I could move to Cali to work out of the main office...

I've worked at home until the first of this year for the last 25 years, since I graduated high school.

I guess people for the most part look at whatever they make as being the minimum they can live on. One company I work for gives out a bonus each June at a minimum of 20% of gross pay and goes up. My dad retired from there and he often got 50% or more of his gross pay in one check. I know lots of the guys never treat it as a bonus, but rather are sweating each year to pay off what they spent in the previous 12 months. The company doesn't offer a 401k and your bonus is supposed to be to fund your retirement. I know every year the week after the bonus checks guys are getting new pools, new trucks in the parking lot etc...

The friend I mentioned above had a nice home. He and his wife both took new jobs at the same time and bought a new house within two weeks, before they even knew if they would like the job or not. I don't know how they live like that. I know when they sold their house they had to wait till they actually had some equity. Not because the market dropped out here, it really didn't fall at all like the rest of the country and demand was still pretty high following Katrina. But becuase he bought his house with zero down or whatever they would let him get away with.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where there exists a script to qualify as 'normal'. You go to school, get a job, get a wife/husband, get a house, have 1.5 kids, buy shit we don't need with money we don't have, get old and die. Society and family dictates this is how it goes and if you don't have these things done by date xyz you are 'losing'. It is these pressures that cause us to do crap like your friend and his wife did -- we rush our decisions because we feel obligated to catch up to some ideal state that media and society has place upon us.

The only good news is it seems to be a little better for the Gen-Y folks and the arbitrary systems of man/woman = right, only home = house, thou must have kids etc. are fraying at the edges. Unfortunately, for us older folks (Gen-X geriatrics) it is already too late. We are in the machine, we drank the kool-aid and now we have to fight twice as hard to get out.

Your friend, and by and large most of society still feel those pressures. It is pretty great actually that it sounds like you don't and you should be very thankful for whatever part of your upbringing or your independent id has made it so you don't -- it's a gift and a valuable one at that!

Just got the official word that our team as we know it within EMC is dissolving and being reformed under another person (in typical EMC fashion). Due to me being a young guy, they thought it was a good time for me to get away from that.

So with that, I'm moving back into firmware engineering as a software engineer. Kind of shitty as I've been in this job since December, so it's sort of a setback, but at least I'll be doing real engineering again and working on the big toys.

It's funny because I've had little work the past couple of months and it was starting to pick up - but I feel I will enjoy coding more (for now).

Same pay and everything, so just a sidegrade.