I’ve learned that there are a lot of misconceptions about being laid off in middle age.

A few days ago, there was a hot article about a 35-year-old man who, after losing his job, sat in Starbucks for three months in order to hide it from his family. Pretending to be at work, writing, interviewing, and revising your resume.

At the bottom of this article, the two comments with the highest praise made me feel a little uncomfortable.

The first:

“Down-to-earth industrial, engaged in technology will not be so, laid-off are more illusory industries, pigs flying in the wind, wind face on the ground, high or low to think carefully in addition to PPT what also can not.”

Article 2:

“It’s not enough to be irreplaceable. People with real strength aren’t afraid to get laid off.”

These two comments are pretty mainstream. The former is “pragmatism”, the latter “political correctness”.

Well, a lot of things aren’t cut and dry.

People who get laid off don’t necessarily live in a bubble industry or are easily replaceable. Even those who are skilled and irreplaceable with 5 stars still face crisis, and the dilemma is even more embarrassing after they lose their jobs.

01

My former colleague, Xiao Ping, works as a configuration management engineer (SCM) at a large Internet company, which is one of the few IT jobs.

Originally a programmer, she got the offer by chance while trying to switch industries to products.

Generally speaking, there are several “requirements” for each position, such as familiarity with several tools.

But there’s something special about vial’s job.

It doesn’t require a lot of tool-handling skills, and it doesn’t have to do any other SCM day-to-day work. It does three things

  • Train new employee to use in-house support system.
  • Collect feedback and send it to the product manager of the development team.
  • Assign accounts and permissions to users.

The vial position is an “SCM lead,” but it’s really more of a 3 in 1 mix of trainer, requirements collector, and basic rights configurator.

Four years later, Vial resigned for health reasons and recuperated for nearly a year. When I decided to return to work, I found myself in an unprecedented dilemma.

First of all, she is a classic bespoke talent. As a configuration engineer, what she had done before was different from the job requirements in the market.

Second, there is the dilemma of career change.

Go back to being a programmer? Vial hasn’t written code in four years and isn’t as competitive as he used to be.

Switch to product manager? “Everyone is a product manager,” but remember, the word “junior” is a long way from her expected salary.

“I thought I had a decent income, but suddenly I feel unemployed. The switch was off guard.” “Said the vial with a sad smile.

02

When it comes to “midlife unemployment”, two words often follow: change careers.

It is often heard that people ask, is it feasible to change careers at the age of XX?

In fact, the emphasis is misplaced. There is no direct link between how old you are and whether you succeed in changing careers.

Ma Yun, Lei Jun, Ding Lei, Zhou Hang and other Internet tycoons, to varying degrees, have achieved different degrees of switching runway in middle age. Not to mention Haruki Murakami, a 30-year-old jazz bar owner who inexplicably resolved to “write something decent” one day next to the Kamiya Stadium.

The key points of career change are:

Do things that match resources.

A. Match “industry age”

Many industries have unspoken age rules. This is not discrimination, but an objective reality.

For example, 35 years old is a 100% natural “old man” to a coder, but to an architect or a doctor, it’s just like 20 years old.

Although many articles tell you that it’s never too late to start, sometimes we don’t have to go head-to-head.

B. Match your strengths

Include your experience, knowledge, skills, contacts, etc.

A few days ago, a reader in the logistics industry asked me, he was 29 years old, and he knew a friend who was an algorithm engineer with an annual salary of 600,000 yuan. He asked himself whether it was possible for him to make 300,000 yuan a year when he switched to writing algorithms.

Ahem, “algorithm engineer making $600,000 a year.” What does that have to do with you?

Many people place too much emphasis on the “industry” and too little on themselves.

You need to learn about your personal characteristics and strengths first, and then take the time to learn about the industry you’re going to be in, rather than Posting “Yes or no.” Find online materials, online courses, go to “expert” or find big V paid consulting, spend money, with an hour, is worth a month.

A career change is literally a river crossing.

A plunge into the river was ominous. You must know where the goal is, how to get there, what the cost is, and whether there are enough chips in hand, and then implement the plan step by step to reach the other side.

03

In fact, I think it is better to “transform” than “change industries” to deal with the crisis.

Because any time “starting at zero” comes with a hard decision that comes with a highlighted exclamation point. As far as I can see, people who succeed in change have one thing in common:

Know how to borrow.

Borrow what you already have.

Yang Shu, talent strategy director of Ali Group, worked as an IT text editor in a publishing house after her master’s degree.

For her first job change, she chose a headhunting company in the IT industry. She moved to Oracle, where she worked her way up from internal recruiting to head of Recruiting for Oracle North Asia, and then ran alibaba’s recruiting operations center.

Each of these jobs involved working with people, and She followed the “proximity rule” with each transition.

Imagine you’re coding one day and saying you’re going to open a restaurant the next

  • Are you familiar with the catering industry?
  • Do you have any advantages in catering?
  • Have you tested it on a small scale?

If you want to try another road just because you are unemployed, it is like drinking poison to quench thirst.

I know a friend of mine who is a senior network architect who earns nearly $300,000 a year and is on his company’s “check list” (which is basically a list of people who need to be laid off). Disheartened, he calmly offered to resign after a few days.

What is he going to do?

Become a lecturer in a training institution.

He already had training experience in the company, recorded online courses, and even held the trainer certification of two institutions, so he successfully got the corresponding offer. In the same year, he was awarded as an excellent lecturer.

No matter from income or development space, far more than before.

At dinner, he talked about being laid off with such an unsmiling smile that he said “it was a good thing they were going to be laid off”.

A crisis turns into an opportunity to rearrange and rearrange the advantages.

04

To be fair, being laid off isn’t necessarily your problem. Big companies at home and abroad, including Google, Amazon and Alibaba, have all experienced financial crises or mass layoffs.

But if you don’t find the right job for a long time, it may be a red flag.

Yohji Yamamoto said: “this thing is invisible, hit something else, bounce back, you will know yourself.”

Makes perfect sense.

In recent years, I’ve had a feeling that many people wait until they have a career crisis before considering career development.

Wait until downsizing, unemployment, can not find a job, just feel helpless, was a wave beat down on the beach.

Let me say this from the bottom of my heart:

Preparing for yourself, saving money, visiting job boards, and talking to managers and HR friends is 100 times better than doing nothing.

For one thing, as Franklin said, “When you can, you should plan for the future. The morning light does not shine all day.”

Second, the most valuable skill is value reinvention. Keep an eye out for things around you that don’t seem relevant to the moment. They could be your new battleground

Don’t feel too bad about being out of work for a while. Plow rain reading, take this opportunity to stop, see the surrounding environment and the road in front of you.

Learn to make peace with yourself. Learn to refocus on your strengths.

In the movie Alice in Wonderland, the Red Queen has a line: in our place, you have to keep running to stay where you are.

There is still a long way to go. Please start again.