I got one of the most lame Christmas presents a guy could hope for, a phone call from my boss yesterday telling me I’m getting laid off effective next week because they weren’t able to find any new contracts for me to work on with the heavy spending cuts going on in the government. Kinda puts a damper on the power steering rebuild which at this point is a necessity not just a want, my cat being out of commission until I have a new job locked in and believed to be stable. Sad for that but glad I didn’t already order the parts to the tune of several hundred dollars. I’m just hoping the severance package is decent, after 13.5 years with this same company, and I can continue to pay my mortgage and for my wife and I to eat and whatnot.
While I’m a little bit down right now, for obvious reasons, I’m also glad in a sense, as I haven’t really loved my job for a while now. What was once a small company with a sort of family feel to it has been on a steadily increasing trend toward unfeeling corporatization, and now even downsizing for the first time in its history. So I’m actually a bit glad to be out the door, really, and as long as I can get something new lined up quickly I can only view this as a great thing long-term.
If any of y’all know of any data analysis type careers in the Chicago area or that allow for working remotely (as I’ve done for the past 9 years) please do let me know. Or just advice/suggestions in general about the best way to line up a new career in this day and age, I’d really appreciate it. All I know is newspaper ads and websites from around the turn of the millennium, so I have to assume there is an awful lot I don’t know. Headhunters are a thing, anyone know if that’s worth pursuing?
Give AT Kearney a call and ask to talk to someone looking after their analytics practice. Deloitte also have a forensics practice that relies uses a lot of data analysis skills. Sorry don’t have contacts on your side of the globe
Chicago area is a pretty slim place to try and find work. You could easily find work if you were willing to relocate. Combination of incompetent / corrupt government, high taxes and money sucking unions have doomed the state of Illinois generally and Chicago specifically to be home to a growing number of unemployed.
Since you have a background in data analysis, I’d recommend exploring the emerging field of data scientists. This is a new job classification associated with the challenge of Big Data. You’d need to develop knowledge of Hadoop and other associated technologies, but it might not be that much of a stretch. Data Scientists are in the high 5-figure to low 6-figure salary range for larger companies or in the consulting world, at least in the Northeast.
I hope you will keep us updated. Is there anything that you can share with the community about the kind of work you are looking for? Lots of good networking here.
My supervisor finally heard back from HR who had been non-responsive since I first posted here. From what I can infer based on some very specific language the HR rep used in the call where I was given the final details, it appears as though the reason they delayed the layoff until this year is that effective 2014 the company no longer offers severance packages. How about that, eh?
I’ve been programming computers since I was about 10, I’m the first generation who could say that. I’m an expert-level programmer in VB.NET, specifically integrating with databases (dBase for the first several years with this employer, then Access and finally SQL Server) and Excel. I’ve worked on everything from little one-off analyses writing macros in Excel to major for-release software development for an official model used by the federal government and all related consultants. Probably my single biggest strength is being able to identify and solve potential problems that have not yet materialized, which comes with my ability to see things from multiple angles, “outside the box” as the old buzz phrase went.
As far as what sort of work I’m looking for, I’m very open. While my work history is primarily in analyzing noise and emissions from aircraft, really any job that would be engaging and put my skills to use is something I would be open to. I can be honest to a fault, which I know is a strike against me, but I’ll go ahead and do that here and say that thus far I haven’t had any ambition to try and take over the world or work my way up to “the top”, my preferred role is to be the guy you can go to with a question or a problem and I tackle it. My old supervisor from years back, who I love dearly and count myself lucky for having had the privilege of working under, once told me that the way of the world is to continually promote people until they are in a position they are no longer qualified to perform. The sponsor of a project I did the QA/validation on last year (NASA) specifically commented that the work I did on that project was of a much higher level than they were used to seeing. That felt great to hear, and confirmed for me that I was right where I belonged, identifying what was wrong and how it should be fixed to make the analysis as meaningful as possible. In this case it was a project about how to differently utilize the national airspace to maximize efficiency and minimize fuel consumption/cost.
I can tell you my dream job. Rather than doing the sort of national or global modeling of air transportation related data that I’ve been doing all these years, I would like nothing more than to do the same sort of large-scale analyses, but of plate tectonics, in an effort to predict earthquakes. That is my absolute dream job. A close second would be to hook up with a wealthy benefactor who was willing to fund research into an idea I had a few years back that I think might provide a means for mitigating if not completely preventing hurricanes.
But as I’m not a pie-in-the-sky 20-year old anymore, I have no problem with a less glamorous job like writing code to count widgets, or writing instruction manuals to explain complex processes in layman’s terms, etc. Anything that will let me help someone accomplish something non-nefarious in exchange for enough money to pay for my mortgage and food for me wife and I, maybe even the parts for the PS upgrade on my Cougar.
To Royce’s point-- while I know the ridiculousness of Chicago politics firsthand, still I will avoid relocating at all costs. I love the suburb I’m in, love my house, and my wife still has a few years left in medical school here. I’m willing to travel, but not relocate. I already did that, lived in DC/VA for three years for my soon-to-be-former job, and that was long enough for me to realize I wanted to be here. My parents are here, all my family is here. So relocating is not going to happen unless something impossibly absurd like a 7-figure salary forces me to rethink everything.
That, my friend, is data science. It’s the art of taking data from many sources, some transactional, some unstructured, and pulling the view together to see patterns or trends that wouldn’t be visible from the structured or transactional data alone. It’s a new field with lots of opportunity and you shouldn’t have to relocate to find a spot in it. You just may have to learn to use some new tools because of the scope and varied formats of the data involved.
