Being Layed Off

Let me start with I have no animosity toward the company that laid me off.  I understand that they had to lay people off and I also understand why I was one of those people.  A public company has to protect it's investors and bottom line.  The economy being what it was and is worked against me.  There are other factors that played into the decision as well and of those punitive action was not one of them. 

I have come to find that there are perceptions of a company that play a bigger role in their personnel decisions than just how many people they have working for them.  There is an element of intelligence perception based on how many people work for a company that have a college degree and even to further that advanced degrees.  Business is gained by perception.  If customers perceive that you can do a better job than the competition because you have smarter people (on paper at least) they are more willing to do business with you.  There is also the economics of personnel.  Who is more valuable the person with a degree and two years experience making $32,000 a year or the person without a degree with 20 years experience making $ 76,000 a year?  To a public company with a bottom line to protect it's easily the person with a degree.  Especially if that person has been working with the 20 year veteran to learn all about the concepts and inter workings of the job.

The current economic situation requires that companies hire degreed people with far less experience and knowledge.  However, this puts a huge strain on unemployment benefits.  people like me who were making a good deal of money doing what we did for as long as we did now make more on unemployment than we can at jobs that don't require degrees.  By the way I can remember when you risked burnt fingers soldering connections and the satisfaction of enabling a port and seeing a login prompt on a terminal.  Just a thought.