Hacker News Reader

Comment by snarfy | Hacker News Reader

Since you were laid off and didn't quit or were fired, you should head down to the unemployment office so you can start collecting. You don't know how long it will be before you find a new job, and the bills will keep coming in. You may have savings, but there is no need to blow through it when you've been paying into the safety net.

View on HN

I agree with this recommendation. It's easy to do, has simple ongoing requirements (that you are applying for jobs), and while it's not going to be a lot of money, it's fairly dependable money. Set up an alarm to submit your weekly reports, and that's it.

Honestly, this would be the first thing I would do, though, since you've been there less than a year, I'm not sure if you would get the 'max' or not. In CA, that's about $450/wk.

I would recommend checking the box to take the taxes out when submitting your forms. Or however they have it set up online now.

I second the other suggestions about letting it be known that you're available for hire. I assume that you might have already been putting out feelers since you were planning on quitting anyway.

I cannot recommend this enough. In the dot com bomb I didn't do so at first thinking I would surely get a job and that applying for unemployment would be a huge amount of red tape.

I was wrong. It is drop dead easy. Do it before all else, it is why you have been paying for that insurance.

I was laid off years ago and I didn't do this. I wish I had. I was young and no one told me I could.

I was only unemployed a month and a half but it still would have been nice to collect since I'd been paying into it.

This. More to the point, depending on your jurisdiction, you could lose benefits by not applying right away. In CA years ago, for example, you lost 25% for each quarter after the job loss -- take a year off and it was all gone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com