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Comment by AwesomeGriffin | Hacker News Reader

> probably lower skilled workers can take your job, you probably suck

More probably these decisions are made at a very high level and the individual abilities of these workers aren't even taken into consideration. The real lessons here are never trust your employer, loyalty is a two-way street and always have an exit plan.

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Exactly. I was having this conversation with fellow employees. He brought up that they have a 1.5 - 2 year plan to phase out his entire department and moving everything overseas. I was just shocked that he was literally watching time tick by until his job was over. He was been with the company for 8 years. I asked why he stayed and it came down to security. He has kids and needs the insurance.

I hear that while it can be depressing to stay while the department is transferred overseas, companies will often sweeten the deal to make it worth your while- despite the fact they are getting rid of you, they still need the transition to happen gracefully, and to transfer knowledge to the new team.

Damn fine time to push for a raise!

Great point here. Never stop interviewing, always maintain your network connections, and make sure development that you do is associated with your personal brand so that it's portable. There's always a company willing to pay you more, treat you better, give you more interesting assignments, or ALL OF THE ABOVE.

I suppose, but to turn around and complain about how you haven't been able to find work for the past 5-10 years seems to indicate there might be something beyond "I got laid off because of outsourcing."

That something is usually "my skillset became overly specific to my employer, so that once I was laid off, I had nothing of value to anyone else." There's a lesson in that too: even people who were quite talented and hungry in their younger years can find themselves pigeonholed into a corner when they tie their fate to a single big company.

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