Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed
    The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed
    The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed
    Ebook68 pages51 minutes

    The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed

    By David Dvorkin

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    It's all here: My 2003 satirical essay on unemployment which got hundreds of responses, details of my 40-year work history, why it's probably not your fault if you're laid off, some unconventional advice on resume writing, and lots of encouragement for anyone who is currently job hunting.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Dvorkin
    Release dateMay 25, 2012
    ISBN9781476294551
    The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed
    Author

    David Dvorkin

    David Dvorkin was born in 1943 in England. His family moved to South Africa after World War Two and then to the United States when David was a teenager. After attending college in Indiana, he worked in Houston at NASA on the Apollo program and then in Denver as an aerospace engineer, software developer, and technical writer. He and his wife, Leonore, have lived in Denver since 1971.David has published a number of science fiction, horror, and mystery novels. He has also coauthored two science fiction novels with his son, Daniel. For details, as well as quite a bit of non-fiction reading material, please see David and Leonore’s Web site, http://www.dvorkin.com.

    Read more from David Dvorkin

    Related to The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed

    Related ebooks

    Technology & Engineering For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Don’t Be Afraid To Be Bad

      Jun 19, 2021

      If we were talking one-on-one after a workshop or over coffee, this is the advice I would give you, the one thing you can do right now that will change your writing and your life: Don’t be afraid to be bad. I’ve seen it happen to some of the best wri

      1 min read

    • Article

      Take Your Android To 11

      Jan 11, 2021

      Take Your Android To 11
      4 min read

    • Article

      Don’t Let the Tired Win Out

      Dec 21, 2021

      Here are the top five ways to keep your momentum going after a writing conference: 1.Brainstorm ways to apply new concepts before the event even ends. Jot them down, including a timeline, so you can later put your plan into action.2. Review summary s

      1 min read

    • Article

      Breaking In

      Feb 14, 2022

      Breaking In
      5 min read

    • Article

      It’s never too Late

      Apr 25, 2020

      It’s never too Late
      7 min read

    • Article

      Worth a Thousand Words

      Oct 18, 2021

      Worth a Thousand Words
      1 min read

    • Article

      When Less Is More

      Oct 6, 2022

      When Less Is More
      6 min read

    • Article

      The 3 Phases of Book Signings

      Aug 7, 2023

      Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, publishers would send their authors out on a bookstore tour to publicize their new book. A driver would meet them at the airport and shuttle them to the hotel and bookstore. The authors would speak, maybe do a

      5 min read

    • Article

      I Got Fired Over Zoom

      May 12, 2020

      I Got Fired Over Zoom
      9 min read

    • Article

      Advice From A Shark

      Dec 18, 2020

      @dorieclark Has Trump altered the course of U.S. conservatism? »P 14 THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HAS OBVIOUSLY HIT A lot of businesses hard. But arguably no one more so than the owners of small businesses. To get some thoughts—and some help—I turned to Rob

      7 min read

    • Article

      You’re Gonna Miss Zoom When It’s Gone

      Apr 16, 2021

      For people like me, who have social anxiety, videoconferencing can be easier than in-person interactions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Advice From A Shark

      Dec 18, 2020

      Advice From A Shark
      7 min read

    • Article

      Imposter Syndrome

      Aug 29, 2022

      Imposter Syndrome
      15 min read

    • Article

      In 'Whistleblower,' Susan Fowler Reveals The Toll Of Speaking Out Against Uber

      Mar 4, 2020

      Hours after Susan Fowler received her company laptop at Uber, a chat message popped up from her boss. He wasn't offering her a friendly welcome to the new engineering team she'd just spent the last couple of weeks training to join, or suggesting the

      6 min read

    • Article

      Workplace Romances

      Feb 8, 2024

      Workplace Romances
      3 min read

    • Article

      ONE LEG At A TIME

      Oct 30, 2019

      ONE LEG At A TIME
      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘You Can Be Swift Even In The Public Sector’

      Apr 15, 2022

      Arundhati Bhattacharya broke the mould when she became India’s top banker, as the first woman Chairman of the State Bank of India. Yet, that was not to be the summit of an illustrious career in banking, as she quickly followed that up with an intrigu

      11 min read

    • Article

      How to Retire

      Jul 1, 2019

      How to Retire
      6 min read

    • Article

      Why Everyone Needs A Work Village

      Jul 18, 2023

      I landed my first management job at the age of 25, as editor of the former pop bible Smash Hits. The office was like no other – an average week would see the likes of Mark Owen singing his new song at my desk, or a cover shoot involving a boyband mem

      2 min read

    • Article

      MOSTLY JUST A SCREAM AN INTERVIEW WITH HALLE BUTLER On capitalism and The New Me

      Sep 1, 2019

      For the past ten months, I have lived in San Francisco. I work in Silicon Valley. Capitalism swirls around me: Long work weeks, robotic men and women with their faces in the blue glow of their screens on the train, rampant homelessness among the weal

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed

    3.5/5

    3 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      His continuous political rantings compromised the strength of this e-book; otherwise, helpful.

    Book preview

    The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed - David Dvorkin

    THE SURPRISING BENEFITS OF BEING UNEMPLOYED

    by

    David Dvorkin

    Smashwords Edition

    Copyright 2012 by David Dvorkin

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re–sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    * * * * *

    The cover photo, minus the computer, was taken by my wife, Leonore, in 1988 in northwestern Germany. She used the same photo for the cover of her breast cancer book, Another Chance at Life: A Breast Cancer Survivor’s Journey. For details, see http://www.leonoredvorkin.com/brcan/

    * * * * *

    Contents

    The Surprising Benefits of Expressing My Feelings

    The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed

    The Day Job

    The Response

    The Lasting Benefits

    About the Author

    * * * * *

    The Surprising Benefits of Expressing My Feelings

    Perhaps the title of this book is misleading. It’s really about what happened when I wrote a tongue–in–cheek essay some time ago about the benefits of being unemployed. And yet in the end — years after the original essay and the layoff that led to the writing of it, and after other jobs and other layoffs — being unemployed did end up being a surprisingly positive thing.

    I’ll get to that later, in the section titled The Lasting Benefits.

    In the summer of 2003, I was laid off from my job as a software developer at InfoNow, a small software company in downtown Denver. This was the company’s second big layoff. I had survived the first one, but the second one swept most of the survivors of the first layoff, including me, out the door. Given that the company was not doing well, and given also the lingering shadow of the first layoff, it was not entirely a surprise. Nonetheless, it hit me hard emotionally. I liked the company and my coworkers, and I was happy to have settled into the software niche that suited me.

    My first full–time job after college, in 1967, was as an aerospace engineer. (For a detailed description of my career, including the litany of layoffs, see the section titled The Day Job.) After seven years in the aerospace business, a layoff caused me to switch careers to computer programming.

    In 1992, again after a layoff, I made another career switch, this time to technical writing. It was a change I had been contemplating for a while, thinking that it would suit me more than computer programming.

    I quickly learned that I was wrong, but for a number of reasons, I found it difficult to move back into computer programming. I kept trying to make that move, and I kept failing. I grew increasingly pessimistic and depressed about my chances of becoming a programmer again. In the meantime, a new type of programming, Web development, was becoming increasingly important. I played around with Web development on my own and liked it very much. If anything, that made me even more depressed by my inability to get a job in the software development field. I feared that I would be a technical writer for the remainder of my working life.

    My perseverance paid off, though, and in the spring of 1999, InfoNow rescued me. That’s certainly how I saw it at the time. I was happy, I was relieved, I felt that I was finally in my element, and I envisioned myself staying at the company for years — ideally until age 70, at which point, according to my calculations, I would be able to retire and, perhaps with the help of part–time work, my wife, Leonore, and I would be able to live above the poverty line.

    When the InfoNow layoff happened four years later, I felt like a man whose wife hands him divorce papers and kicks him out of the house just when he thinks they’ve gotten past a rocky patch and the marriage will be fine. I felt hurt, betrayed, stabbed in the back, and ill rewarded for what I had contributed to the company.

    I suspect that this is a common response on the part of those who have been laid off. Of course, it’s irrational.

    When you work for a company, it’s not a relationship. It’s a business arrangement. You’re an item on a spreadsheet, an entry in a database. You are disposable and replaceable. Corporate apologists yammer about loyalty, but in reality they envision that loyalty as going in one direction only. Employees are expected to be loyal to their employers, but there is no reciprocation. Corporations are most certainly not people, no matter what idiotic courts, lawyers, politicians, and corporate executives may proclaim. Corporations experience no emotion save greed. To survive in bad times and to acquire more in good times — more money, more power, more market share — they will destroy and discard anything that stands in their way. That includes superfluous employees.

    I was old enough to know that in 2003, but it took

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1