Recession and the pink slips

My last post was a personal view on the technical communication in India and how would it take a turn in the recent economic recession. I could not really make an inch forward from then to see a clear picture of my profession in which I am employed. The impact of economic downturn became more evident as the time passed by. And it literally made me think about myself, my job, and my career. A kind of uncertainty prevailed which made me docile and prevented me from being creative, analytic and bold enough to face the challenge and see a way through this.

The pink slip saga is a common practice in any economic crises. I have faced a career recession and so I can understand how it feels when you are threatened. When you are threatened you are challenged but you do not know how to win over the challenge. Many a times we feel certainly we lack certain skills because of that we are laid off and we need to sharpen our weak areas to improve upon. But most certainly it is not always true. There might be most deserving people with most appropriate skills losing job somewhere. The fact is their skills and talents are not in demand. The entire human resource requirement to pull up the cart is driven by the business demand. And when the speculation takes over the real scenario in business, uncertainty always looms large. We never know what is going to happen.

The worst part is that there is no mechanism by which we can predict and analyze much before it hits us. There is no way a common person can have some kind of access in the public data or right of information based on which they can prevent certain unwanted situation. However, this can not apply valid to the economic downturn where the entire business philosophy is runs on the wrong machine. When you start showing the profit and losses much beyond reality, sooner or later you land up in a mess.

It’s a big shame when a business leader of reputed excellence turns to be a cheater, a burglar, who steals the public money to fill his coffin. He puts our career, our future on stake for his own benefit. Its shame on the public machinery also which can not detect the fraud. Who knows how many of them might be involved in the episode. At the end numbers of jobless people are on the rolls. So far the number has crossed 4 lack mark and its continuing everyday. Policy is to cut jobs to survive. Blows are on; you never know who is receiving where. Major Job cuts make news that too of public limited companies, the LLC’s laid off never makes any news and that forms even bigger chunk in totality. These LLCs are contractors and subcontractors for Public limited companies. So the indirect impact can be even more severe.

The software and hardware computer industry boomed because of the prospect of serving all walks of business and the negative impact of any business would indirectly hit this industry too. It is related.

Few of my Technical writer friends have lost their job. We all are scared because we do not know our own status in terms of value and the demand at the work place. We are also just speculating about the things and living one day at a time. All said than done, tough people have tough work at hand to save the job if they have. If not, then to get another one. Each passing days is real testing time. We wish to be the survivors but would we. I don’t know. Let the time answer this question.