One year ago today, I was laid off from my job at Alcatel. As I’ve mentioned here before, that turned out to be just about the best thing that could have happened. It freed me up at precisely the right moment to take a much better job at IBM, and it got me out of an environment that had been deteriorating for some time and was about to get much worse.
The prospect of being unemployed can be daunting, but sometimes it’s the first step toward much better employment. Before April 2 of last year, I was reflexively clinging to a job that I no longer enjoyed and that had become a dead end, just because I was afraid of the unknown. I shouldn’t have needed a layoff to shake me loose. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to admit that you’re not happy with what you have, and let go of it.