I’ve been getting more popular lately. I’d like to think it’s because I’m a genuinely cool person that so many old friends are suddenly getting back in touch with me, but unfortunately, it is more due to the current economic situation. I’ve been getting more and more requests to join social networking sites or to add connections in the ones I already belong to. While I do wish that these people had kept in touch (I honestly do consider them friends as well as former coworkers), I can also appreciate the urgency of their need to reconnect and I’m trying to be a good friend and be generous with recommendations and such.
To be honest, I also got busy and didn’t keep in touch, but I always knew I could count on them for recommendations if I needed them, so it’s only fair!
Right now, I feel incredibly lucky to be hired on to a company just before they instituted a hiring freeze. Every time I listen to the news, (I’m not big on watching the news or reading it, but listening to it in the car works well) I hear about another company cutting jobs, reporting losses, or even just throwing in the towel. I can’t say I was surprised to hear that Nortel is considering bankruptcy , but it’s still ominous all the same. Any place I have worked, people were far busier ripping out old legacy nortel equipment than they were interested in installing any new equipment from them, so that tends to translate into a company not doing so well. Still, it only adds to the dark clouds.
I would have to say, up until the past month, I have believed that this recession was something that the majority of people would weather fairly well and that it would just be a couple of years before the economy was back humming right along. Now I’m not so sure. It almost seems as if the entire US and by extension, world economy were just a house of cards waiting to fall, all depending on everyone, from huge corporations to individuals, to keep spending beyond their means, racking up huge piles of debt in the process. Now it is as if the loan sharks have come calling and even the deepest pockets realize that they are not deep enough to pay up.
I also find it interesting that the huge corporations that blindly spent, paying out incredible salaries to their executives, are the first to be bailed out by the government while there seems to be no intention of helping out individuals or families who are guilty of the same financial crimes as the corporations. It appears that the very wealthiest portion of society that was at the helm of these corporations is the only portion of society that the government is willing to assist even when they are far less likely to need it.
This blog is primarily about networking, but I can’t help but express my disillusionment in a democratic government that has clearly given up any concern for its people in exchange for being bought by large corporations.
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