Thanks for you comment.

Boy, I know all about low pay and getting taken advantage of. I have done this a couple of times in my career. I only recommend this when your company is hurting and they appreciate it. If you work for one of those greedy, soulless corporations, keep doing it and look to move on. The reason I say to keep doing it is because it can definitely help you get a better job. Good companies can afford to be picky and they usually hire the best employees. If you are a high performer at a lousy company, you are exactly what they are looking for.

As for up-and-down cycles, I know about those as well. I have worked in IT for decades and I have seen times where head hunters would court me every week and other times when I couldn’t buy a job for months. When you go through lean times and get little or no raise for years, your company will never make that back up to you in the good times. But, other companies will be more than happy to pay you what you are worth. The trick is to really be worth more when you decide to make a move.

be all you can be is something i’ve struggled with in the past. i’ve had companies take advantage of me as the go-to guy, or the person who’ll always lend a hand with grunt work, or the one who’ll come in on saturday or stay late. while this may be a desirable position to be in during recession or lay-offs i also feel this has led to me being underpaid during a stable/steady economy.

if there are lay-offs and the work is spread around to remaining employees i would take on the additional duties without adjustment in pay to show the company i am willing to help out during hard times. however once hiring begins again i feel you should ask for compensation or return to workload commensurate with your pay.

be careful about putting yourself “on sale”, a good company will recognize your additional contribution during hard times, but others might expect it from you regardless of how the company is doing. you may or may not be ok with that. i guess in this post it can be regarded as an insurance policy…

Wow, you are definitely a survivor. I hope things turn around at your company before it gets any worse. Unfortunately, the government is broke and they seem to be the only ones who haven’t figured that out.

You are right about doing everything right and still getting canned. This is especially true in bigger companies, where the people making the cuts don’t interact with the employees on a daily basis.

I choose to work at smaller companies where they know you personally. And, these tips have been really useful to me, while working at a number of declining companies. Sometimes, you just need to make it through to the next round.

Sometimes you can do everything absolutely right with respect to minimizing your chances of getting laid off – solving problems, doing those ugly jobs nobody else will take – and it doesn’t matter.

Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do because the odds just catch up with you. I’ve avoided six major downturns in my career over the past 20 years and I have been fortunate so far, although I know my time will eventually come.

My best defense has been, besides working hard and making myself an asset to my employer, to keep my mortgage payment low and my savings high. I have no other obligations and when the day comes that I finally get the axe, I will at least have a little comfort knowing that I should be able to make it for several years if I have to without having to earn any money at all.

It’s really the only thing we can do to maintain our independence and some modicum of self-reliance when we are working for “the man.”

Great article, as usual, Bret.