May have to take forced early retirement (10 years early)

[woodsprite]

And it could be for both myself and my husband. Thought we were in fairly stable positions. We have been working at home in IT support in higher ed since the start of the pandemic. We had been hearing scuttlebutt, but today we heard some solid numbers. Our IT department has been asked to cut their budget by a figure that would cut our department staffing by half, and that's after accounting for service and software contracts they could cut, and already cutting misc wage employees and student workers. If they forced every person eligible for retirement, that would only cut it by less than half the amount needed, and that alone would decimate our department, it's support capabilities, and cost the school a huge loss in institutional knowledge.

Today was the first official contact of "If you were offered incentive, would you take early retirement?" I told them "I'd really rather not since it's 10 years before I'm eligible to take anything for retirement without taking a cut, SS is probably not going to be around by then, let alone our 401Ks have taken a tremendous hit, but it would depend on what the incentive package contains. It's especially stressful because we both know that my husband will be getting the same call shortly from his VP."

[Claustrum]

1. I am sorry to hear this.

My dad was laid off in March as he turned 60 and will likely be in early retirement as well. His chance of finding another job is slim to none.

I hope it will work out for you and your husband.

[LakeArenal]

2. Almost exactly what happened to me in the 2009 debacle.

Had to lose a lot of retirement. Probably 75% to keep us afloat, the house and Med insurance. (Before the ACA).

Now retired. Are renters instead of buyers. One bedroom. Few perks.
We made it through better friends then ever. But I won’t under estimate the pressures of that time.

I wish you both he best. I’ll be rooting for you. 🤞🏼🇺🇸🤞🏼

[redstatebluegirl]

3. I think our University will see this in the spring.

Our kids are on campus right now, for now so we still need our IT people and other support staff. I was told on Friday of last week that I would be finished in December. I am older than you are, so I can do it, I wanted another year of work to pay off some things, but we will be ok. I feel for all of the other staff on our campus and others who will suffer because of this horrible pandemic.

Take care!

[Bradshaw3]

4. I retired as soon as I could and it's worked out

Of course I don't know all your circumstances but sometimes it's not as bad as it seems. I believe SS will be around and, combined with a university pension, the two income streams have served me well. Also you can work while on SS, the first year especially. I worked in academic media and was able to free lance to add to my income. Sounds like you two may be able to do the same. While universities are cutting back, they still have to provide services but doing with with freelancers cuts their cost. Not good for workers but if you can have multiple income streams you may be able to make it work.

Also, don't know if this will be part of the offering but I had a choice between taking a lump sum and a monthly pension and chose the latter. So glad I did. The AARP has an article this month on that very topic.

[Sherman A1]

5. Sorry to hear this and hope the best for you

I was pushed out, but just a few months ahead of my planned retirement. It sucks no two ways around it.

[dickthegrouch]

6. If you don't yet have any get cyber security training

The cyber security world is short many millions of trained positions. It’s all the more important with thousands working from home.
If you have skills such as penetration testing you can just about write your own paycheck.
Governance, gap analysis, PCI DSS, ISO27001, CIS, SOC-2, are all standards crying out for practitioners to implement them.
“Experience” is essential in all these fields.
CISSP, CISM, CISA, QSA are the sorts of qualifications to do these jobs.
Good luck.

[woodsprite]

9. Hubby would stand a much better chance at the cyber security stuff than I would

He was a programmer for years until they moved him into management. He is now director over all financials, hr, student records, and the DBA programming groups. He has years of experience in upgrading management and customization of Oracle, PeopleSoft, as well as other packages. Me, well I have secretarial, which morphed into web design/light javascript development, CashNet, desktop support, and some business analyst training. I was looking last night at positions that were actively hiring, and saw that there were several places looking for QA/Testing type candidates. I *might* fit into one of those since we all were responsible for cross testing applications before we actually hired a QA tester.

Truth is, I have no idea where to begin to look. I know Indeed.com has been a fairly decent place to look (at least the kids found something there). Hubby has a ton of head-hunter contacts. I told him to get in touch with them to put feelers out. They hope to have the retirees and anyone else they deem expendable out by Xmas. They have to cut at least 38% of the entire budget.

[SharonClark]

7. I hear you. I started my last job at 58 and felt fortunate to be hired in IT at that age.

Sending positives vibes to you and your husband.

[getagrip_already]

8. I hear ya - also an IT consultant.....

For the past 10 plus years, I've been a "road warrior" travelling from customer to customer delivering advanced it solutions.

Well, now, there isn't much call for on-site consultants and I was laid off. I since found another job, but am paying through the nose for cobra health insurance. This gig could end anytime and then I'm off into the pool yet again. At 62, it's not as easy as it once was.

One of the pressures I'm seeing, though not explicitly, is that companies are very quickly assuming that since most of their projects need to be done remotely, it can easily be done by offshore resources at a fraction of the rate.

Also, there are a lot more gig workers willing to do pieces of remote projects for thin dollars. Especially support and other generic skill set positions.

Lots of ripple effects here. Everything from remote work to cloud and data center transformations to managed service providers are reducing the it infrastructure at companies large and small alike. Some of it is good. Some of it comes with security land mines that will destroy companies if they aren't careful - and few are.

Hope it works out for you. IT has always been a roller coaster ride. At least it isn't manufacturing or agriculture.